Unspoken Anger

Long term effects of domestiv violence

 

Dearest Sisters,
 
I was thinking last evening as I boxed my papers about my fear of my father when I was young. A thought entered my mind, 'When you were young you saw your father's anger as his greatest strength.'
 
On this side of life, through eyes aged in life's wisdom, I see the truth of things. My father's anger has always been his greatest weakness. Anger for my father meant pain for those who loved him.
 
Anger is a negative emotion.
 
In moments of extreme emergency anger can be our best friend.  For people like my father, born with an angry personality, always believing he received the short end of the stick, anger turned into rage towards those who loved him.
 
It has been my experience that most angry people feed off the positive energy of those around them. When my father beat my mother it was always those times when she appeared most happy. Times when she 'didn't see it coming.' Most abusers are like this.
 
Mama has also always been angry. Her anger has existed just below the surface. I could feel it when I was young. Through the eyes of a child I interpreted this to mean that I had done something wrong.
 
I had a kidney infection once when I was nine years old. I had suffered in silence for a week, not feeling well, not knowing why. One night a woman attending nursing school, a friend of mama's, came down to visit. She noticed that I didn't look well. Being a student of nursing school she immediately took my temperature. It was 103. Mama was called. My temperature was brought down, and the next day mama took me to the doctor. The doctor made mama take my underwear off so he could check me internally. Mama didn't want to. I had a kidney infection.
 
All the while mama and I were walking to the doctor I felt her anger. I was overwhelmed by it. I asked mama if I had done something wrong. Mama said, "Why no! What's the matter with you?"
 
Mama's anger didn't make her hurt others. Her anger turned inward and turned her into a victim. Mama is as strong a woman as I am. She once threatened to kill a man for making a pass at her. She ran a bar and kept control of it. She was hot tempered and quick to piss off if she believed you thought yourself better than her. Yet my father beat her and she never fought back.
 
Why did my father's unspoken anger result in producing a man capable of terribly evil things? Why did my mother's unspoken anger turn her into a victim of domestic violence?
 
I wonder what part testosterone played in my father's life. I wonder if, genetically speaking, women are wired to more often play the part of the victim. We cannot forget the variable of environment and its effect upon our 'thinking.'
 
I asked mama once when I was fourteen, "Why don't you just leave him?"
 
"And do what? And go where?" mama replied.
 
The other night as I was falling asleep I answered my own question. The simplest solution is often the hardest solution of all.
 
My sister Karen has taken to accusing me of being angry all the time, "Just like Donald." It irritates me. She irritates me, like chalk on a chalkboard, when she accuses me of being angry. I ponder ever more deeply if her words have any truth to them. I ask myself, "Are you angry? If so, what would you be angry about?"
 
Mama pushes at me about why I won't move to Indiana. I told her today, "I just can't make myself want to do that. I just can't. My home is here."
 
Mama always says, "There, that is how I feel about my home in Florida."
 
Point taken.
 
Am I angry? Do I harbor resentment towards those I love? Am I carrying around my own unspoken anger?
 
I was thinking the other day about my parents children. We were all caught up in the abuse. We were all victims to the devastating effects of domestic violence. Children cannot divorce their parents anymore than parents can divorce them. We are victims, just as we are participants. There is an uneasy balance here.
 
Maybe I only think I'm not angry. Maybe it's time I allowed myself to be angry. What would be all right for me to be angry about?
 
Little Dog lied to my sisters. His lie has left the child a prisoner. There is no level within my existence that makes his choice the right one for me. His continued denial has hurt me. I did not bring up the subject to him. He is the one who broached it to my sisters. He is the one who proclaimed his innocence, but only to them, not to anyone else.
 
Over the course of the years the secret found its way into the real world. As soon as I was away from my parents home I told my newly found best friends what my brother had done to me when I was young. It got back to daddy and mama at the same time I was leaving my first husband. 
 
