Patricia

You ever get hit in the head and you can vaguely feel your brain rattling around? That’s what she did to me. The first time she ever laid a hand on me. I had to have been about 15 or 16 at the time. I was crying because she was screaming at me about something or other. Maybe I didn’t do the dishes correctly, or I left my load of laundry in the dryer. I can’t remember. Every day was something else to bitch and moan about. Patricia is my grandmother. I lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents basically my entire life until I decided to move out at 20. She was abusive. Extremely so. I’ll give you a small taste of the things I went through and you can piece it together for yourself. Age 12, was playing at the park across the street and was drinking a red Gatorade. You know how if you drink enough of a red drink it can stain your skin? That happened to my upper lip. I went home once it got dark out and she started screaming at me, calling me a whore because she thought I was out making out with some older guy with a mustache. Age 10, I’ve always been a bigger girl. Not morbidly obese but I’ve always had some jiggle and a belly. I wore a shirt a little too tight one time and she asked me if I was pregnant. That wasn’t the only time, but it kept getting more frequent as I got older. Age 18, things got worse the older I got. So a really good friend of mine and her family basically adopted me and I would hang out with her and stay over as much as I could. Almost daily I was there because I just couldn’t handle home life anymore. One day I was at her house and I got about 15 or so text messages from my grandmother telling me that I’m dead to her and that if I loved my friend so much why don’t I just move in with her? All because I was hanging out at her house. Age 14, my grandmother and grandfather got into a fight (as they always did) and she picked up a coffee table covered in crap because she’s a hoarder and threw it at him. Age 13, I hadn’t done anything “bad” that day but once my grandmother got home from work, she immediately came into my room grabbed me by the arm, and threw me outside. Locked the doors and wouldn’t let me come back in. I was in my pajamas and had no shoes or socks on because it was about 7 pm and I wasn’t exactly expecting to be thrown outside for no reason. My grandfather ended up letting me back inside and they got into a screaming match because of it. Age 17, she tried to beat me with a broom. I didn’t let her. Just grabbed a hold of it and wouldn’t let go until she did. The look on her face was pure confusion. She expected me to just allow her to beat me. Like I wouldn’t fight back. When she realized I wouldn’t, she spit in my face and called me weak. Age 20. I had had enough. Daily I was getting harassed. She would go through my things. She would make snarky comments about me working too much, then not enough. How I would dress, or act. Everything about me was up for scrutiny, no matter what it was she had an issue with it. So I decided to move out and I moved in with my boyfriend at the time and his parents. The day I went to go get my things from my house, my mother started screaming at me and yelling. My grandfather got in on it too, telling me that I have no one to blame but myself. Just. So. Much. Yelling. My grandmother was texting me the entire time, telling me that I’m a piece of shit. I’m no longer her granddaughter, and when she dies she’s going to come back as a ghost and haunt me for the rest of my life. (I’m not sure why her mind went there as a threat but she was always weird like that) She told me she hopes I fail at life and that I would amount to absolutely nothing just like my mother. She told me that no one would ever truly love me because there was nothing about me to love. That I was a fat piece of shit nobody. Oh, and I have illusions of grandeur because I decided I wanted to go to college. That was the day I had my first panic attack. My mental health has been a rocky road since. Through my healing process, I’ve figured out where all that anger and aggression was coming from. When I was younger, I’m talking birth to about 9 years old I didn’t really notice the negative things. I never really questioned her. Never really knew what abuse was until I got older. So once I started noticing it and pulling away from her and actually being hurt by the things she said and did she started losing control over me. She couldn’t handle that. I started becoming my own person. Able to survive without her and I didn’t need her. So she started acting out. Becoming more and more aggressive, thinking it would bring me back to her. Make me fall in line. But I wasn’t like my mother. I knew what abuse was. And I knew I wanted no part in it. She had a bad life growing up. Her own father was abusive, her mother clocked out. So she had to raise her siblings by herself. Then she got pregnant and married at 18 to my grandfather and that was an abusive and loveless marriage on both sides. Raising my mother and uncle was a project in and of itself. So she never had an easy life. Doesn’t excuse her actions. But at least there’s a reason for them. Don’t get me wrong I still believe my grandmother is a piece of shit human being. Most of the issues I deal with on a day-to-day basis have come from her. You can’t really come back from 20 or so years of constant abuse. You can’t exactly forgive and forget that shit. Especially when I’ve only got 5 years away from her. But throughout that time I learned some amazing lessons. Both good and bad. She taught me to never take shit from anyone. Stand up for myself. Don’t stand idly by while someone is mistreating me. (It took me a bit longer to really let this one sink in) She taught me to not be apologetic about my authentic self. That I can like what I like and fuck anyone who thinks I’m weird for that.

