Before today's episode, I wanted to remind everyone that there is now a Facebook group for the show, you can join the community on Facebook by searching for this is actually happening. Discussion group, a big thank you to everyone who has already contributed. And I hope to see more of you join the conversation soon. My earliest memories as a child were fear and anxiety. I was obsessed with being able to control the situation and I was never able to control the situation and that would drive me crazy.

That unknown just haunted me.

Welcome to the Premiere Corporation. A presentation of the audio podcast. This is actually happening Episode 150. What if we were trapped in a cycle of abuse? I'm an only child, my mom was a single mom, my dad started experiencing some demons with drugs and alcohol, and so they split when I was probably about one years old. So my mom raised me by herself. I'm biracial, so my dad is black. My mom is white, and I was raised with my mom's side of the family who was also happened to be Jewish.

So it was interesting growing up, I was like the only black girl in Hebrew school and things like that. So a lot of my family spent a lot of their time focusing on me because I was like the only great grandchild also. I think that I was just surrounded by a lot of love and I just recall being pretty happy as a kid. Also, there wasn't that many men in my family, and so it was kind of just all my aunts and my grandmothers and me and my mom and my cousins, who were also all women.

So I feel like I was raised by a lot of strong women who just taught me a lot about myself.

I was always told when I was younger that I was like here before. I just remember, like being so in touch with my emotions and knowing, like when things were wrong with other members of my family, I don't know. I always had the sense that I was also an old soul. And I think that goes back to maybe a past life.

I remember one day I was roller skating at one of the cemeteries down the street from my house. And I remember me like going up to some random tombstone and just being like, oh, hey, mom, like, these are my real parents. So it was kind of just this thing in my family that, like I've just known that I've been here before, it I feel it every day and I felt it from my earliest memories. I remember my mom being super into, like fortunetellers and psychics and mediums.

The same thing they would say all the time was like, your daughter is your guardian angel. And my mom would always say because she had a pass before she had me, that I just changed her life and I saved her life. And I think that was kind of a pattern and something I took with me really up until this day. Being twenty six years old, I feel like I've always kind of saved my mom and I was always her reason and her motivation to do a lot of things in life.

Growing up, I was very extroverted, very outgoing, very outspoken, very unapologetic, and I don't feel like I've changed much. I've always just been like an entertainer, just not afraid to take risks. Even as a child, I was very expressive. My mom is not so much of young mom. Yeah, I'm twenty three, but she didn't grow up rich at all, so she couldn't afford childcare all the time. And so I would just kind of go to work with my aunt, which was at a bar.

And let's remember also performing on Break My Heart in front of like a bar full of like drunk men, women shooting pool. And I was doing it for like free Shirley Temples. So I was very outgoing and I still am. Growing up biracial was interesting, you know, I never really felt that I was an outcast. I had a very open minded family and I'm very blessed and lucky to have been raised in that type of environment. But I remember having a lot of identity crisis's.

I obviously look different and I knew I look different. I did have some type of relationship with my father's mother, so I knew that I was black, obviously. But there's not many black kids in school reminders, just me. So that was interesting, too. I always felt like I stood out there, but I did go to public schools where I thought it was natural for me to just become friends with the black kids. Like I felt like I finally like, well, these people feel like more so my family than my family do sometimes.

Like, they kind of just get me. They look like me. Like now I feel like I have a sense of community at school. I think a lot of biracial kids go through this, at least friends of mine who you're just kind of not white enough for the white kids and not black enough for the black kids. But you look like the Spanish kids. But you're not Spanish. You don't speak Spanish. What do you even want for me?

Like, I am trying to fit in here the best that I can. It's not really going well. And so I just ended up finding my people. So I remember my mom was dating a guy who at the time I was calling my dad because they started dating when I was so young and I loved him and he was black and also just looked like me and embraced me as his child. I think they started dating when I was two until maybe I was about five.

I feel like I have that complete family now. I felt really secure, protected and at home. So then I got news that he was cheating on my mom, and that was really devastating to me shortly after my mom and I were out to dinner one night and she was like, I want to take you somewhere. There's kids there and I want you to meet someone. And I was like, OK, sure. So I remember going to someone's house and meeting this man.

It was interesting meeting him because I had never saw my mom be romantic with anybody else besides the man I was then referring to as my dad. It was her ex-boyfriend. So I remember being a little weirded out, like, why is she hugging this man like that or holding his hand or kissing him like that? And I was like, oh, by the way, like, this is Steve, this is little sister. You guys go play and like, become friends, go play dress up or something, five or six at the time.

