Spilling the MOST Tea, Part 5: Surviving Child Abuse

Hello, Dear Reader,

How has your week been? Did you have any good tea this week?

First, I wanted to catch you up on a revelation I had this week.

I was really reluctant to tell you this, Dear Reader, but I needed therapy. I believe I handled my breakup with Tom swimmingly. I doubled down on friends, volunteered more, and let myself heal from my emotions so I could properly move on. However, my second break-up? The one with Wyatt? I sat in a never-ending fog that wouldn’t lift. I’d go on walks, volunteer, work out, etc. Nothing was working.

I was upset, angry, disappointed, and overall jaded.

However, you may have noticed over the years that I rely heavily on chosen-family. This is because I don’t really have a family to go back to. Since I became an adult, I set out on a journey to create my own family, and create the family I wish I had.

However, now that I’ve turned 30, I often ask myself: Where is my chosen family? Where is everyone? Why am I so black-and-white when it comes to letting people in my life?

To be able to find the answer to that question, I first have to ask: What happened in my own family? What am I holding on to? How did abuse form how I function as an adult?

Today, Dear Reader, we’ll be talking about something rather uncomfortable:

Child abuse…

Child abuse can look different; there’s no 1 clear depiction of how it looks.

However, for me?

One of my earliest memories as a child was watching my mom and dad scream at each other in the entryway of the house we lived in. Apparently, I learned as an adult that when I was a baby, my dad went to hit my mom while she was holding me. She flinched and held me up, and my dad punched me instead by accident. Apparently, I had to go through speech therapy as a younger kid as a result.

Along with this, when I was a toddler, I would watch my mom and dad chase each-other around the house while screaming at eachother. I would watch them go at it, and I would scream and cry out of fear.

As a formative child, this is where I learned my basis for love.

When growing up, my parents eventually divorced when I was six or seven, and we went to live with my mom. As for my dad? He moved across the city to be near work. I remember not understanding as a kid why Dad had to go away. I remember being in the back seat of my mom’s car and hysterically crying, asking for my dad.

However, my dad was a messy character to say the least. Before my mom, he had two previous marriages and had three kids between them. I don’t recall having much to do with my half-siblings growing up, except maybe a visit or two. However, they all had baggage with my dad. They weren’t close to us, and because of my dad’s age gap with my mom, my half-siblings were much older. I only saw them a small handful of times growing up, and wouldn’t see them again until my dad died.

When I was twelve/thirteen, my dad became very sick. He had blood pressure issues, along with some heart issues. Regardless of how, his kidneys were failing. We always thought it was because of the high blood pressure that led to his kidney failure. However, his kidneys dipped so quickly that he had to schedule a surgery to get a catheter fitted so he could eventually start dialysis. At the time, he didn’t get the surgery scheduled. He thought he had more time, except that he didn’t. One morning, he woke up blind. He couldn’t see. In a panic, he was rushed to a hospital where they diagnosed him with complete kidney failure. They gave him emergency dialysis, and since they had to use a one-size-fits-all catheter, it slipped out in the middle of dialysis. I remember being at his hospital bed, and watching blood spew from his body all over the hospital wall as he flat-lined…

He eventually recovered, and for a time, he got better. However, since that night at the hospital, he changed. He wasn’t the same person. He was no longer the same fin-loving parent that I always knew. He became angry, depressed, and miserable to be around. I eventually stopped having a relationship with my dad when he attacked me one weekend. He jumped on me, grabbed me, and shook me around like a rag doll while in public. Cops were called, and when the cops asked my mom if she wanted to press charges, she said no. However, I had marks on my face, and months later, they found him dead in his apartment. He was hooked up to his at-home dialysis machine, and he apparently had a heart attack during his dialysis.

That’s when we learned that the reason why his health declined so quickly was that he binge-drank in private. He kept postponing surgery because he couldn’t stay sober long enough. He also couldn’t get on a transplant list because he wouldn’t stop drinking. Apparently, his heart issues, mixed with alcohol, made his body quit on him.

He died alone as his body sat in his apartment for two straight days before anyone found him…

That weekend, my half-siblings came in from out of state. They came to Dallas and stayed at the Hilton Hotel, and partied all week. They thought they were receiving a large inheritance from my dad. Given that he was an executive at a bank, they thought they were about to be made for life. Except that when we got access to his banking paperwork, we discovered that he was actually broke. In fact, one of his bank statements showed that he bought a car for a woman who worked as a stripper at a club in Dallas. With the shell-shock that they’d now have to afford their own mini vacation, my half-siblings immediately packed up and left, and dumped my dad’s body on my mom and left her to figure it out.

As for my mom?

My mom had a history of family dramas that goes way back before I was born. However, these issues really came to a head around the time my dad got sick and after my parents divorced.

Here’s the layout: My grandparents had three daughters, and my mom was the oldest. My mom had my sister and me, and my aunt had a child as well. My dad didn’t have any living relatives, so we had a very small family unit.