She taught me how to cook, and have a love and passion for food. How a meal can make someone feel loved. That food is a great gift to those around you. She taught me what kind of parent I didn’t want to be. To be loving and gentle. Encourage my child to do great things and that she’s valued. Wanted. Needed. To teach her and help her become the person she is meant to be instead of resorting to trying to force her into the picture I have in my head of the person I think she should be. Always encourage adventure. She taught me a love of learning and reading. It wasn’t until I was in middle school that I really started to read and enjoy it but as long as I can remember we always had bookshelves and towers of books around. She showed me the value of learning and knowledge. She brought me up in a somewhat “out there” religion. I still consider myself to be part of it. I’m a non-practicing Wiccan. I lived in Mass growing up and every year we would go to Salem, MA for Halloween and she would buy me all kinds of books and crystals and tarot cards and all that kind of stuff. I feel being exposed to that at a young age has helped me a lot with the next one. As mentally messed up as she is she taught me to be tolerant of people and ideas that are different than mine. I always grew up knowing that people who liked the same sex, dressed like the opposite gender, or had a different skin color than mine, or a different religion were no different than me. We are all human. What happens behind closed doors has nothing to do with me and who am I to look down on another person for what makes them happy? I really do believe that most of these lessons were because of being exposed to her manipulative exterior to make people like her. To “seem” like that person that is always tolerant and accepting of other people. But that’s on her; I learned these lessons and wholeheartedly believe in them regardless of her motives. My grandmother is a seriously messed up person. She fucked me up for the rest of my life and I struggle with PTSD and different neuroses every single day. To this day I shut down when someone starts raising their voice. To this day I always have to ask if you're upset with me. To this day I flinch when someone moves too fast around me. To this day I have panic attacks if I see a red Toyota Corolla. Even though I moved over an hour and a half and 1 state away. To this day I keep a hand over my mouth when I laugh or smile. To this day I have to remind myself that I deserve happiness. To this day I have to protect my daughter from myself because I'm so afraid the little bits of my grandmother that are still a part of me will come out and hurt her. For the most part between her, my mother, and my father that’s what paved the road to me saying “yes, I’ll try that” just 4 short years ago. I’ve learned to accept an apology that I’ll never receive. Because if I sit here and analyze it every day and try to process what happened, why, and exactly how it affected me and in which ways, I’ll go insane. I won't be able to heal and move forward in my life. I won't be able to look hard at myself and forgive myself for the choices I made. What matters now is my future, with my baby. Making sure the cycle stops with me. Because she doesn’t deserve that. She deserves to have a happy childhood full of amazing memories and building an amazing relationship with her so I can experience her life after she’s no longer under my roof. Abuse at a young age will damage a person for a very long time. There’s something called learned behavior. While growing up you learn all about how to be a human from your family or caregivers or what have you. But if that support system is already damaged, you don’t learn things the way you should. You learn that abuse is ok. You learn that how you show love is by being mean and hurtful. You learn that if someone gets angry that you have to shut down and become a shell so you don’t anger them further. You learn what you can and can't talk about. You learn that if there’s something mentally wrong with you then you are a broken person. So you shove it down inside yourself and suffer in silence, which doesn’t help in the long run. It just makes it worse. I’m rambling, I know. But this issue is so close to my heart that I could go for hours about it. At the end of the day if you are a victim of abuse during a time that you are learning about being a person, if you’re still healing and figuring out who you are without the abuse and the learned behavior, just know you are not broken. You are not alone. It's unfortunate but there are so many of us out here that know exactly what you’re going through mentally. It wasn’t your fault that it happened. It was them. There’s something broken and missing within them. It’s a cycle of abuse, and the only way to stop it is if we do not continue that cycle with our own children and loved ones.