And I was like, OK, like, well, this can't be that bad. So I just remember the beginning being really cool. He had a big family. I didn't know much about them, but there were so many kids. So I just felt like it was fun. Like any time my mom was like, Oh, we're going to Steve's house. I'd be like, oh my God, yeah. Like a sister home. Is his daughter home?

You had a daughter who is a year older than me as well. My introduction to him was was very sweet. It was fun. So I remember my mom saying I know it's been us for a little while, but I think Steve's going to move in. You know, he's going to help us with some bills. And I was probably two months before they decided to move in together. This is awesome. Like and he was he was cool.

He was kind of like a big kid. So we had a lot of fun together during those first two months, honestly. But then things changed really quickly. It's weird, I remembered a smell in him that started changing, I don't know if you've ever smelled like a drunk construction worker. It's a very distinctive smell of like sweat and cheap beer. He started drinking a lot more and it would be him just coming home from work and drinking so much.

And, you know, he was always kind of funny when he drank. I remember him like drinking. I was like, oh, we're going have fun tonight because like, I don't know, I guess when he got drunk, he was just kind of cool. Obviously, that didn't last very long. The drinking picked up. He was drinking one night and he was just kept asking my mom, like, can you bring me this can. Then she was like, I'm going to bed.

Like, it's one o'clock in the morning. I was up because he was outside with his friends and music was blasting and we lived in a really small house. So you can hear everything through the walls. They were kind of like paper. So I remember like tossing and turning, just like eavesdropping. And he was like, well, can you bring me another beer? And she was like, Oh, I think it's time to just like, come inside.

It's late. The neighbors are starting to wonder what's going on out here. And I just remember him screaming at my mom and calling her the worst things I've ever heard. Anyone call anyone at six years old and me just being like, there's no way that this guy who I thought was so fine and caring and loving, could ever speak to my mother like that. We grew up in a very peaceful household. We all respected each other. I just thought this was so weird.

My thoughts of him changed immediately when I heard him raise his voice that my mom things just changed almost immediately. I remember the next day saying something to my mom, like, are you OK? Like, did that make you sad when he yelled at you? And you're like, no, it's OK. Like, he was just drinking a little too much. Like, that's what happens when people drink a lot. And I was like, oh, OK.

So now when I associated him, drinking is something like cool and fun. Immediately I was like, OK, any time he drinks is not going to be good. One night, it was probably six months after we moved in together, he had went away to jail for, I believe, a month and it was four for wise or something along those lines. And my mom had some type of like get together. I think it was a football game or the Super Bowl or something.

And she invited their mutual friends over. And I just remember when everyone started coming over, she was just giving this claimer like, do not tell Steve. You know, the adults are drinking some beer, we're literally just watching the football game, and I was a little bit confused by that, but he wasn't home and I was like, OK, it's fine, whatever people came and they left. Fast forward the week after he got out of jail, I remember going to his friend's house and he lived in a trailer park and I remember going to the trailer park.

And it was probably around 2:00 in the afternoon. My mom was a waitress, so she was her waitressing job. And I remember his friend bringing up the party. And as soon as he brought up the party, my stomach dropped and I was like, oh my gosh, like this was a huge secret. And I remember the look on Steve's face after his friend told her about the party and it was scary. He kind of just blanked. He looked at me as if maybe I was supposed to tell him this information and I obviously didn't.

Later on that night is like 11 o'clock at night when she was on her shift, when you're picking my mom up from work and he was so drunk with me in the car driving and she gets in the car, he gives her a huge hug, huge kiss. We're getting closer to our house. And he says we're going to have some fun tonight. I pull in, my mom's like, what do you mean by that? It's 11 o'clock at night and I hear him say, So what happened when I was away?

Like, what did you do? And my mom was like, I didn't do anything. I just, you know, hung out. I went to work, took her to school. We just we didn't do anything. And then I hear him smack her and say, well, that's a lie. You're not to hang out with my friends and I'm not around, I don't want you around other men. This was not supposed to happen. And my mom was like, I'm really sorry, it won't happen again, but nothing went on.

And he was like, I don't care that screaming until I was like, I don't care that nothing went on. So whatever. My mom leaves the room, goes into the kitchen. I guess I didn't realize why she went into the kitchen, but it was to get a knife to defend herself because he was being really physical with her. And I heard them rumbling around the room and my mom screaming in the slaps and and I just hear like, just stay in your room, like stay in your room.

Everything's OK. Just stay in your room. And I was like, just trying to plan an escape. I don't know if I can even get away. Will he hear me if I open my window, like, would he do this to me.

