Rough day

I wouldn't say I grew up in the worst of homes. However it was by far not the best place to be, between having two parents in an unhappy marriage, to a difficult split, and then both of them hating whoever the other was seeing; made for uncomfortable home life.

One such day was around Christmas time. My dad didn't celebrate holidays on their traditional dates because; that's what he chose to do. Anyway, my sister (11 ish?) and I (14 or thereabouts) were at our father's place, with his soon to be second wife and her son (five or six years of age at the time) who has some behavioral problems which, long story short, I do not feel were handled well in his younger years.

On this day of Christmas celebrating he was having a rough day. He wasn't listening to anyone very well, he pushed our cat out of a window, and probably peed in his closet. I spent most of my time trying to stay away from everyone because none of that was my jam. Both my dad and his significant other were constantly yelling at my soon to be step-brother, and my sister always took it upon herself to try and be a parent and would make things worse. We ended up opening presents around 9 in the morning with everyone's gifts being overshadowed by my step brother, and this (at the time) mega tantrum he had.

He had already spent the previous several hours being yelled at and berated by the other three in the house due to whatever he had been doing, or not doing, which understandably put him in a bad mood. Unfortunately for him and for everyone else, it put us all in a bad mood. I was pretty dissociated from the typical holiday ritual but I put on a good face when I had to open my presents. With every present anyone opened however, it was somehow a slight against my brother and he made it known. Whining and complaining that he wanted what everyone else was getting even when it was stuff he obviously didn't like. He would grab it away from people or stomp around, which in turn, caused more yelling and me to slowly fade to the back of the room.

By the end of opening gifts I was pretty burnt out on being around people and was trying to clean up the wrapping paper and plastic mess that comes with these kind of mornings, when he took the garbage bag from my hands and tore it open causing the mess to explode in the dining room. I looked at him and said "Dude, really?" and was already resigned, not upset about it and was on my way to grab another bag. I had taken two steps away and was thinking "Dang he kinda looked sad when I said that." When I heard him give a bloodcurdling scream. "What the f*** is your problem!" I turned around and saw his mom pulling his ear away from her, wind up and slap him hard enough to bruise the entire side of his face. She then bent him over on the couch and proceeded to spank him for what seemed like forever to my adolescent brain. "I think he gets it, you shouldn't be hitting him like that." Is what I said to her, as she turned around and said something to the effect of "He knows I'm not doing this to hurt him, he understands it's only to instill discipline." or some other nonsense abusers say to justify their means.

He runs off crying and she looks at me like I scared off her prey she had been hunting for days and now has nothing to eat for who knows how long. "Mom's here." my sister says as she runs down the stairs with her bag. "You don't need your bag, she's dropping you both back off tonight." My soon to be step mom says with venom dripping from each syllable. True, I think to myself. Thinking about my brother I hope that the rest of the day goes okay for him. We go to our moms place, which was a pretty nondescript Christmas type day. We open some stuff, get a late lunch, early dinner and she goes to drop us back off.

My step mom meets us in the back yard, waves at our mom with the fakest of smiles she could muster, and says that "T" is having a rough day and they had to try something different to try and control him and to not be too alarmed. Screaming started, and could be heard echoing in the neighborhood. Clearly coming from our house. It was loud enough to where my mom rolled her window down and asked if everything was okay in the house. "S" replied everything was fine and that "T" was acting out.

We go inside and directly to the left of the mud room is our bathroom, which we notice is where my dad and the screams are coming from, the shower is on, and my first thought was of confusion, and I asked "Why is he screaming in the shower?" "S" replies "Oh, we turned it as cold as possible and he's going to stay in there completely clothed until he decides he wants to stop screaming and listen. I didn't feel good about what was going on, but I thought "Dad doesn't do things to hurt people, especially kids. This must be for a good reason." I never felt good about it, and I was told over and over from the two of them that what they did was only to discipline and to get him to become more disciplined. I spent the rest of my time at home rationalizing what I saw and heard, while never talking about it to anyone, because why would my dad do that to someone? He's a good person.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the beginning of many years of that kind of abuse to run rampant in my father's house primarily directed at "T" and it still sticks out to me as one of the more memorable holiday memories, if only because it was the first time.