My Epic Domestic Abuse Fail

Am I a horrible person? Will and I just watched “The Human Experience” and something in the program triggered him to tearfully relay to me a conversation he had with his counselor.

Apparently he can’t stand it when children are hurt. Go figure. That’s just really strange to me considering he has abused and treated my son cruelly for the entire 16 years of his life. As he was sitting there crying to me about his painful childhood, I was literally getting sick to my stomach thinking he was a hypocrite.  Is he delusional? Does he not realize that he himself is a child abuser?
Then I remembered an appointment I had with some Christian counselors a few years back in which I was at the end of my rope with his mistreatment toward my son and was desperate for something to give. My husband sat in that office crying like a baby because of “how his father treated him.” I sat there completely numb. I guess the counselors noticed my indifference to his pity trip and thought they better appeal to me to care. “Do you see how he is crying?” They asked me. “How does it make you feel that Will is hurting like this?”

The bastard basically tortured my son – my flesh and blood – my beautiful little boy. He ruined that kid. He devastated him emotionally and psychologically. He beat on him. He pushed him and poked him, tripped him and pinched him, squeezed him, rubbed his face in urine, beat his dog and took all his property, and grabbed any opportunity he could to squelch any fraction of joy in his life.  

And I am supposed to care about HIS feelings?

Do they not understand where my loyalty lies? Do they not get that this grown man’s ‘pain’ is irrelevant to his abuse of my son? Do they not comprehend that this is a damned excuse? I’m supposed to just forget all the ways that he damaged my son growing up and that he has never even truly apologised for it or tried to rectify what he had broken? How about the fact that he shifted the blame for his abuse of my son on to my son and I? I watched him shatter my son’s heart into a million pieces. I was a witness to the sheer pain written all across the little face of my son repeatedly as he pushed him away any time my son tried to hug him or sit near him. The fear on my son’s face when he choked him; The helplessness and hopelessness each time he sucked the life out of my son and eagerly said no to every little thing he asked for; How little, ashamed, worthless, and flawed he made my son feel when he made fun of his clothes, his hair, and his cologne. He even picked a fight with my son because he was angry that my son’s feet outgrew his. Did he feel like a lesser man, maybe?

And now he cries crocodile tears, not because of the trauma and pain that he has caused my son or because of the irreparable damage he has done to my son’s development and self-worth – and not because of the rifts he’s put between my children and between the children and myself – and not because of the years I wasted blaming myself, trying to make it better, walking on eggshells and orienting my entire life around his crap attitude. His tears were not because I almost committed suicide out of sheer hopelessness over the situation in my home either. Nope. His crocodile tears are because of “all the pain he felt when he was a child.”

Poor. Baby.

I felt a lot of pain growing up too. No, I didn’t get chased by my dad with a machete. But I did get rejected and abandoned by my father. And I did get beat up by my step-dad. And I did live in an unhealthy relationship with my mother and then get kicked out at fourteen. And I did get coerced into prostitution, assaulted and violated on many occasions, and I suffered some viscous attacks by the father of my son. That didn’t drive me to tear down a child. On the contrary, because I knew what it was like to be treated that way, I made a choice early on to never do those things to my kids or allow anyone else to hurt them that way.

Apparently I failed on the latter.

I made a mistake by letting that man back in my house. I sit here angry all the time now the more I learn about what he is all about. Honestly, I think I am getting to the point where I am outgrowing him.
I am sorry I didn’t protect my son early on. I am so sorry for the pain and suffering I have caused him. I am sorry that didn’t listen to the child workers years ago who told me he was ruining my son. And above all, I am sorry that I trusted Christians to help me to deal with the problem.

I wish...I wish I could back in time and protect my son. I could have prevented the suffering in his life and the way he hates himself now. But I didn't. And now I can't undo it.

What a mockery that man's tears are to me now.

Mocking tears, haunting tears              
Subtle, empty, taunting tears
Mocking tears, talking tears
Laughing, lying, shocking tears

Did once you well for me to see
my worth mirrored back at me?
How cruel! You warm the rival’s cheek
This soft betrayal; the wound cuts deep
I beckoned to you; you cared naught
Now ally to the pain he wrought

Mocking tears, haunting tears
Distant, icy, taunting tears
Mocking tears, talking tears
Spiteful, painful, shocking tears