I'm not sure. Screams in the kitchen I guess you saw my mom with the knife and obviously threw it out of her hand and I just hear, like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And he's just slapping her and I hear glass breaking and I hear him call my name to come out there. And I'm like, OK, just a second. And I'm just trying to act brave and not be scared. Mind you, I think I'm six, not even seven yet, and I'm trying to be as brave as I can.

So I walk out of my room into the living room. There is blood everywhere. There's blood on the walls. My mom is in a fetal position in the corner of my kitchen with glass all over her. And I just hear her saying, like, don't hit her, don't touch her. Like, don't touch my daughter. And he didn't. But he said, come look at your mom. And he was like, this is what happens when you lie to me.

So I'm thinking, OK, well, I did lie to you, at least I didn't tell you the truth, I didn't talk about the party. So am I next? Like, is this going to happen to me? He tells me to go back in my room and remember the fighting continuing him just kicking my mom and punching my mom and I just hear screams and my mom screaming to me, call nine one one. Call nine one one.

I'm frozen, I remember being in my room and having to use the bathroom so bad, but I couldn't even move like I couldn't tell my brain to move my legs to get up and leave my room to use the bathroom. So I peed on myself and I remember thinking, well, this is what babies do, like, why am I doing this? And I was so mad at myself for even doing that. It's such an old age. So I thought I was like, wow, this is so embarrassing.

I hope no one knows that I'm just wet myself. Eventually, he got in the shower and my mom walked into my bedroom and just saw me, I guess frozen, and she threw me the phone and just call my mom on, you know, her address. Just calling. I'm on one. So I can I'm the one that can you play, say, on the phone with me until the police get there and I said, no, I'm not going to stay on the phone with you.

If he comes out of the shower, I'm going to be really scared. My mom asked me to call 911. Please just come to my house. So the cops came as soon as he got out of the shower, I remember hearing the knock on my door and I was like, thank God, like, thank God they took him away. I asked my mom some questions and did she want a restraining order and all of this stuff? And she said, no, I.

I specifically remember her saying no. Why why wouldn't she want to do anything about this? He goes to jail for the night, and I remember waking up maybe was like 10 a.m. the next morning to a knock on the door and it's him. He's out of jail already. Before he even says anything to my mom. He walks into my room and throws a phone at my head and goes, in case you want to be a little pussy and call the cops again.

Here you go. And he threw a phone at me and I was like, how did he know that I called the cops? At that point, I felt betrayed by the cops because I was like I didn't want him to know that I was the one who called them. And I remember the house being a mess, there was still glass all over the floor and they'd both just started cleaning up. Ten minutes goes by maybe maybe longer than 10 minutes, and I get another knock on the door and it's his mom and she walks in and I'm like, wow, finally someone's going to know what just went on and maybe she'll talk some sense into him or take him away or something.

His mom walks in the house and it was so eerie. She goes under the sink, puts on some gloves, put some hot water in a bucket and starts cleaning the blood off the walls. He and my mom are talking like nothing ever happened, and I remember her vacuuming up the glass and cleaning the blood off the walls and just not even asking like what happened here and asked me if I was hungry while she was cooking breakfast. She was cleaning up the mess.

All four of us in house, me, Steve, my mom and his mom, just one big group effort to get the house back in order. I don't know exactly what's normal and what's not, but this seems off something crazy just happened last night. I'm still scared and everyone around me is acting like nothing ever happened. Like so am I the one freaking out about this? And also, like, who is going to reprimand him? You know, when you're a kid, you think your mom is just like God.

So when his mom came, I was like, oh, thank God he would never act like this around his mother. And for some reason, it just seemed so normal to her in the most insane way possible. And then it was just we all just ate breakfast together, and my mom obviously has scratches and bruises all over, but it was honestly like nothing ever happened. I remember going to school the next day, the bell rang at school and I was supposed to go and obviously get on the bus to go home, but I remember being frozen in my seat and just not leaving school.

They call my mom and my mom came to the school and I remember her talking to the guidance counselor and saying, yeah, we just argued like it was just an argument. So I remember asking the whole ride home, like, why did you say that? It was just an argument. And she's like, well, because it was. And if you tell people that it was more than that, then they might take you away. So I remember the whole ride home asking over and over and over again, are you and Steve OK?

Are you and Steve OK? It was just a nervous tic that felt like I was asking every five seconds of that night and the following nights to come. I do specifically remember that night being the first time that I felt anxiety, I remember sweating in my heart racing, my vision being really blurry, walking into the house that day, just thinking like I don't feel well. And at that point, I guess I felt like I was going to pass out.

