~*CHILDHOOD TRAUMA*~

Trigger warnings: abuse, self harm.

Less serious warning: no timer for this one. No check still though, just typing until it’s out. 

So, last night I went a little wild on Facebook. I deleted it because… well… I don’t know? Probably so I could type it out longer? Or it may because I don’t truly believe I have any right to speak out about the things that have happened to me because I don’t deserve the closure, or safety of speaking what I need to. 

I went to a therapist a few years ago, I did this PTSD test thing. The person giving it asked if I was a veteran. I sort of assumed it was my Bullet Club shirt and the guy didn’t know about pro wrestling, so I said no, it’s wrestling. He was confused and explained my PTSD was as bad as an Iraqi war veteran. I said, “huh. Alright.”

My parents were abusive. 

Said it. 

My father was mentally and sometimes physically abusive. 

My mother made excuses for him.

Let’s get into it. 

DO NOT READ AHEAD UNLESS YOU WANT PERSONAL DAMIEN STUFF THAT DAMIEN NEEDS TO TYPE IN A PUBLIC FORUM BECAUSE HIS BLAHG HAS SORT OF BECOME HIS DIARY AND THERAPIST. 

IF YOU READ AHEAD, I AM EXPECTING YOU TO BE MATURE AND UNDERSTANDING AND NOT TELL ME IM WRONG OR ACCUSE ME OF USING THIS FOR SOME ULTERIOR MOTIVES. 

THIS IS SOMETHING IVE NEEDED TO FACE FOR A LONG TIME AND I FINALLY FEEL CONFIDENT ENOUGH IN MYSELF TO FACE IT. 

Why am I making a BLAHG post about it then?

I think writing books has become my sort of weird therapy outlet. I like putting things that piss me off, or emotions I’ve had into a book and knowing I’m sharing that with the reader in a silent conversation. 

It’s a little woo woo of me but there it is. 

First, let me say this:

I haven’t spoken to my parents since 2018 in any constructive way. Everything I had went through finally boiled over because my father was in too much of a rush to spend time with his adult son to do something right which resulted in a truck driving over a motorcycle and then smashing into a shed. 

None of that was on purpose. No one was on the motorcycle. 

What was supposed to be an easy battery jump to start a project bike turned into the worst day I’ve ever lived. 

My parents have never been able to say they’re are sorry. They physically cannot do it. I don’t know why, and I’ve been made to feel I don’t deserve that for so long, that I have never asked for it. 

I have gone no contact more times than I care to count, but my mother always uses my empathy against me, I feel bad for her, feel bad for my father, I pretend nothing happened, we go on as if there was never any of the incidents I’m going to talk about. 

It’s toxic. 

Well in this particular cycle of radioactive waste my father decided we could do some father son bonding over fixing up a motorcycle so that I could have one and we could go on road trips together. 

This didn’t work with guitars, cars, music, carpentry, or anything else… so why would it work this time?

I thought I could be patient enough, and play along enough to make it work. 

Wrong. 

In a pretty typical scenario, my father shows up pissed, he wants to rush through everything, he complains about everyone he knows who has success but refuses to do anything for himself, he gets the job done half assed, he feels he’s done his duty as a dad, he feels like my mother won’t be mad at him, they leave, I cry about not being good enough for my parents, repeat. 

Saw it coming the moment they walked through the door. 

I’m a dumb ass and do not know how to drive a standard. Bre’s father, to his credit, believed in me far more than I did myself and let us borrow a standard. 

I was right, and for once, Bre’s dad was wrong LOL.

Destroyed bike, destroyed shed, I have a meltdown over events I knew were going to happen, I go inside and chug 10 bottles of Guinness and down an entire bottle of sleeping pills, paramedic shows up, makes fun of my Aquaman collection, tells me I’m good to go, takes off, I get a $500 ambulance bill. 

Let me say something about nurturing here, Bre stayed with me and watched Sasha Banks VS Bayley at NXT Takeover Brooklyn with me for the billionth time while I sobbed about not even being able to kill myself right. 

Then I woke up in a Walmart sleeping pill induced trance to see her and her dad outside trying to figure out the damage to the bike and how to fix it. 

Seeing Bre’s father taking time to do that, actually trying to help, when I have honestly been a crummy son in law to him, mainly just avoiding spending time with him, made me think. 

Maybe I deserve to be around?

Maybe I’m not this horrible awful pain in the ass my parents have convinced me I am?

