My Child Suffered Too
How My Kid Felt the Abuse
I'm a single mother of a little boy who was six years old when I met my ex. I never introduced them to one another. My plan was to wait at least a year before I let my baby meet my boyfriend.
I am glad they never met, but that didn't stop the impact the abuse had on him. I was effected by it, so it automatically effected him as well.
Sadly the relationship got deeply confusing and rough. Painful things would happen and throw me off balance. It quickly began to exhaust me.
I didn't mean to prioritize my relationship over my kid or myself. It took over without me realizing how bad it’d become. It was beyond difficult. I was trying my best to do the right thing. I wanted to be good to my partner, try my best, and to never be selfish. My desperation to do right and avoid/deny hurt became a constant.
Anxiety and stress each time he vanished..
Anxiety and stress when he lashed out at me for sharing thoughts, asking questions, calling, or sending cute pictures..
Anxiety and stress when he’d harshly accuse me of things I’d never done and would never do.
The obsessive foggy loop I’d be thrown into for several days at a time after he’d make awful, degrading statements.
The pain that followed his refusal to respond no matter how much distress I let him know I was in..
The levels of stress and exhaustion from many negative emotions consumed me.
His words and baffling actions had me trapped inside a negative headspace I’d escaped many years prior. But the place my mind became was darker and harder to comprehend than ever before.
It genuinely felt like prolonged torture. I didn’t know what to do or what was going on. I didn’t understand or even trust my ability to understand anymore, but I still felt a pain I can't explain.
To be treated like my suffering or needs were wrong, selfish, inconvenient, and unimportant to him hurt in a way that left me feeling like I was worthless and bad.
It sounds serious and dramatic BECAUSE IT WAS. It was a big deal. It was not ok. The way he treated me was NOT alright. It was abuse. His cruelty made life harder than it needed to be.
I became a collapsed version of myself I didn’t recognize or know how to tolerate.
I was always in pain, on edge, worrying, analyzing, catching my breath from yet another shockingly disrespectful and cruel attack on my character from the man I had fallen for.
I was constantly stressed out and lost with no idea how to make things right. I didn’t trust my head or my ability to understand anymore. My former personality and positive energy were suddenly gone. My grasp on truth and my personhood became non existent.
There were many days I spent a lot of my time in bed because emotional exhaustion crossed over to physical.
I felt burnt out, sad, lost. After a while of that I became depressed- deeply depressed. I was uninterested in talking, playing, or doing much of anything. I was irritable and reclusive.
I was still a mother to a young boy who needed me..but I was emotionally unavailable. All I had had been sucked out of me by the the abuse. I had nothing left. I didn't know why. I didn't know what was going on.. but I was no longer present.
I was not myself. I was trapped inside of an aching body running on some battered woman auto pilot from many years ago.
I technically existed in the physical world, yet my smile, joy, and involvement with my son.. it was all nowhere to be found.
The crafts I did with him, the adventures we had in our own backyard, our movie dates, the camping indoors, making up bedtime stories, the baking crazy cookies and doing science experiments together.. the conversations and our snuggles..it was all GONE.
I was gone. So my little boy had a shell of his mother with him for over year.
He went from having a happy involved momma, to living with someone harsh, distant, and often sad with no clue why.
He is an only child.. and for many months while this relationship with D.B. bled me dry, my sweet little guy was all alone observing his best friend change and crumble. I can only imagine how that felt for him. I’m so sorry.
To make matters worse, he had to witness the worst of it. The things I couldn't hide when D.B. hurt me horribly..like on his birthday..
.. or extremely abusive episodes like when he drove off instead of picking me up for a date. My son saw me spending all afternoon getting fixed up. My son saw the excitement on my face as I gushed about how we were finally going on a date! My baby saw a glimpse of his real mom again.