Now that I know what anxiety feels like as an adult, from that point on, I feel like my anxiety just worsened and worse and worse and. I think what was most prevalent to me was the nervous tics of asking, are you and Steve OK? Was honestly asking that question, every two minutes are going to be OK or you and Steve OK. And I was just hoping that she would just say yes so I could calm down. I thought that if I heard that they were OK and they were not fighting, then my heart would stop racing.

I would maybe be able to eat. As soon as she said yes, I was able to breathe. But then two minutes later, I would ask again, are you and Steve OK? Because my anxiety would just come back and I'd be like, Are you and Steve OK? Yes. Please stop asking me that question. My answer has not changed from the last 20 times. You ask me this hour like we are fine, there's no fighting and I'd be like, OK.

I would just continue asking in hopes that when she said, OK, it would be the truth, but nine times out of ten, that was never the case and I would feel really betrayed and lied to. So at some point, me asking that question over and over and over again, even saying it right now makes me sweat and feel really nervous. It was always physical, they never he never just yelled at her, he always hit her or threw something at her or there was strangling going on and they were truly just never OK.

So during this time that my mom was with him, I just remember always being so excited to play with his little sister.

He was probably around thirty two to thirty five at that time and she was around 14 to 16. So she was a little older than me, but a lot younger than him. So I always felt like we were a lot closer than they were. So as my relationship started to grow with his little sister, she became really comfortable with me and her just telling me all of these stories. So his family lived in a duplex. They own the whole thing.

They're running out the other half to a man, his wife and his three kids. And he was cool and they were black. So I loved going over there and hanging out with them because I just felt like myself around them. I remember her saying that she just had things to tell me, but she couldn't tell me because we were just honestly never allowed to leave the house. So she got like a black light, like a black light bulb for her room, and then she got a bunch of like glow in the dark pens and paper like black paper, and was writing to me with these pens and paper that you can only see when the black light was in.

And we would just sit in her bed and she would tell me how much she loved the neighbor and how much she wished that, you know, he wasn't married and she feels like he loves her, too. And this happened four months. We would just go in her room and right back and forth about the neighbor and her like love for him. A couple of months after we started talking about him, she started telling me that at first he kissed her when his wife wasn't around and she would be like, you know how Steve is if he finds out or my parents find out, it's going to be big trouble.

So I'd be like, OK, I'm not going to tell anybody. So I remember one night she comes in and she's writing on the paper and she goes, I think I'm pregnant. A couple of weeks went by and her parents were very controlling, and so I remember her mom saying something along the lines of, you haven't gotten your period, take this pregnancy test immediately. I don't even think anyone knew that she was having sex. It was positive, so the first thing the family does when they find out that she's pregnant is they fill up a bucket with bleach, straight bleach.

I don't even think there is water. It was like hot bleach. And they took her to the basement and said, you have to clean this entire floor. Maybe if you inhale the bleach, it will kill the baby. And we won't have to take you to the doctor to get an abortion. Steve was a Jehovah's Witness, his entire family, mom and dad side were Jehovah's Witnesses, and I don't think that coincides with their religion. Her hands were so blistered up, pretty much bleeding from just dipping her hands in this bucket and scrubbing the floor, and her crying is like, I can't take the smell.

I feel like I'm going to pass. All my hands are burning. And I think after about an hour, they're like, all right, it's fine. I think two weeks later, they made her pee on a stick again, as if that actually caused her to miscarry or something. She was obviously still very pregnant. The next step was just, OK, she's got to get an abortion. So I remember him telling my mom I'm not going to the doctor with her.

So you have to take her to get an abortion. You're going to take her to get this abortion. So a few weeks after that made the appointment, we drove about an hour and a half away and she went in to get the abortion. And I remember sitting in the car and her coming out crying, saying that she was already six months pregnant and that she couldn't get an abortion. And then the whole story kind of came out that this man, who was about twenty three, maybe twenty four, even impregnated this 15, 16 year old girl, he was then kicked out of the house next door and World War Three broke out in that house that night.

And I just remember thinking like this all makes sense. The way that they're treating her, the way that they're treating each other makes me totally understand why he is the way he is. She ended up having the baby. But I remember that being such a pivotal time in my life, realizing this family is just as batshit crazy as he is.

I remember when they said we were moving specifically the house that we found was about an hour away from my family and an hour away from his family. We had one neighbor across the street and one neighbor to the to the left of the house. And I remember thinking, OK, well, even though it's really far to get here, at least there's neighbors here. I remember moving into the house and immediately it felt like as cold as he was, that he kind of just got colder.

So I remember unpacking everything and I remember him pulling out a gun like we were packing and it was not a little handgun, but it looked like a shotgun as long as brown. And it was really intimidating looking. And I remember him just placing it in the middle of the dining room table. It always stayed in plain sight, so when he and my mom would argue in this house, something would always tell me, like, let me just make sure this gun is always in the dining room.