Until that year, I didn’t know I was abused. 

I would go to my friend’s house in middle and high school and be so confused that they got to eat more than one single time a day. Like… you mean that your mom and dad will make you food or buy you food so you aren’t starving? You mean if you’re outside skating they will actually save you food and not say, “if you aren’t home for your one meal, oh well?” You mean your parents didn’t suggest you get a job at 14 if you wanted to eat? You mean that your mom and dad encouraged you to go to school instead of trying to get you to drop out to help with bills?

YOU MEAN YOUR PARENTS PROVIDED LOVE AND WAYS TO SUCCEED? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOUR FAMILY???????

This was my internal battle from age ten on. 

I didn’t get it. 

They must have been spoiled little brat shits right?

RIGHT?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s me, hi, I’m the dumbass, it’s me. 

I’ve never talked about any of this until recently, and even then it’s with a very select few people.

I was allowed to do anything I wanted. 

No joke. 

I could stay out until 4 in the morning drinking, I could listen to whatever music, I could watch whatever movies I wanted, I was allowed total freedom, and to my parent’s credit, they never shamed me for anything that would be deemed not “manly” or for a “boy.”

Here’s a transcript of when I told my father about my first girlfriend:

“Hey, my girlfriend is coming over this weekend.”

“Oh… uh… okay.”

“What?”

“I kind of thought you were gay. Which, hell yeah, whatever, amazing… you’ve just been listening to a lot of Depeche Mode is all.”

He was right. I had been on a Violator kick. 

The point is, if I came out as trans, they were fine with it. If I were gay, they were fine with it. 

They didn’t actively discourage these things. 

But, that’s where it gets slippery, they didn’t actively ENCOURAGE anything positive. 

I wasn’t held to a standard in school, I wasn’t held to a standard after high school. I was basically bought things that would keep me busy and out of their hair. 

Before we get into the stuff I’ve been avoiding let me clarify, I do not believe my parents are bad people. My father was raised by an insane woman who disowned her 16 year old grandson for stealing $500 from her for pill money… that grandson was me… that grandson was also busy being talked out of getting a straight edge tattoo at 16 by the tattoo artist who was a family friend. 

Kudos to him. 

A big fuck you to my grandmother. 

She made my father raise his brothers and sisters, didn’t provide him the love or mental health resources he needed, and he has suffered his whole life for it. 

My father and mother are, at their hearts, decent, good people who do not judge the lives of others. My father is a talented carpenter and musician, he builds better guitars by hand than any big company does out of their factories. My mother is an avid dog lover who would rescue every stray on planet earth if she could. My father introduced me to the world of horror movies. I will NEVER deny, or discredit any of the things they are in a positive way. 

What sucks is that with some positive, there have been instances of pure misery. 

When I was in seventh grade I began skateboarding, I was a 280 pound 12 year old. After one summer I was a 160 pound 13 year old. My parents were not rich, that’s fine. We couldn’t afford to go out and buy new pants on a whim. Cool, whatever. But damn, would a belt have broke the bank? 

I go to school, can’t keep my pants up, a teacher calls home because they think I’m purposely not wearing a belt. 

A belt I asked for, but was told wasn’t in the budget, much like food more than once a day. 

Weed, booze, and cigarettes for them being something that the budget always made room for though.

My father was embarrassed about this call, so when he got home he made me lay spread eagle while he did circles around me screaming at me. At one point he let me stand up and touch the tip of my nose to the wall, I guess he must have been worried I would fall asleep laying down. 

He told me to repeat after him, “I will not let my fucking pants sag.”

I said, “I will not let my pants sag.”

The “fucking” would have never been an issue, but I knew in one of those moments, something I had done a million times before could be used as a road to cruelty. 

Wouldn’t you know it? I was right. 

He then put his mouth beside my ear and screamed “I think you forgot a FUCKING word!”

Oh joy! I got to lay down again. 

Only this time the screaming came with a lil cheeky kick here and there. 

My mother came home, I was sent to my bedroom, I lay there plotting how I could either kill this old bastard, but then decided I probably wouldn’t do that, so maybe I could get a notebook and figure out how much money I would need at 18 to move out. 

I’m an English teacher, not a math teacher, leave me alone.

I fell asleep, woke up, got on the bus with a dirty ass pair of those swishy pants everyone wore, and went to school. 

