I was four years old when I watched my father hit my mother.1
I remember sitting in the living room, trying to play with handful
of small dinosaur figurines, while my parents stood in the hallway a few metres
from me, screaming at each other. I don’t
remember what the fight was about. My parents fought often, then made up and
laughed about it with equal frequency.
But this argument was different.
As my parents screamed at each, my mother did something she had
never done before; she put a hand on my father’s chest.
It wasn’t a shove, it wasn’t violent, but on my father’s
face, something snapped.
I watched him as he looked at the hand and in the same
motion reached to his foot and pulled off a thong, and then slapped her in the
face with it.
The toys I had been playing with fell from numb fingers, the
figurines falling in perpetual slow motion. Everything seemed to go still and
suddenly the thing that had been just another argument between Mama and Papa,
turned into something terrifying. I
could feel my mother’s hurt and fear emanating out of her like the feelings
were living, breathing things.
I watched in horror as my father started to raise the thong
again, coming to the sudden understanding that he wasn’t going to stop at just
one blow.
A smarter child probably would have run away, but as I
watched the welt instantly spring up on my mother’s cheek, something snapped in
me too. I had no plan, no idea of what to do, so I did the only thing I could.
In a moment of heroic idiocy, the tiny four year old version
of myself, jumped to his feet… and charged.
As my tiny body collided with the back of a leg that I
barely came up to the knee of, I kicked and punched my father in the calf with
everything I had. My father was so
stunned by the barely noticeable impact, that he dropped the shoe.
I remember him turning his face towards me, an empty open
hand the size of a steel fry-pan still upraised as he looked down at me with shock-filled-eyes
at my attack, and as he registered my betrayal, his eyes clouded with a rage so
fear-inspiring that I stopped my attack and instead just clung to the tree-like
stump of this giant’s leg.
Instead of swatting me down as expected, he turned to my
mother and said, “You see, he doesn’t even love me, he only loves you.”
I was terrified. I
knew with absolute certainty that I had bitten off far more than I could chew,
but I was committed. My cheeks grew hot
and wet and in a tiny quivering voice I interjected with the only thing I could,
“I love you Papa, but you can’t hurt my Mama.”2
At my words my father slowly turned to look at me once
more. I’m not sure what I expected, I
just knew that whatever he decided to do next, there was nothing my mother or I
could do about it. There was a true
ugliness to that, the knowledge that we were each completely powerless in the
face of his aggression. For the briefest moment, he just looked at me, like he’d
finally seen me for the first time and as he did so, I saw the words hit
home. The anger dissipated and in their
place I saw the realisation of the horror he had become to his family.
He sobbed.
My father fell to the floor in a heap, wrapped his arms
around me in a grip of steel with tears streaming down his face. His whole body
shook, an emotional earthquake encircling me and lifting my whole body as he
told me that I was right and apologised over and over and over again. My mother just stood there, watching, as if
completely removed from the reality of the situation.
In Australia, one woman per week is killed by her
spouse. The violence of domestic abuse
is a crime that happens in silence, seen only by the eyes of children who
cannot help and are powerless or too afraid to act. In those families, the violence often becomes
normalised, acceptable—it’s just part of the burden of the relationship because
normalisation is the only way not to live in constant fear. Most victims of domestic abuse are
controlled, cut off from their friends and family, made financially and
emotionally dependent. This means when
the violence occurs, the instigator of the violence is also the emotional support
to recover from the abuse.
When your whole world becomes one person, a person who is
the cause of your abuse, but also the support mechanism to recover from it, it
creates emotional dependency. It is a cycle that is almost impossible to break.
But you can break
it.
Even if you are not experiencing long term abuse, even if it’s
an isolated incident—seek help. It may
be the difference between a single event that is an ugly relationship scar, or
the start of real, long-term abuse.
Help is available confidentially, by
phone or online. If you are
experiencing abuse, even if you feel you have no support network outside of
your abuser, no friends, no financial aid, nowhere to go that you will be safe,
all it takes is one call or one email.
There are shelters for you to stay at filled with people who feel just
like you, who will understand. I know—my
mother ended up staying at the Salvation Army’s women’s shelter in Brisbane with
my sister and I as part of the resolution of my family’s issues.
My father however, never laid a hand on my mother again.
My mother’s decision to leave and seek help was the first
step in a long term resolution of my parent’s issues, it changed the power
dynamic so that my mother had a support structure, and in discussions with my
father, she did not need to seek resolution from a position of dependence. Regardless of the outcome, it was the first
step in a fresh start for her.
It could be the first step in yours too.
Next week: A life of shame - Domestic abuse as a men's issue
1PTSD is a serious
psychological disorder and when left untreated its recipients are often left
with violent or suicidal tendencies, my father unfortunately suffered both.
2Even at four years of
age I had been religiously indoctrinated into male gender role - the idea that
it was my gender’s responsibility to protect women and children. In this moment,
my father had failed our most sacred duty and my words and actions were based
on this.
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