So it always create past that room down the stairs and just literally peek over the staircase and just make sure it was there. Any time I was there, I felt like I was OK and things were OK. I was going into fifth grade, having to meet new friends and also having this anxiety of what's going on at home and not really wanting my peers to know what was going on at home. My mom still had her job in the other town once we moved.

So when she had to go to work, she then had to drive an hour there an hour back, which means she was home even less than I was with him. Even more so the more time we spent together, just the two of us, as he quote unquote was watching me, which mostly consisted of him being belligerently drunk, working in the shed and then telling me to get in the car and go somewhere with him as he was what I would consider now blacked out drunk.

I remember just always saying, no, it's OK. I would rather just stay in a room. And he like, we can't stay home alone. And I got to go do this. So you've got to come. Anywhere we went, we'd go down these long, winding roads that were kind of dark all the time and I had no clue what direction we were going in because it all just kind of look the same. The woods. He was drunk, he was drinking while driving beer can in his hand, he shuts off the lights in his truck and just starts flooring it down this winding road.

And he was like, I know where I'm going, like, watch this. Like and we're not hitting anything, but I'm already anxiety ridden as a child enough. And now I'm in a pitch black car in a pitch black road. And he is speeding down this road basically saying if we die, we die. No regard for my life, no regard for his own life. And I just remember praying so hard, just saying, like, I really don't want to die, but also having this calm feeling like I have no control over this.

I can't stick up for myself to this man. I'm too scared of him. So if I do die, it's OK. And I remember telling myself, it's OK if you die, it's OK. It's OK if you die. Those are the types of things that would happen when my mom was at work and I didn't tell her, I don't even think to this day I've told her about all of these things that would happen because I never wanted to betray him.

I never wanted him to hurt me physically. He was already hurting me enough by hurting my mom and putting me through all of these things. So I just I just really never wanted to turn my back on him. I had so much loyalty to him. And that was out of fear, obviously. Maybe it was a few nights after that my mom came home and he was really drunk and just started screaming her as soon as she got out of the car, I remember they were outside in the garage and she was he was just screaming at her and she was like, listen, I just got home from work.

I don't have the energy to do this. My mom is exhausted all the time. They came inside. They're fighting. He was I was downstairs. And before I could even make it up the stairs, I'm by the refrigerator and he's shoving her into cabinets. So I remember being OK, this is the night he is so drunk, I don't even think he knows what he's doing and he will not stop hitting her. Same thing happened there, physically fighting, he gets in the shower, my mom comes upstairs and goes, we're leaving, pack a small bag and let's get in the car and go.

We get in the car, my mom starts the car, I just remember her moving so slow and I just remember saying, hurry up, like I never yelled at my mom, but this night I was yelling at my mom, like, start the car, back up. What are you doing? Like, we've got to go. He comes running out and a battle goes behind the car and pulls some type of wire, I don't know if he had this planned or he rig this up, but as soon as he pulled that wire, the car shut off and we just had no way out.

Just thinking, wow, like this was our chance and being so mad at my mom saying you blew this, you did not move fast enough. Now this night is going to get even worse. My mom told me to take my bag and go to the neighbor's house, which one of my friends live there with her grandparents and saying, you know, I'm really scared to go home. My mom said, I can come sleep here. Is that OK?

They allowed me to sleep there, though I'm forever thankful for, so I'm not exactly sure what went on that night. So we went to school the next morning and I go home and she has dinner waiting and he's in the living room watching TV. Everything is so normal. There's broken glass everywhere yet again. And there's like dents in the wooden cabinets, cracks in the wooden cabinets. There's dents in the wall. Mind you, this is a brand new house that we moved into.

I just remember knowing that something so bad happen and that same night, them arguing again and me being in my room and him coming to my room and saying, if I kill your mom, I'm going to have to kill you, too, because you'll never shut up. You'll never stop crying. And I can't live with that. I can't hear you crying every day. So if I kill your mom, if she makes me so mad that I have to kill her, just know that I'm going to have to kill you to.

I immediately felt responsible for her life. I don't think he wants to kill me at this point, I don't think that's his goal is to kill a child. And I felt like if I wasn't around, then maybe he would kill her. I would spend a lot of time at my grandparents house this summer after we moved into the house and the town that was about an hour away, and I remember that being one of the worst experiences of my life, one of the worst summers of my life is just I would call and my mom would get home from work.