The story, by the time it reached daddy's ears was quite different from the beginning. Rumor had it daddy was the one that was guilty of the crime. Daddy was madder than a wet hen. Mama grabbed my two-year-old son out of arms and accused me of being a bad mother for saying such a thing.
 
To make a long story short, the first time my parents heard the story I was eighteen and pregnant with my second child. Mama said, "I think you must have liked it. That is why you didn't tell." That stung pretty good. Mama said this a lot through the years. Karen finally set mama straight a few years ago, told her I was only six years old. Mama doesn't say that anymore, thank God.
 
Daddy told me, "I would believe you raped Little Dog before I would believe he raped you." Daddy's words didn't sting so much. I mean, after all, it was Daddy. He spoke with knives in his voice all the time. The body gets used to the blows after a while.
 
My parents were angry with me at the time, as it was daddy's name being dragged through the mud. I have always understood this. I set the story straight. It was not spoken of again for many years.
 
Does the fact that I have never forgotten what my parents said to me convince you that I harbor unspoken anger? When I was little no one noticed anything. No one could see. Does my acknowledgment of this mean I am angry? I don't think so.
 
The final chapter to our story has yet to be written.
 
We are infected with our parent's heartaches. They couldn't leave each other. They couldn't stop hurting each other. Maybe the simple truth is, 'One cannot move past what one has not yet dealt with.'
 
Karen said one day, "It still bothers you because you are still keeping it a secret." She stung me with that one. Cat always says, "The soul knows the truth when it hears it."
 
Am I angry? If I am angry how do I feel about that? What will I do with my anger? How will I allow it to express itself? One thought leads to another. I try to argue with myself in my journals. I push the issue with Karen. Mama pushes at me. It's a process.

 

I feel it isn't right that I should be the one to tell my brother what he is guilty of. I don't feel it is right that he has 'forgotten' what has scarred me. His denial has awakened the lioness in me. She paces her small space, always waiting for the chance to escape. Is this anger? The lion is strength. Strength can be motivated by anger.
 
I can take it apart and put it back together a million times. I have done this all of my life. Why do others see this ability as a thing of shame on me?
 
Karen says Little Dog knows he is guilty. He is just denying the truth like he has always done. Don't let it bother you."
 
Sometimes I just need to seek another opinion. Sometimes those who stand on the outside looking in provide us with a fresh point of view.
 
I do not wish to harbor unspoken anger. I do not want my mother's future to be mine. I always put myself through this whenever I think about going home to my parents for a visit. This time though I feel something stronger than mere anger. My brother has denied me. He has denied the truth, again. How can I look him in the eyes? How can I hug him and laugh as if nothing has changed?
 
My own life always leads me to question the life of our country, as strange as that might seem. Budweiser is considering selling out to foreign investor's. America need not worry about being taken over by force. Our country is being sold off to the highest bidder. Our abandoned homes; sold so quickly to people who could not afford this dream, are now owned by foreign investor's. Those who had money really did make more money. Now our precious country stands on the brink of bankruptcy and most of us are kept so busy making a living that we can do very little else to reclaim our country from those who would cripple us with foreign debt.
 
I see our leaders as being more like my brother and my father, people who take and take and take until everything they don't possess is gone.
 
There are very few people I give my trust to. There is no one at this moment, other than God, that I allow to see me cry. It is a habit, my being this way. It isn't just my parents that have placed responsibility for the past on my shoulders alone. It is everyone, even life itself, that makes the woman responsible for what happens to her.
 
In a radical Muslim country I would have been put to death at the age of six because of my brother's rape. Our country doesn't kill the child for the sins of her brother or father, but social isolation is a form of killing, a much lonelier form.
 
Then there are my ex-husbands, all of them mirror images of my brother and father. This too is blamed on the woman. Even in college I came across this idea that somehow the victim is responsible for all future problems she or he encounters. Because I was raped as a child I grew up and married a man who would attempt to rape my child. This makes the child responsible for the actions of others. These thoughts lead me to wonder how many of America's problems are blamed on the very people who keep America alive.
 
