Obviously the answer to that question has to be NO! No kid deserves to be abused, no matter what they did. What they do deserve is to be loved, cared for and cherished to the best of our ability and this countries ability. We fail miserably on both counts.
Was I a bad kid? Not really but there were times I did deserve some punishment. Lol, if I was the same kid now I'd be in therapy and on high doses of drugs for ADHD, ODD, PTSD and a ton of other things. I'd be medicated until I was compliant and fit societies standards of behavior. However I wouldn't be me.
Did I do some bad things when I was a kid? Sure did. The kid that lived behind my house used to hang out with me. Another kid we didn't particularly care for played with us now and then. D and I both had BB guns and K had done something that had made both of us pretty angry at him so we quit playing with him completely.
K wanted back in our good graces so we told him if we could use his back as a target for our BB guns we would play with him again. It was fall so he put on his big coat and we put a magazine inside his coat and then proceed to shoot him in the back at the magazine. However neither D or I could resist and we each shot him once in the butt.
Naturally when he got home his mother asked what happened and he ratted us out. My dad beat the hell out of me, broke my BB gun and I was grounded for life. Same with D. Another thing is D and I weren't allowed to play together anymore and K wasn't allowed to play with either of us.
Yes, it was a dumb thing to do, it was cruel and we deserved to be punished but we didn't deserve the beatings we both got. We didn't hurt K except when we shot him in the butt and we both knew it was wrong while we were doing it.
D and I used play with matches. We particularly liked the wooden farmer matches. We'd walk along the railroad tracks and light them but we were smart enough to make sure we kept them between the rails and never started a fire.
One day K begged us to come along with us so we let him. He kept throwing the matches in the grass and we both yelled at him not to be doing that. Eventually we started a grass fire and D and I both rolled our bodies over it trying to put it out. Singed off most of my hair and eyebrows.
We finally figured out we weren't going to be able to put it out so we ran to D's house and used the phone. D picked up the phone and hollered fire, fire, fire and slammed the phone back down. I picked up the phone and told the operator there was a fire by the railroad tracks. Yes, they still had real live operators back then.
After notifying the fire dept the operator said "What have you and D done now?" as it turns out the operator we got was D's oldest sister. So we were busted. Go beat again and forbidden to play with D and K again. They were building a new fertilizer plant by the tracks about 3 blocks away from where the fire started an it came very close to being burned down. That was the end of playing with matches.
No, I wasn't a perfect kid. Lol, you couldn't even see perfection from where I was but I sure didn't deserve the beatings I got for the dumbass things I did wrong. I'm not sure how I'd handle a kid today like I was back then but I do know that beating the kid wouldn't help the situation.
I did lots of other kid things wrong but those are the two worst I can remember. At least at the age of 8.
Showing posts with label beating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beating. Show all posts
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Running away, killing ones self and Runaway Love
As I said yesterday, it gets worse. I have a brief interlude here that's related but the first time I heard Runaway Love by Ludicrous and Mary J. Blige I almost cried. If you haven't heard it or seen it you can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJWtR2KlMwg and I would recommend you watch it and listen to it a few times.
That video could be the story of my life except I'm a guy and my abuse started much earlier than that. I'm sure the girls abuse started when they were born too. Yes, I'm getting to the point of all of this.
The first time I ran away from home I was four years old. Imagine that, a four year old running away from home for real. It wasn't like the shows where the kid can't leave because he can't cross the street or his mother refuses to pack a lunch so he doesn't leave. I ran away and my mother couldn't find me for hours and hours. Of course at four I couldn't fomulate a very good plan so I ran away to my grandmothers house which was about 8 blocks from where I lived.
In retrospect not a good plan but hey, I was four and I did have the balls to leave home and try to find a better place for me. Eventually my parents tracked me down, came and got me, took me home and beat the hell out of me until they got tired of it. That was how life was for me. While my maternal grandmother cared about me she and my grandfather just kept letting the abuse happen. Yep, I've probably been depressed all of my life.
After thinking about my unsuccessful attempt to runaway from home I came to the conclusion that the only way to make things better for myself was to die. So naturally I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Obviously I wasn't successful or I wouldn't be writing this. The bad thing is I still which I had been successful.
It's kind of embarrasing for me to be writing this stuff as most of the people in my life don't know any of these things happened to me. I also never knew that my life was that much diffeent from any other kids lives. I didn't know there were good parents in the world or that there were kids who weren't abused. Except for one of my cousins I was close to. I always wished I had her parents but her parents and mine hung out together as our two dads were related. I'm not so sure now that her life was that great either but she didn't get the beatings I got so it made it look better to me.
When I was around 40 or so one of my wifes friends was at our house and she was talking about how the social services had taken her neighbors kids away from her for abuse. She was telling me that the parent had left them alone overnight and someone had turned her in. Now her kids were fed well, dressed well, not beaten or anything like that and in my mind an 11 and 9 year old were old enough to be alone over night.