So it's a given that she would sleep late. But every morning when I would wake up around 9:00 a.m., I would call my mom. And if she didn't answer, I would just start pacing and having extreme anxiety attacks, thinking, OK, she's dead. And he killed her because I wasn't there. If I was there, he wouldn't have killed her. And this was five days a week for three months of the summer. This changed my life drastically because I would spend a lot of times going to my grandparents house or spend a lot of time at friend's houses.

And at that point I just stopped because I then felt if I was home, sure, he might beat her up or things could get really bad. But I don't think that he's going to kill her if I'm there. Because then he has a bigger decision to make. I had to put myself in this horrible situation in order for my mom to make it out alive. Luckily, during this era in my life, I met my best friend, who is still my best friend to this day, she was going through something really tragic.

She had just lost her mother a couple of weeks before we even became friends. So I remember telling her everything that had been going on and just feeling like so much lighter, like, wow, I finally have someone I can confide in who is not going to judge me or my mom, she would invite me to sleep over. And sometimes I would be scared to leave the house or sometimes I'd want to leave the house. She would begin sleeping over my house a lot, and mostly because she didn't want me to be alone.

And she knew that I was sometimes scared to leave my house. And she witnessed some horrific things, but I always felt so secure when she was there. So it kind of just was a huge security blanket for me. She saved my life and a lot of ways and helped me also save my mom's life. The town that we moved to was a predominantly black town. I was starting in a new school and I was making a lot of new friends and it was a predominantly black town.

And so a lot of my new friends are black.

Had this one friend, he was it was a little boy, he was a boy my age, about 10 years old, we were best friends. We hit it off immediately. He also lived down the street. My mom picked me up from school one day and saying, hey, look, I really want to hang out with him. And I was so excited that me and my new friend were going to hang out. My mom is going to go take us to get ice cream.

So we went to get ice cream with my friend is just me and my mom. And on the way back, I remember Steve was outside and was like, well, where were you? And I was just frozen, I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to lie because I was very scared of lying to him after he told me what could potentially happen to me if I lied. And I said, well, my friend and I named him, came with me to get ice cream.

First question he asked was, what does he look like? Is he black? And I was like, yes, he's black and he's got braids and he's my best friend, one of my best friends. And then it was just him screaming at my mom saying that I, her black child was not allowed to hang out with these people and was just like dropping the N bomb and making me feel so bad for something that I felt so good about.

And I was just so. Ashamed that I kind of sold out my mom and now she's going to have to pay these consequences tonight and I had a good friend and now I'm not going to be able to hang out with this friend anymore. That night was pretty terrible. I just remember him dropping the bomb all night to me and my mom hurt me so bad and then saying I wasn't allowed to hang out with those types of people anymore. And I was so confused because I was that type of person.

It just really confused me after I thought I was making a lot of personal growth as far as feeling OK in my own skin. On one end of the spectrum, like I'm living this hellish life where I feel like I'm being tortured in my own home, if I say I'm walking on eggshells, I say wrong thing. If I do something wrong, if I cry, everything is wrong. Everything that I do is wrong. And whatever I do wrong, he is not going to physically harm me.

But my mom is going to pay for all of my wrongdoings. So in the house I was a quiet, passive shell of myself who showed no personality. I was just like a soldier, like anything anyone needed. Yes, sir, no problem. I didn't show any type of emotion in the house. When I went to school, I was able to be myself. And so all the quiet that I was going through at home, all the silence I let out at school in front of people who accepted me when I was around people I wanted to be myself, when I was full out myself, like unapologetically me.

The second I stepped into the house, I was a different human. I think I was feeling a lot of resentment against my family, even though they didn't know what was going on, but no one ever asked. No one ever said like, hey, how's living with Steve? No one ever said, does he treat you well, don't treat your mom well, and the one person who I expected to ask was my aunt because we were so close.

And another person I always hoped would ask is my biological father. When I would talk to him maybe once a year, I would just be hoping he would say like, so how steep like do you like living the service he could to you? And then I could finally just let everything up. You think of your dad is like the super hero. And I would think maybe he would finally become a dad to me and want to protect me from the situation.

But he never asked. My family really never asked. And I guess that's just because, like I said, the second I stepped out of this house, I wasn't sad. I was really never sad. I was always happy. So I guess there wasn't really any warning signs. I felt really betrayed by my family for a long time, and it really was not their fault. I was just scared if I said something that they would take me away from my mom, which would also ultimately mean that I was not there to protect her anymore.

As I got a little older and headed into middle school, this is when I started becoming a little more ashamed and embarrassed of it and I just stopped talking about it publicly. So now I'm really in this by myself, like I'm in this by myself, the more that I talk or the more that I voice my opinion, my mom is getting the wrath of all of this. I truly just didn't know where to go from here. Like, do I keep expressing my opinions now that I'm older and not as scared of this person?