My mom showed up later, picked me up from school, took me to the music shop my father owned, said he had a rough day the day before, we pretended nothing happened. 

Then it happened again when my friend had a birthday party and my grandmother told my father I threw it at her house for some reason. After he went to tell the friends father, he came home embarrassed and unable to look me in the eye because he was told the party was a sleepover in the friends basement. 

They said nothing to my grandmother, who then a week later disowned me, and we all moved on like nothing happened. 

It happened plenty of times before this too. 

One time for wetting the bed when I was five. 

One time for finding out he smoked weed. 

One time for not filling an ice cube tray up all the way. 

One time for getting excited about wrestling when he was sleeping in another room. 

One time when my friend called at 6pm on a Friday. 

One time when my friend pulled into our driveway with his radio too loud. 

Countless times from 4-17 this happened. 

Same cycle. 

Something small pisses him off. 

Screamed at. 

Maybe kicked. 

Mother says he had a bad day. 

We pretend it didn’t happen. 

I didn’t deserve his apology in my mind. And I still don’t. I’m such a useless pile of shit son that any mercy they have shown me is a kindness. They should have left me on the fire house door step with a note that said “burn after feeding.”

In their eyes, that’s who I am. 

I don’t know if they consciously know they’ve sent me that message, I don’t believe they do. 

Here’s another story to show the irrationality of my parents. 

A few friends and I were in a band, they had a bottle of crown royal at our house when we were fifteen, my dad found it, told us to “hide it better,” and laughed. 

A week or two later, we went to a pool party they had for their friends, I accidentally splashed my father in the face with water. The next day it was the old spread eagle on the floor getting screamed at for embarrassing him gimmick. 

Like, damn, at least switch it up every now and again right?

I broke my ankle in the 8th grade. Absolutely demolished it. At the time, we lived in a house that we didn’t have a spare key for. So, I would boost myself up through an unlocked window in the spare room every day after I got off the bus when my parents were at work. 

I didn’t think anything of this was weird. 

Sure, of course we don’t have another key. 

Them getting one made or letting me use theirs was never a thought that passed through my head. 

I was already always walking on eggshells in bizarro land where a ripped newspaper could get me in more trouble than not coming home for five days. 

When I broke my ankle I took a week off school until I got my cast. When I got my cast and prepared to go back to school I realized, wait just a minute, I can’t climb in a window with all this gimmick. 

I mentioned it to my parents. 

My father couldn’t understand why it would matter that I had a broken ankle. Couldn’t I just sit outside until they got home? Rain? Who cares? Eventually, I asked enough questions to annoy him apparently because he did that angry white guy pulling away from the house thing and I just retired to bed so I wouldn’t be there for the meltdown when he got home. He left some mean ass note with the key, I don’t remember what it said, but it wasn’t a classic like the time he got pissed I forgot to unplug a window AC unit so he cut the power cord in two with scissors(still plugged in, I have no idea how he didn’t die or cause a house fire) and wrote in permanent marker “nead I sai aney more?” across the front. 

I don’t want to go into every single incident, I would be here all day because it was at least once a month. You never knew what mood you were getting, either cool guy that would talk about George Romero and listen to Black Flag with you, or the angry prick who was pissed that you ate both Reese cups five years ago and wanted your blood for it. That’s the way his brain worked. 

And I won’t bore you with how they sent me to live with my father’s abusive mother when I was 12 without telling me why. Moved me away from a grandfather and step grandmother who actually showed me love. Made it so I couldn’t contact either. And then I had to find out my grandfather passed away via text message and feel the immense guilt of abandoning people who genuinely cared about me, but having no way to fix it when it was happening. 

When I was 17 I found a stray dog. I decided it was mine and kept it. It cried, as puppies do, and my father decided that was my problem. So he screamed and yelled and screamed and yelled. 

At this point I had been listening to WAY too much hardcore and considered myself somewhat of a hard ass after a few fights with other school kids and at shows. I had started adding jogging and exercise to my usual regime of skateboarding and starvation. 

I didn’t feel like listening to it anymore, so I didn’t. 

We got into a fight. 

No one wins a fist fight in my opinion, but I did win in the sense that I now had broken away from that physical power. 

We got in plenty more fights after that. 

I fought him, I used violence against my friends in disagreements, I was explosive in anger and intimidation to everyone from 18-30. 

I was a piece of shit. 