I firmly believe everyone is just like me, on the inside. Behind our many masks of disguise everyone is just like me. I told my students one day when the subject of race came up, "Peel away our skin and we are all the same color underneath."
 
One day the subject of prejudice came up, along with its many ugly forms, its many ugly faces. I asked my students, "Are we better off today? Or have we merely buried our true feelings deeper below the suffer?"
 
My students said, "Sometimes it is the way you are raised."
 
I told my students, "You aren't going to live at home forever. When you get out on your own rise above it."
 
I have always said I would know when the time came to speak of what I believe. A year ago I heard a voice in my head, my voice, clearly state the obvious. "If you believe in yourself why do you remain silent?"
 
Now when opportunity knocks I answer the door.
 
I don't know for absolute certain that I am right. I can only say with certainly that this way I have chosen is less painful for me.
 
As I was saying, I was thinking...
 
For some reason that sounds funny to me. I was thinking I think all the time. I sleep now though, used to be I couldn't sleep so well. I still wake a lot. I search for my young four-legged friend. She is beside me. The old dog sleeps in the chair next to my bed. I acknowledge that I am awake, everything feels all right, I return to sleep.
 
I told mama the other day when she sounded sadder than usual that she should turn on her favorite Italian music, sit back, relax her body, and allow her mind to take her to Italy. I explained to mama that I do this all the time. Mama said, "I can't do that."
 
I pushed her to explain why. Mama again said, "I just can't."
 
I pushed a little harder and mama finally said, "It makes me want what I can't have."
 
In this life there is no prison stronger than the one we build around our self.
 
I told mama, "You can't physically be in Italy. The next best thing is allowing your mind to go there. Maybe it's all right that it hurts. Maybe you should see where your thoughts take you, and then think about why you are thinking about that. Just listen to your music, and let your mind go wherever it wants."
 
Mama said, "You can do this, because you can still dream, I can't."
 
I saw a movie the other night, Broken Trail. Robert Duvall's character was explaining the nature of the human mind in the wee hours of morning when there is only you and your thoughts. "In these moments you cannot escape the reality of what you have done with your life."
 
Alice used to tell me, "I wish I had been more like you when I was young. Maybe my life would have been different if I hadn't been so afraid."
 
Montye used to say, "The older I get the less I need." Montye didn't regret her life, she rejoiced in it. Every trail was a challenge to be overcome. In that movie with Robert Duvall, his character also said, "Sometimes you just have take what life throws at you and do the best you can." Montye was like this.
 
I once told daddy, Jesus didn't say, "Give me your cross and follow me. Jesus said, "Pick up your cross and follow me." 
 
The same is true 'for all of us.'
 
I told some teachers I worked with last Friday, "When a person stays in an abusive relationship all they are doing is giving the abuser permission to keep abusing them. I guarantee you the violence never ends. It changes form, but it never ends."
 
One teacher asked me how old my mother is. I told her eighty-two next month. She said, "Eighty-two. She still has time."
 
I told her, "No. She 'just can't leave him."

 

The truth is, there is a part of me that wouldn't mind it I was returning to attend my father's funeral.
 
Does this mean I wish him dead? No! I just don't care to ever see the man again, not in this life anyway.
 
I do not want to go to Indiana because I do not want to see my father. My stomach ties itself in knots just thinking about being trapped in a room with that man. He has let me know tonight that he knows about my poems. He thinks I shouldn't be telling him he has good memories as well as bad. 'Especially since I write sad poems because I am depressed, just like him.'
 
He is attempting to twist the knife. The next time my father sees me he will tear me apart about my poetry, something that he has never seen, much less read. The cat is toying with its mouse again.
 
