Child Abuse Story From Jason

by Jason M.
(Illinois, USA)

I feel like other adults knew I had been abused and they used it to their advantage. Whenever I would hear about another kid at school getting spanked I would wonder how it was any different than my stepfather beating me every day after school. And because I thought about that, I came to the conclusion that I would continue to be beaten for the rest of my life. There was never much communication between my stepfather and me, so him beating me was unpredictable. I couldn't make any sense of it. I thought he was crazy. This is getting hard to write. When I would wait until my mother got home from work before going home he would sit on the couch and stare at me in an insane way. He was staring at me, and I think he was furious that I didn't come home that day and give him the opportunity to beat me.

On another occasion my mom, me, my sister, and my stepfather were all at home in the same part of the house. Sometimes it seemed as if he would become a disciplinarian and it seemed like he was overseeing the worst children in the world. This occasion was one of those times. He started an argument with my sister about some ridiculous thing and he then dragged her like she weighed nothing across the floor into the bathroom and slammed the door. He did it like it was totally justified. It was the scariest time in my life. I was so afraid. I couldn't think about what was going on. I don't remember any noise coming from the bathroom, but my sister was crying and screaming and then it was quiet. My mother wasn't perfect but I didn't know why she didn't stop him. I thought he was going to kill my sister and me. Later on that day or possibly right after, he let her out of the bathroom. She yelled hysterically to my mother that she said he couldn't touch her. I thought, does she mean that my mother had told him to beat me that way.

I don't think that was the end of him beating me. My mom saw him drag my sister across the floor like an object and she never confronted him or said it was wrong to my sister. She never saw him beating me regularly, but she saw him beating my sister that day and he still lived in our house for a long time after that. The only time she ever had him arrested was when he hit her. Because of that I thought him abusing us was accepted and my life belonged to him. He manipulated me to think I belonged to him and that I should follow the way he lived his life.

I had a girlfriend that once told me that I frightened her. She told me about a friend she had and that her boyfriend was hitting her. She said she thought I could become an abusive man. When she told me this, I thought she knew about what had happened to me when I was a kid and that she was trying to control me. This goes back to me thinking that adults knew that I was abused and used it to control me.

I saw my stepfather when I was maybe 21 and my blood poured out of my body. I hadn't seen him in years. He didn't threaten me and he didn't seem to intentionally try to scare me. But I felt like I was 10 years old, and even though I knew I was older, I knew he could hurt me all over again if he wanted to.

I know have choices in life, but at times I think I don't have any control of what happens and the things I do. I considered suicide to avoid hurting anyone, but more just so I could stop being hurt. I don't know what to do. Life is so hard.

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