Child Abuse Story From Andrew Richards Part 2
by Andrew Richards (see Part 1 of Andrew's story)
(Sydney, Australia)
The next day I'd been a bit messy with my stuff in the tent and came back to stuff being thrown out of the tent. Words were exchanged, I collected my stuff and feeling slightly angry after sorting it all out, I lay on my stomach seething. Next thing I felt what I thought was a friend just patting me on the shoulder in a friendly gesture, only it quickly degenerated to him rubbing my shoulders and making these low-pitched fake sexual moans, which made me sick, but I just put up with it. After all, I figured that he was giggling before so maybe he was just mucking around. Besides, my family had taught me well not to put up too much of a fight with confrontations. I think I mentioned it in the tent later that day (it was sometime during those first 2 days) and got told that I was just "overly-mature." That night, giggling yet again, he asked me if I wanted to have sex with him. I think I angrily told him to "drop dead, get a life and still keep on dreaming." I spent that night feeling terrified, not knowing if I was going to wake up in the middle of the night to being anal-raped.
The next morning I desperately wanted to tell a couple of my closest friends in the group what had happened, but the whole group was hanging out together. I didn't want to make a fuss with the teachers (and I really didn't feel like my Year Coordinator was very approachable), so I did the only thing I felt I could do: I found a group of three guys who were sitting in the eating area that I'd been to school with for years and told them.
They promptly spread it around the other kids in my year group who were on school camp, who en masse asked me what had happened and I told them.
The teachers then approached me, asking me what had happened and asking why I didn't go to them. I told them I didn't want things to be a hassle for them. I thought that was the end of it - I was wrong.
The following Monday, my best friend at the time chose to have it out with me in the playground, right outside the staff room. At the end of the fight, I got sent up to the Year Coordinator's office. She demanded to know if I wanted the police involved. I said no. After all, the only guy who witnessed the whole thing was on the side of the guy who'd done it to me, so who were they going to believe, right?
When I said no, she screamed at me for what would have been a good half hour or so, comparing me to "women who cry rape," amongst other things. That night, my mother, who had the principal's home number, was furious when she found out. The principal claimed that they were trying to keep it quiet "for the sake of my reputation and rumour-mongering down the track." My mother went along with it and the school got to hang onto its reputation.
A couple of weeks later, she spoke to my mother when she was in the school office. She told her that she and the other senior male teacher on the camp had "had a bit of a giggle" about the whole thing. I only found out about this last bit a few years ago. I also overheard some people rumour-mongering that I was gay after it.
The rest of that year passed without incident, but the following year would be hell on a couple of fronts. To begin with, we had a Year Coordinator in the following year who at every assembly would tear into us, telling us how bad we were and what we were doing wrong and was an absolute demon of a woman to deal with (apparently she was like this whenever she was pregnant). There are a million other horror stories from my school life, but this is already turning into a novella, so perhaps they're best kept for another time.
On the other front, my mother's time on haemodialysis (treatment for kidney failure) grew ever so short - within 6 months we were told if she didn't go on it soon she wouldn't make it past Christmas. When that happened, all I ever heard from my family were questions of what I was doing to help my mother. No one, not the people I went to school with or a family member, ever asked me how I was holding up. Actually, the only exception was my year 12 music teacher on a choir camp.
What's worse, my mother kept having complications in the form of septicaemia (blood poisoning) that year. Both parents were in hospital a total of 27 times that year on top of my mother's dialysis sessions, which happened three times a week - at one point, the running joke was that they had shares in the place. What complicated it further was that as I was growing up, my family had almost completely taught me the perfect thing I could do for my mother: hide my emotions publicly so she wouldn't have to worry about me because she was dying and she had to focus on getting well, and dad's wife was dying so the last thing he needed to do was focus on me and so I hid what I felt - until late at night when the house was dark and everyone was asleep, when lying in my bed I'd pray "dear god, please don't let my mother die" and then burst into tears quietly so no one could hear me.
For many years, my mother's condition became a living nightmare where I just endured everything with it: the uncertainty, my mother's constant foul moods; everything. Eventually though, she was given a kidney by one of my aunts, so that nightmare did finally end. All the while, nothing really changed in my family.
When I was about to turn 24, my mother insisted on having a family reunion at my place, the day before my 24th birthday. I was dreading it because family get-togethers always left me feeling like some freak of nature my family wished someone would come along and hopefully correct one day. At the same time though, I longed to feel like the family actually loved me. And so that day, after lunch, I asked if we could have pizza for tea.
I mean it was low key and that way I could get a birthday celebration without people actually having to know it was my birthday (because I honestly feared the retribution of that if I dared to bring it up). When I asked about it, one of my aunts in the kitchen said, "You can have whatever you like as long as it's leftovers." Mum told her that I could have what I liked, but then forgot about it and yet again, where the family was concerned I was ignored. I stormed out of the house in a mix of anger, deep hurt and betrayal (emotions by that point I guess I was used to, but never on my birthday). When I got back, everyone who was meant to be sleeping over the night had gone home and I was quietly told how I'd made the whole thing about me and ruined it for people.
After that though, Mum started quietly talking to people about it and things were slowly improving, or so I thought. One of my cousins today repeatedly makes me feel like inhuman scum when everyone's backs are turned, including an incident at the most recent family reunion which she organised. However, it seems that everyone finding out about it has family members furious and so maybe the nightmare of child emotional abuse that continued on into my adult life is finally over.
My abuse left me countless days where I honestly felt like if I died tomorrow, no one would honestly care that I was gone or miss me and that in fact some people would rejoice that a mistake of nature finally being corrected.
I compensated with video games and childhood interests, and porn when I wasn't in a relationship.
I contemplated suicide more times than I can count, but was always able to keep my suicidal thoughts at bay.
I found myself attracting women (and still do attract women) who treat me in a similar way and with a similar level of respect. I'm nothing but a loving and devoted boyfriend (if anything I'm guilty of giving too much too soon), but every woman I've ever been with has been guilty of lies, mind games, cheating, two-timing, using me to unknowingly two-time another guy, using me before sucking me dry and then spitting me out and/or ditching me at the first sign of parental disapproval.
My last relationship was a real doosy; classic textbook emotionally abusive behaviour: isolating me from my friends and hobbies, treating me like garbage in every way, putting me into debt, flirting with other guys and showing them soft-core porn pictures of herself, expecting me to just "get over things" whenever she emotionally wounded me, blaming me for everything, not buying me anything for Christmas and Valentine's Days and spending the bare minimum on birthdays only when fought to tooth and nail; all while expecting me to give her the world and walk on eggshells for her. On top of that, I had her mother making unspeakable character assassinations about me behind her back, all because at 28, I was studying full time at university.
When I finally spoke well of myself, she dumped me and then came crawling back to me a few days later telling me "how sorry she was" and wanting to make it all right. When I took her back it wasn't long before her mother used things I'd said in the breakup as an excuse to forbid her from seeing me (this is a 20-year-old woman we're talking about here, who in Australia has been able to drink, vote and get married solely of her own free will for over 2 years now). When I contacted her afterwards, it soon became clear how much her words were as meaningless as air.
These two last events, however, and the pain they caused have helped me get to the core of my abuse. That one key statement that sums up everything: I grew up alone, having to rely on myself entirely for emotional strength and support, while enduring constant bullying and emotional abuse at the hands of my family, followed on by equally emotionally abusive relationships.
You'll find Part 3 of Andrew's story on this site.
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