Or do I just be mute like I have been? And I remember talking to my mom about it and I remember giving her an ultimatum at this point, saying, if you stay with him, I'm moving out, I'm switching schools and I don't want to talk to you. I always knew that maybe if I did, she would choose me. A couple of weeks after that, he went back to jail for suspended license or something along those lines, and he was gone for a good four or five months at that point.

And let me just tell you, those four or five months were some of the best of my life. And I remember telling her, do you feel happy, like, doesn't this feel good? And she was like, it does feel good. And I said, well, what's going to happen in two or three months when he comes home? And I think that conversation was what changed in her because we ended up looking for houses to rent. And before he got out of jail, we ended up moving out.

And when I say moving out, I don't mean we moved an hour away. We actually moved a couple of blocks away. But I felt like as long as we were out of the house and had doors to lock, that he did not have the keys to, then we would be we would be safe. I don't think that he knew for a while that we were living so close, but the day that he found out, he came to the front of the house and she obviously wouldn't let him in.

So I don't think he ever came inside of our new house and he was outside of her window on the ground floor screaming like, well, if I can't have you, no one can have you, and I'll kill you if you're with anybody else. So it went from the anxiety of living with someone who I always felt like could kill us at any second, to then living down the street from someone who I knew could kill us at any second.

I really don't know which anxiety or which fear was worse, being able to watch his every move and be able to, like, plan and know what he's thinking or not being able to. For about a year, we were getting threatened by him coming to the house, calling it didn't feel like we were away for a long time, being away from him was just a completely different anxiety than it was being with him. I didn't have the nervous tics of asking, are you and Steve OK?

Are you and Steve OK? That stopped. But I didn't sleep for a year straight. I would only sleep when the sun was up. I didn't trust my mom. I really didn't trust her. My anxiety about her lying was hard. I would have panic attacks any time I'd hear anything outside of my window immediately would have a panic attack. I would sleep with a knife under my pillow. Being so deprived from sleep because of fear makes you think really crazy things, so at this point I was like, well, maybe if I killed him first he couldn't kill us.

Or like I would think, like, I know where the gun is in the house. Like, I could easily go in there one night and hope that he's drunk and literally kill him. And then I wouldn't have to worry about this anymore. Obviously, I didn't do it. I wouldn't do that. But I feel like he killed the child and me. He killed any relationship that me and my mom had a chance of having during that time of my life.

And I felt like he deserved a lot of bad things to happen to him. But everyone in his life was scared of him. So no one stood up for him. No one ever told him what he was doing was wrong. I remember my grandfather passed away like maybe I was 16 or 17 and this was three or four years after everything had ended, we haven't really heard from him or anything and him showing up at my grandfather's funeral. And at this point in time, I was disclosing a few things here and there to my aunt, who I was extremely close with.

And so she knew when he showed up, we both kind of just like blacked out and just wanted to attack him. Like we kind of like ran over to him and like it was kind of like a what could have been a brawl at my grandfather's funeral. But it wasn't. He left and that was the last time I've seen him. Even after years of them not being together, I think just just living with that fear constantly and just having anxiety about the unknown, the unknown was always what scared me most, because when you're living in it and you're living, you're seeing these things happen, they're happening.

There's nothing you can do about that. But I became obsessed with the idea of control. My earliest memories as a child were fear and anxiety. I was obsessed with being able to control the situation and I was never able to control the situation and that would drive me crazy. That unknown just haunted me. And it still does like when I don't know things or when I don't feel like I'm in control of something. Now, I get so anxious because I always need a plan A Plan B and a plan C, and obviously that comes from those times of my life.

I remember being so scared that everyone in my life was lying to me, so I remember having a friend, we would talk on the phone all the time. I remember one day we were talking about nothing on the phone, and I said, please don't ever pretend to be my friend if you're not my friend. And she was like, What do you mean, please don't pretend to be my friend. If you're not my friend, just say it like you don't have to call me and we don't have to talk on the phone and pretend to be best friends.

And she was so turned off by that. And I would say it all the time, like we would be all having fun and be like, Are you really having fun? Are you sure you're having fun? Like, little things like that. And even in my relationships today and I remember bringing these nervous tics into my past relationships and being like, are you happy? Like, is everything OK? And that was the equivalent of are you and Steve OK for me?

Like if I felt like things were bad, I'd be like, Are you happy or are things OK? As soon as I found myself doing that, I went and got therapy because that was something I did not want to do. I did not want to be this person anymore. And that was the first time in my life I was like, I need serious help because I'm still doing these things that I used to do when I was six years old.