And then when my baby woke up in the middle of the night, he saw his mom still all dressed up for her date, crying her eyes out on the living room couch. He saw his mom hurting and sobbing in the dark while everyone else was asleep. My baby cried with me as I worked to appear more calm.(I told him I had a bad tummy ache)
He cried because he saw me hurting, and that hurt him. He cried because his once joyful and interactive mom was now going to emotional extremes and struggling in ways that frightened him.
D.B. had been saying to me about how he wanted to have a baby with me, how he said if things kept going this way we'd be married within two years. He knew that I‘d been around his family and adored his mom.
Oh my sweet little dude knew.. even if he hadn't overheard me, he could see my joy for those few days leading up to the main discard.
My baby saw me getting dressed before 7 a.m. and gathering D.B's gift to drop off at his house so he could wake up happy. Then he saw me look worried and sad when morning transitioned to afternoon without a word from my boyfriend on his birthday.
He saw me wait around all day. Then that evening came, and he saw my face change.
He witnessed me grab my things and leave outside without saying a word to him about where I was going.
He didn't follow me or see me falling apart in the driveway. He didn't witness what happened or know what took place at all. But he saw me when I walked back in the door empty handed.. with nothing but a completely different look on my face than the one I had before.
He saw me when I wanted to die.
He saw me having a breakdown after being abnormally silent. He saw me lose composure. My mother could tell something was not ok.. so when she asked what happened I exploded with cries and began hyperventilating while slowly sinking down onto my kitchen floor trying to get words out to tell my mother what happened.. He saw.
He heard my anguish. He saw how pale my face became. He witnessed me behaving bizarrely. My baby saw his mom no longer acting like his mom.
He saw me.. but in that moment I didn't see him. I can't even recall what he was doing or what he did while I was a few feet away caving in. I know he was in the living room because he always is..I was in the kitchen, it's all connected, no wall but it's spaced out.
I have no solid memory of what was going on around me. I just know I was breaking, I was actually broken minutes prior by the man I loved.
I wasn't me that night. The small part of me that had managed to still exist at points in the relationship was now fully erased. Dead.
I snapped.
I couldn't function. I cried and cried. Then I'd fall silent and stare and shake my head. I didn't eat. I could not. I could barely drink.
After the sobbing slowed down I got up and made it to my room. I curled up in my bed and I became still for a long time. I didn't do anything.
I didn't check on my child. I didn't call my friend. I didn't write in my journal. I didn’t watch anything. In a moment of brief denial I texted D.B. a goodbye text from my mom's phone like a creep. The moment didn't last long. I retreated back within myself.. whatever self I was.
I stayed in my bed for several consecutive days. I didn't once fix my kid food or interact with him. I didn't once fix myself food. I didn't brush my hair.. I didn't bathe(eww).. I’d hobble to my bathroom a couple of times a day. That’s it. Thank God my mother took care of my innocent child who didn't deserve this chaos or parental neglect. I didn't even see him. I didn’t see my beautiful little boy.
My son is my entire world, and I DIDN'T SEE HIM. I couldn't see anything properly. It was horrible. I barely saw myself either. The pain was so severe. The shock, confusion, heartbreak, disorientation... I was having a mental breakdown. I failed my son.
My baby witnessed and lived with this. No amount of will power or good character could yank me out of it and make me do what I was supposed to be doing. The trauma and shock were very real. My mind had been violated and destroyed.
The psychological abuse had made complete ruin of my psyche. I was quite possibly experiencing a full nervous breakdown, or some form of a psychotic break.
Psychological abuse is serious. It is damaging. It is never 'just emotional' he could have easily caused me to take my own life without having ever laid a hand on me.
Please, if anyone reading this is in a situation involving their little ones, know you aren't alone and you aren't a bad person. Everyone knows it is best to get out, but knowing that does NOT make it any easier, especially when you don't trust you know anything anymore.. Have mercy on yourself because you know that abuser isn't going to. If you are truly stuck I hope something or someone helps you soon. It is not easy to wake up and see clearly when someone is constantly turning off the lights, and that's all abusers do.