All of that changed when my mom announced she was bringing her new boyfriend to Thanksgiving the year of their divorce. This boyfriend of hers was a man she met while still married to my dad. Post-split, but still pre-divorce.

However, my grandparents had already invited my dad to Thanksgiving. My mom was upset that they invited me behind her back. I mean, he was a part of the family for twenty years, and since he had no other family, they were his family. Inevitably, my mom told my Grandad that he needed to call my dad and tell him he couldn’t come to Thanksgiving anymore. My grandad called my dad, explained the situation to him, and my family quickly shut us out.

A month later, at Christmas, we all had plans to spend Christmas together. My aunts, my mom, and my grandparents would all be in the same place at the same time. Given that there was so much rockiness between moving and my parents' divorce, this was really one of the only times we could ever be together and feel like a unit.

However, we were told at the last minute to come later in the day. I retrospectively learned that my aunt was bringing a new boyfriend around for Christmas, and she didn’t want my mom to be there for it.  My mom and aunt had been fighting over Thanksgiving. In fact, it was outed that my aunts went to my dad’s house behind my mom’s back to have Thanksgiving with him, and that launched my mom and aunt into a feud. As I was saying, we were told that instead of meeting for lunch, we were to come for dinner instead. We weren’t given an explanation as to why, but just don’t show up. Despite the instructions, the weather reported snow for later in the evening, so we left and got to my grandparents' house at noon anyway.

When we showed up, everyone was there. They had just finished eating and were wrapping up the food as we walked in. When we walked in, my mom confronted my aunts. My aunts began arguing with my mom. Before you knew it, all of the adults in the room began screaming and yelling at each other. With my grandparents trying to calm my mom and aunts down, and a threat of “I’ll kill you” and “I’ll beat your ass” being thrown around the room between all of them, I snapped.

I had a meltdown.

I started screaming at them to stop.

In the midst of this, I threw over the Christmas tree and the dinner table, and screamed at all of them to stop.

Eventually, everyone left my grandparents' house upset, and we were no longer a family unit.

I haven’t seen my aunts and cousins ever since…

After this, my grandparents instated a new rule: We will take turns on holidays. One year, my mom will get Thanksgiving, and the year after, she’ll get Christmas. We alternated holidays with my aunts, so we’d at least get one holiday a year with the grandparents.

However, this is when my relationship with my mom started to deteriorate.

Every year, she’d have a 3-month-long meltdown with my grandparents. It would usually start at the beginning of November and wouldn’t end until January. No matter if it meant celebrating on our own or doing our own thing, my sister and I would have to sit in the same misery as mom. She’d scream at my grandparents on the phone and would endlessly complain about her sisters. She’d often cry and throw tantrums towards my grandparents. Although we had one holiday ruined by my aunts and grandparents, my mom made sure my sister and I would never enjoy another holiday after that. She couldn’t let it go, and it eventually became our problem.

My relationship with my mom got worse and worse. When she’d have these meltdowns, I’d beg and plead for her to stop, drop it, or let it go. This would be the usual, until I’d eventually begun to cry. To be able to stop her in one of her rants, I would have to start shouting and crying before she’d stop. When she did stop, she’d look at me and claim I was now the problem. This quickly led to a cycle where she’d then begin to fixate on me, push me until I began to cry, then point the finger at me for having a reaction.

She’d then begin to hit me. Scream at me. And do whatever it would take until I would eventually react.

One of the strongest memories I recall was when I was in high school, and my best friend came out to me as a lesbian. She meant the world to me and was someone I would have considered a sister, and I was someone she'd consider a brother.  However, all of that changed when one day I was in the car with my mom at a red light. This friend of mine called, so I answered the phone.

“Whose on the phone?” My mom asked.

“It’s Maybelle,” I whispered while answering the phone.

“Oh, that gay lesbian bitch? The one who's bringing evil around you?” My mom questioned out loud.

My mom then grabbed my arm and started screaming in the phone, “Why are you calling my son, you n- lesbian bitch? N- bitch! N-!!!!”

I immediately hung up the phone and pushed my mom off my arm, and when I pushed her off, she hit her head on her windshield. She screamed, turned the car around, and drove to the ER. She told the nurses that I had hit her and that I was mentally unstable, dangerous, and I needed mental health help.

The cops came and questioned me while she was in the ER, and upon questioning, they saw the mark my mom left on my wrist from when she grabbed my arm to yell into the phone. They stopped questioning me after they saw the mark…

After the car incident, my mom drove me to a doctor's office to put me on mood stabilizers. While there, I told the doctor I didn’t think I needed anything for my moods. I told him that Mom pushed and pushed until I had a meltdown, and I just wanted to be left alone. The doctor felt conflicted and referred us to a psychologist. He couldn’t make a determination of the situation, and didn’t want to prescribe us anything since he felt something was off between us. 

When we got back to the car, my mom slammed the door, got in my face, and started screaming at me. She was screaming at the top of my lungs that I tried to make her look bad in front of the doctor. I asked her to stop, and she wouldn’t. I then began screaming “STOP” at the top of my lungs because she was still screaming. 

