What I Learned From Being Severely Beaten Repeatedly As A Child

I learned I had no home.
I learned I was welcome nowhere.
I learned I never, ever really would be.
I guess I'm OK. I'm old now.
But my kids don't have the same opinion I do of how OK I am, on a scale of 1-10.
They don't have the same opinions of how OK I have been on a scale of 1-10.
And they don't use any scale I ever even imagined in their childhoods. I couldn't manage my own
growing up scales, even as I was changing quickly every year.
I don't know exactly how I intimidated them. They may have gotten a  few smacks, but some
say one whipping is enough. Kids obey a certain amount of time no matter what.
It shouldn't be necessary to intimidate them.
And you certainly won't get more obedience from giving out more hell.
You may tell yourself you are; but what you are seeing is fear, contempt.
I had that argument with my dad when he was in his sixties, even though he wasn't a bad person.
I had to cut the conversation short with him though until he was in his eighties! He was getting too
threatening in his tone even then. He had been thinking all along nothing else mattered except the
kids obey- obey the instant some command is given.
That instantaneous compliance expectation actually is a necessary instinct for parents to demand
from having lived under extremely punitive social pressures which group-identify and herd persons
rarely treated as individuals, as a matter of course. In my family, a lot of that sort of socialization came from slavery.
My own mom who could be just brutal, puzzlingly enough though, was horrified that I even cursed in front of my kids.
Well, I wasn't cursing them! I wasn't even cursing at them in my estimation. If I said, "Stop all that
damned noise!" she'd feel crushed. I suppose it's sometimes easier to identify with grand kids because
you can see how cute they are, but you are not responsible for them. I said sometimes. My dad loved
them too, but I could tell even though dad never developed the habit of cursing or swearing, that he
had more of a 'Would you kids stop that damned noise' sentiment when they were young.
So she was quite an enigma. She sure had different standards now that she had grand kids.
Here's the thing.
My grandchildren, her great grandchildren, get it worse than my children did.
That generational witnessing is what hurts so badly when it happens.
But my grandchildren do know love. As a child, I wasn't quite certain. I wondered. I thought
fate and love were all of one mix. I didn't think anyone was going to find nice ways to express
love as a way of living. I believe my own children assumed much of it rather than felt it in measures
which could have made them feel safer, and sounder, and more ready to grow inside.
They love one another, but are quite a bit more suspicious of each other than they should be.
And because their father was a troll they did grow to love- their emotional dependencies are way out
of whack, either way too extreme or hovering eternally n avoidance land.
As my children did begin to grow up, I realized such a thing as evolving love was entirely possible, and explorably wonderful. I began to do more and more of those little expressions of affection which had landed in my heart after all from both my own grandmas, and my foster mom, and to some extent my parents and godmother.
It took me so long to figure it out though.
I married someone who was the exact nightmare of a father for my children I never thought I was
capable of loving or choosing. Once he finally gone though,  I guess I began to see love could grow and blossom and be happy to present itself all over the place.
The kids told me once when they were little- 'When dad was here you were so mean!'
Now if that isn't the opposite of how things are supposed to go I don't know what could be.
I have no recollection of ever being mean until he left, even all these nearly forty years later.
What I do know is that things can go from generation to generation taking on many forms- none of
them entirely recognizable from generations past, but none of them warm or inspiring from a joyous
growth point of view.
I bought a house forty years ago.
I've lived in it forty years.
I still don't feel welcome.
Feeling no welcome anywhere is instilled. I don't know if it can be uprooted.
I did have one friend who pleasantly dug at it constantly.
I know I have to keep workn' on it, too. It can make a person cantankerous. But now, I am old.