Cycles of Abuse

My grandfather (my father’s father) was a bad man.  His wife died when my father was 5 or 6 years old.  Not too much later he married my step-grandmother.  Throughout the time since my grandmother passed away, my grandfather beat my dad incessantly.  Eventually, my grandfather chose his wife over my father, and sent him away to live with his grandmother.  Fortunately, my nana (as I called her) was a beautiful, nurturing woman, and my father was happy there.

Do you see any similarities here?

The only difference between my father’s story and mine is that my grandmother was a horrid woman and emotional abused me and neglected me until I was 17.

For a long, long time I was obsessed with the cycle of abuse.  I, irrationally, was confident that I would follow in my father and grandfather’s footsteps.  It was my destiny.  I never wanted children specifically because of this.  If I didn’t have any children, I couldn’t abuse and abandon them, right?  Thinking back on it, I was really loony, but it was terrifying at the time.

My husband would tell me all the time that I was being irrational.  We would talk about it in length.  I thought my reason for not wanting children was perfectly normal.  I don’t want to end up abusing it, duh!

He would tell me, “I know you.  You would never let that happen.”  But, I thought it was out of my control.  Who am I to argue with two generations of the same abuse cycle?

I don’t know my grandfather’s history other than his father dying while he was an infant, my grandmother loved him very much, but I wonder if the man my grandmother married later was abusive.  I’ll never know.  Something happened to make him the way he turned out to be.

I figured that if I stayed childless, then the cycle would stop with me, simply because there wouldn’t be a victim to start the cycle.  I never wanted to be an abuser, but this is how crazy I was.  I thought my life was already determined.

When I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, I immediately went into panic mode.  I couldn’t believe that I let this happen.  How could I be so careless?  I was terrified.  I cried so much and fell into a deep depression.  I was going to have a child, good lord, what the hell do I do?

I took control.

From that point on, I did not allow my past to determine my future.  My child was not going to be abused.  My child would not be abandoned.  My child stops the cycle.  I was then free to really enjoy the prospect of becoming a mother.  I snapped out of my irrationality and focused on the love for this little being growing inside me.

Now, when I look at my child, I could never imagine harming her.  She is my little angel, and an extension of me.  She is everything that I wish I could have been at her age.

When she is older, I will talk to her about the cycles of abuse in her past, and how her mother was strong enough to break the cycle.