I eventually un-did my seatbelt, leaped out of the car, and slammed the car door while screaming “STOP” at the top of my lungs. 

One of the nurses came out of the office to see why there was screaming in the parking lot. 

My mom then got out of the car and screamed at me, “Cody, stop! You’re in public and you’re creating a scene!”

I covered my ears and screamed, “STOP SCREAMING AT ME” again, and as I did, I kicked her car door and began to storm off. 

The nurse in the parking lot called the cops.

As the cops showed up, the doctor came out of this office and gave us a prescription for lithium and told my mom to put me on a high dose until I was able to see the psychologist. I was eventually put on more medicine that I did not need.

This cycle would continue until I left and moved out of the house. The specific instance was the week I came out to my mom.

I went into the living room and came out to my mom.

She cried, went to bed, and that was the last of it…

…until 2 am, when she police-kicked open my door, turned on my bedroom light, and screamed at me to come into the hallway. I walked into the hallway to find her holding a shovel in batting position — angrily swinging it at me while shouting at me to ‘come at me’.

I went back into my room, quickly packed a backpack, and shoved past her as I went to my car.

She tumbled back, accused that I assaulted her, and called 911 as I drove off into Dallas.

I called my Grandparents and stayed with them until things evened out.

However, my relationship with my grandparents wasn’t stable either.

While going through the chaos as a teenager, I’d often visit my grandparents and find silence and solace at their home. I’d often drive them around the city and help them with small chores. It got to the point where my grandparents felt more like my best friends. Despite this, my closeness ended with them when I was making plans with them to celebrate a milestone birthday of mine. I can’t remember which birthday it was, but I had made a plan a month out to have a birthday party with them, my mom, and a few friends.

However, the week of, my grandma called me and said, “We can’t celebrate your birthday on your birthday weekend anymore. Your aunt called, and she made dinner plans for us to celebrate her birthday with her instead.”

I replied, “But I made these plans with you a month ago, before her.”

To which my grandma said, “Yeah, but the needs of a child precede the needs of a grandchild.”

While flabbergasted, I replied, “Why not have them together? I’m on my own now. Mom doesn’t have to be a part of the plan.”

My grandma then said, “Yeah, but based on what happened all those years ago at Christmas, they want to be separate from your mom.”

Eventually, in my teens, I tried to reach out to my half-sister and my half-brothers and tried to have a relationship with them. However, that also failed because, according to them, they didn’t want anything to do with my mom. Even though I was out on my own, they still didn’t want that association.

I even learned that my half-brother died, and my siblings and everyone had a grave-side service for him, and my sister and I weren’t notified. We weren’t invited, and didn’t even know about this until after the fact.

I had no other family left.

I was truly alone.

Dear reader, this is when I started to make a change.

First, I learned that I wanted nothing to do with these people. Right before I turned eighteen, I went to court to legally drop my last name. I wanted no relation to my half-siblings and my dad.

Second, I learned that love in my family was not unconditional…

It came with conditions.

I grew up learning that people would not associate with us, or me as an individual, because of their disdain towards my parents. I eventually learned that I never want a relationship with my aunts, because in the end, they removed their love for an innocent child due to a dispute they had with another adult.

Third, I learned that I was abused as a kid. At one point, I went to a therapist who learned that I was on four different medications that my mom had been put on, when in fact, I didn’t need any of them. My health was strained because of being on four medications that I didn’t need as a child.

Fourth, I learned that it was easier for my mom to blame me, her sisters, and her parents for all of her issues, but she would never look at herself. The abuse, the yelling, the hitting, and the isolation as a child were a direct result of this woman’s inability to take accountability for her own actions, and instead, displacing them on literally anyone else.

This also made me think back to when Dad would chase her wound the house. As far as I knew, she had a history if pushing people until they snapped (her sisters, my sister, etc.), so was this the case for why Dad would chase her while they screamed and ran aroudn the house? Withouth my dad, my aunts, my sister, and literally anyone else around, I became the next target. Everyone else eventually shut her out, and when it was just me, she continued the cycle with the next closest person.

Lastly, growing up in this type of environment made me nervous as a person. It made me impulsive about keeping people in my life as a result of this. It also made me an incredibly lonely adult, because my only core reference for love and relationships is a broken core where everything is conditional.

Or, I’ll overlook things and over-extend myself because it’s better to lose myself than to lose family.

Or, because of this, I learned that I am quick to cut people out of my life because I need to protect myself from getting hurt.

Protect myself from meeting people who treat me like I’m conditional.

Protect myself from ever getting hurt in the way that I did as a child and teenager.

I now have a new cycle in my life: Protect myself until I’m lonely again, and suffer the loneliness.

This is all all I know…

I will continue work on fixing this with my therapist, and in the meantime, next week will be the last time I will be writing to you, Dear Reader.

There’s one last thing I need to tell you, and it will change everything…

Until next week,

~Cody Wade

Aka The Oolong Drunk

“Blissfully Tea Drunk”