I have friends who have stuck around when they flat out shouldn’t have because I was a bastard who deserved nothing less than the suicide I tried to give myself. 

I’m not looking for forgiveness or to blame someone. That was my ignorance. I am to blame for that. 

After my attempt, I decided I was going to be the person I always needed for me. I look up to Mercedes Varnado/Mone/Sasha Banks, and I am a huge Wonder Woman fan. If you know me, you know these things about me. 

From Mercedes, I learned to be myself and only myself, work for the things you want in the world. 

From Diana, Wonder Woman, I learned to act with kindness and compassion above all things. 

I want to be like both of them. 

I want people to feel safe around me. 

I want people who are treated bad to know I will fight for them with more passion and conviction than I will for myself. 

I have worked hard to get where I am as a person. 

Do I need some tweaks?

Fuck yes. 

But I’m 97% better than I was. 

My explosions now are limited to social media rants, sighs, snarky comments, trolling, and writing books. 

All of this to say, if I’m that way, why am I not trying to mend things with my parents and fix that relationship?

I’ll explain because some people in my local area are too goddamn stupid to understand when I tell them, and decide to tell my parents everything about me, approach me in a store to say I should mend things or say, “you’ll regret it when they’re gone.”

Bitch. 

No. 

Not anymore. 

Last night my mother in law decided to tell my wife that I am an evil person for cutting off my parents. Everyone in her family thinks I’m terrible. 

Essentially, that Bre should leave me without saying it. 

She has defended my parents only when it fits her own narrative to accuse Bre of something. It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, it also isn’t my story to tell. The long and short that I will say is my mother in law is a terrible human being filled with bigotry that she justifies as Christianity… and uses other family problems like a weapon. 

She also thinks God is her hitman. 

All that aside. 

It made me realize. 

People genuinely think I should mend things. People think the coil of mortality should make me feel I need to have a relationship with the people who have made me the self loathing, self deprecating, self destructive human I am today. 

No. 

A few days after THAT day, I told my mother I would be willing to sit down and have an open face to face conversation with them. 

Never showed. 

Never planned it. 

She would instead send me a text message here and there trying to get me to do what we’ve always done, pretend nothing happened. 

I refuse to accept that fix. 

They refuse anything else. 

They moved to PA, roughly six hours from me, I believe, as I have found out through constant bothering by others. 

They have driven that six hours at least five times to see local bands play and hang out with local friends. 

Never reached out. 

Always try to when they are in PA over text to do the same thing though. 

They’ve had health scares, watched friends pass away, watched my friends lose parents who loved them, and still, cannot reach out to have a conversation. 

I have always been willing to have that conversation. 

Until now. 

A few months ago my mother called me to invite us to PA for Thanksgiving, and to talk. I declined as I felt this was a bit silly and transparent. They wouldn’t take their time to come to us, even if they were here anyway, but I was expected to go to them so it would be on their turf. All my effort, because a relationship with me isn’t worth more than offering to let me come to them and pretend nothing happened. 

When I declined, and explained why, I was met with hostility about how my father regrets things but can’t talk about them. I was met with gaslighting about my abuse. I was told my abuse was tough, but I should let it go because my father had it tough. 

That isn’t how it works. 

I apologize for my mistakes. 

I own up to them. 

Those are my responsibilities. 

If I can do that, they should at least be able to listen to me say what I want to say. 

Even at that, I still considered driving there to “fix” things because it gets old bumping into people and being asked how they are. 

They of course tell everyone everything is fine.

It isn’t. 

I was in Walmart last summer and an old family friend told me my father called him asking about me. He asked if he could give my father my phone number, I said sure, expected nothing. 

This person was trying harder to mend an issue my parents created than they were. 

Kudos to him, he’s a good human being. 

I’ve waited since around June-ish for that call. For that pop in visit. For that hallmark movie moment. 

Shit is not going to happen. 

I don’t want it to happen. 

The changing moment for me was when my mother told me that someone told them something about me that made them decide they didn’t want to mend things with me. 

I don’t know if parents deciding to end their relationship with their child over gossip is normal… but it ain’t it to me. 

So please please please stop bothering me about them. Let me continue to work on myself with Damien guiding Damien. I’ve self parented my whole life, and will continue to. Stop crossing boundaries I’ve set to tell them what I’m doing.

I don’t have a hella positive inspirational AF end here other than I will continue to be the person I needed, and I will always be empathetic. 

K thx?