And now I'm 20 at the time. Twenty two years old, asking my boyfriend ten times an hour, is he going to hurt me? Are things OK even when things were OK? So as the years kind of just went on, I found myself being twenty two years old in a very toxic relationship. And it wasn't toxic in the way that my mom and Steve's relationship was, but I found myself being OK with a lot of things that. Prior to the relationship, I would say all the time, I'm not going to stand for that and my mom put up with all this stuff, I would never be like her.

And then in reality hits. And that's all you're accustomed to. You put up with a lot of things that you said you would never put up with. Him and I were friends for a very long time and I felt comfortable with him, so when we started to pursue a romantic relationship, it was like he wanted to protect me. He he knew everything that I went through and he thought that that was crazy. And I thought, you know, we're going to change this.

We're going to have a strong, healthy relationship because he also had a pretty rough upbringing. So we're like, we're going to be that change. We're going to get married one day and have kids and be like these great parents to our children. So they don't have to deal with this stuff like we did and all these promises in the beginning, obviously. And then I almost feel like me being so vulnerable with him allowed him to take advantage of all of my weaknesses.

I've never had a man in my life love me this way or choose me or want to protect me. So as long as he was showing me love and choosing me and quote unquote protecting me, I think he thought anything else he could just get away with and I would always be there. And that was the case for a long time. There is infidelities after infidelities and lying after lying after I had said many times, like, you know, it upsets people, but for me, it upsets me more than the average person I would assume.

And when I wasn't with this person, I would feel physically ill because I know that this is not the right situation for me to be in. But I didn't know how to get out. I couldn't get out. It was an addiction. And I like to think that's how my mom felt with Steve, that it was just an addiction that she couldn't let go. I started defending him, defending his behavior to my friends when they would say, you're not being yourself, you've got to get out of the situation, I'd be like, you know what?

It's really not that bad. You guys don't know him. When I would hear myself saying those things, I would hear my mom saying those things. And that was frightening. I just remember saying I'm just like my mom, like I am going to be just like my mom if I don't get out of this situation. And I stayed in that situation for four years. There was a really big incident that happened at the top of the air where it was just a total betrayal of trust.

I found myself depressed, going to the doctors, taking a month off of work because I couldn't get out of bed, I developed vertigo. I think from my anxiety messing with my brain, I was running into walls. I just wasn't OK. I almost feel like I was addicted to drama and drama and fear and pain, like growing up, that's all I saw. This is just what life is. And if things were going too well, it didn't feel right.

Like if I was actually happy and we were having a good week in my relationship, things did not feel right. And I was just kind of chasing the high of the drama. And just like, well, maybe if we fight, that means who cares? You know, things are going well now. Did he stop caring about me? He doesn't fight with me. He doesn't want to do anything like it was just so toxic. Obviously, I know that trauma and drama and manipulation is not love and it's not something anybody should be used to, but I don't think when you go through those things, you know that until you actually have a streak in your life without those things.

I don't think in my life I've ever lived like a full month without shit hitting the fan or being scared of something, and so when I wiped my hands clean of my last relationship, that was kind of a vow to myself that I'm creating my own normal now. Like, this is my new normal. And the past seven, eight months of my life, free of that drama have been the best times of my life. My grandmother, my mom's mother has also passed of being in toxic relationships, I mean, my mom saw my grandmother getting beat by this man and I guess when I started playing out in her own life, she was also very tolerant to it.

You try to break these generational curses and just do better for yourself, but I truly don't think that's possible without getting help. I've never been so scared of myself than I was in therapy, just scared, knowing that I literally have the power to change all of this and to not be like my mom. And when I think about the things that I that I maybe dislike about her or the things that she's done in the past, their direct reflection of things that I don't like about myself, and that's something that the therapist has helped me with.

I just wish that my mom would get the same help that I got. My hopes and wishes for myself personally are to just give myself the love and respect and loyalty to my own happiness that I feel like a lot of people in my life haven't given me, but also in the future, raise a family that doesn't have to go to therapy and talk about their traumatic childhood. I just want my future children to have the complete opposite upbringing. And I have.

I want to just be free of this story and this traumatic part of my life, and I want to just start over. I want to start a new life for myself. Today's episode featured Arial Hermansen, you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at r.i, JBL Egi. This is actually happening, is brought to you by my witness line, die if you love what we do. You can join the community on our official Instagram page at actually happening.

You can also write and review the show on iTunes, which helps tremendously to boost visibility to a larger community of listeners. And if you want to help sustain the show for the coming years, you can contribute a small monthly donation to write poetry on page a page on dot com slash happening. Thank you for listening. Until next time. Stay tuned. Now.