I do not like my father. I do not respect who he was or who he is. I do not want to see him. I do not want to interact with him. I do not want to fetch him his food, or water, or pills. I really wouldn't mind if my life's path never crossed his again.
 
Does this mean I hate my father? Not at all! It merely means I do not like this man. That he is my father is my cross to bear.
 
Then there is my mother. To avoid my father I must be willing to avoid my mother as well. I am not inclined to do this. We children are held prisoner by our mother's love for a man who has always made her pay for loving him.
 
He knows we want to be with her, not him. But to be with her we must be willing to love/put up with him. He is sick you see, any challenge he throws at me, any challenge I throw back, will make him sicker. Mama will get hurt and worried, and feel it necessary, to again, defend him. It is the way of things for us. He tears into us, wearing us down, knowing full well we cannot defend ourselves against his attack, because of mama.
 
Mama has always stood between her children and her husband. That's a hell of place to exist.
 
That woman telling me mama still has time to turn her life around, that stuck with me. "She still has time."
 
I wish my father no harm. I hold nothing against him. What is - is. There is really nothing to do but seek the comfort of understanding. I simply do not like him.
 
I will not allow my father to put my life's work on the chopping block of his life choices.
 
Let the battle begin. Remember the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for. You may get it."
 
I have had enough. I have enough of that miserable old man.
 
Then there is mama. And I know it doesn't matter how I feel. She loves him. No matter how much she proclaims otherwise, she loves him.
 
I could have told my daddy, "At least I did something with my depression besides sit around feeling sorry for myself." Yes sir, I could have told him that.
 
If my father wants to go out being an a*****e, so be it. I can love him because I understand him. He is my father. He had a hand in my creation. I owe him my thanks. "After all," as I recently told a friend, "My father did not kill his children."
 
I owe my father a debt of gratitude. He could have killed us when we young, he often wanted too. He would tell a grandchild, my youngest son, many years later, "If I could go back in time I would kill every child I had when they were born."
 
Something always stayed his hand. Something always made him stop, before it was too late. Sometimes he drank until he shut the voice of his deepest soul into the darkness of a prison only he could create. Then he did things to his wife, to his children, things no child should remember the father is guilty of.
 
It would be much easier if I could just avoid the old man. I don't like him. He doesn't like me. This knowledge will not haunt me when he is gone anymore than it haunts me now.
 
I think the real tragedy for my family is not that we lived with the shame of domestic violence, but that we never dealt with it. Now, in our golden years of life that which has too long been hidden has nowhere left to hide.
 
I am inclined to stop hiding my truth from my father. He pushes at all of his children attempting to force us to reveal to him his actions against us. If he attempts to force me back into the corner this time I know I will push back. I am not returning to the hell my father lives in, "Not now, not ever," as Paul Newman's character said in, Nobody's Fool.
 
I told a friend once that when our father died we children would probably each take a knife and stab him in the heart, just to make sure he was really dead. Inside I laugh at the thought.

 

I think of the times we have shown, or attempted to show compassion to our father. Each time he strikes out at us with cruel words, responding as if our act of kindness was something he was ashamed to receive, and we should be ashamed to give.
 
I told daddy one evening, after he again he went on about his fear of dying, "Don't be afraid daddy. God catches all of his children."
 
Daddy's soul heard me. I could feel his silent respond grab hold of the thought. He almost immediately tore apart the thought, and returned again to his favorite subject, his own miserable life.
 
What is true for me must be able to stand as truth for all.

 

Unspoken anger is misplaced fear.
 
What will I share with my father when the time comes?

Author's Note

Beyond the darkness -- Beyond the anger -- Lives the Light of God's Eternal Love. Remember -- Beauty often hides in heartache. Peace and long life.

Reviews

[Deborah Shepard]

Anger us bnot the strength but love and light lives through you

[clau]

"Anger for my father meant pain for those who loved him."
Your words are so true, anger is never a strength because it causes our downfall and makes us irrational .