She went on and on about how bad it was that the mother had left them overnight and I finally snapped on her and told her she didn't know what the hell she was talking about or even what the hell abuse was. I asked her if she'd been an abused child and she said no, that she didn't even know anyone who had been badly abused. I said sure you do, you know me.
She said what abuse, you got spanked now and then or what. Now I not only snapped but I really went off on her with a major rant. When I finally stopped yelling she asked me how I was abused so I told her a very little of it but included the running away and the trying to commit suicide at the age of four. Much to my disbelief and amazement she started crying and so did my wife. I truly didn't understand why they were crying so I asked.
We talked about it for awhile and I tried to explain that I'd never talked about it because I had assumed every kids life was like that and that it was what I knew and what I had lived thru so it was normal for me. It was the only explanation I could come up with and when she asked me if I still thought it was normal I said yes.
Then she asked me, if I read about a four year old running away and trying to commit suicide, in the paper or saw a tv story about it would I think it ws normal and I said no. That's the first time in my life I realized how abused I was and how bad it really was. Here I am a 40 year old man thinking my running away and trying to kill myself was normal for that age.
I know better now and I will talk more openly about all of the abuse that happened to me but there are still things no one else knows and I'll eventually put them on here, someday. when I get brave enough. I know it wasn't my fault I was abused and I know the responsibilty wasn't mine. I KNOW THAT yet it still feels weird to talk about any of it.
So yes, I now know that I have been depressed all of my life and to this day I don't give a damn if I live or die. It just doesn't matter to me in any way, shape or form.
That video could be the story of my life except I'm a guy and my abuse started much earlier than that. I'm sure the girls abuse started when they were born too. Yes, I'm getting to the point of all of this.
The first time I ran away from home I was four years old. Imagine that, a four year old running away from home for real. It wasn't like the shows where the kid can't leave because he can't cross the street or his mother refuses to pack a lunch so he doesn't leave. I ran away and my mother couldn't find me for hours and hours. Of course at four I couldn't fomulate a very good plan so I ran away to my grandmothers house which was about 8 blocks from where I lived.
In retrospect not a good plan but hey, I was four and I did have the balls to leave home and try to find a better place for me. Eventually my parents tracked me down, came and got me, took me home and beat the hell out of me until they got tired of it. That was how life was for me. While my maternal grandmother cared about me she and my grandfather just kept letting the abuse happen. Yep, I've probably been depressed all of my life.
After thinking about my unsuccessful attempt to runaway from home I came to the conclusion that the only way to make things better for myself was to die. So naturally I tried to commit suicide a couple of times. Obviously I wasn't successful or I wouldn't be writing this. The bad thing is I still which I had been successful.
It's kind of embarrasing for me to be writing this stuff as most of the people in my life don't know any of these things happened to me. I also never knew that my life was that much diffeent from any other kids lives. I didn't know there were good parents in the world or that there were kids who weren't abused. Except for one of my cousins I was close to. I always wished I had her parents but her parents and mine hung out together as our two dads were related. I'm not so sure now that her life was that great either but she didn't get the beatings I got so it made it look better to me.
When I was around 40 or so one of my wifes friends was at our house and she was talking about how the social services had taken her neighbors kids away from her for abuse. She was telling me that the parent had left them alone overnight and someone had turned her in. Now her kids were fed well, dressed well, not beaten or anything like that and in my mind an 11 and 9 year old were old enough to be alone over night.
She went on and on about how bad it was that the mother had left them overnight and I finally snapped on her and told her she didn't know what the hell she was talking about or even what the hell abuse was. I asked her if she'd been an abused child and she said no, that she didn't even know anyone who had been badly abused. I said sure you do, you know me.
She said what abuse, you got spanked now and then or what. Now I not only snapped but I really went off on her with a major rant. When I finally stopped yelling she asked me how I was abused so I told her a very little of it but included the running away and the trying to commit suicide at the age of four. Much to my disbelief and amazement she started crying and so did my wife. I truly didn't understand why they were crying so I asked.
We talked about it for awhile and I tried to explain that I'd never talked about it because I had assumed every kids life was like that and that it was what I knew and what I had lived thru so it was normal for me. It was the only explanation I could come up with and when she asked me if I still thought it was normal I said yes.
Then she asked me, if I read about a four year old running away and trying to commit suicide, in the paper or saw a tv story about it would I think it ws normal and I said no. That's the first time in my life I realized how abused I was and how bad it really was. Here I am a 40 year old man thinking my running away and trying to kill myself was normal for that age.
I know better now and I will talk more openly about all of the abuse that happened to me but there are still things no one else knows and I'll eventually put them on here, someday. when I get brave enough. I know it wasn't my fault I was abused and I know the responsibilty wasn't mine. I KNOW THAT yet it still feels weird to talk about any of it.
So yes, I now know that I have been depressed all of my life and to this day I don't give a damn if I live or die. It just doesn't matter to me in any way, shape or form.
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