By Daniel Gillion

As a kid, I had a physically, mentally, and verbally abusive father. For as long as I can remember, he had been abusive to my five siblings and me. He was also abusive towards my mother. After 17 years, I was able to escape in pursuit of a better life.

I was born as a result of an affair my dad was having with my mom. My dad was already married to another woman who was pregnant with his second child. My mom was the other woman. I was my mom’s firstborn. She was living at home with her sister and parents. To this day, I am not sure how my parents met. From what I heard over the years, they met through mutual friends. My mom was 25 and had never been with anyone before. He was 23 and already married. My dad was her first. His charismatic and charming demeanor may have roped her in. She’d learn later in life how manipulative he was.

I was born one month premature, 2 weeks after my dad’s wife gave birth to her son, my half-brother. My dad had gone back to his wife, leaving my mom to carry the pregnancy with only the support of her parents and sister. When was born, my aunt cut my umbilical cord.

Not long after my birth, my mom began seeing my dad again. He had moved to Las Vegas to live with his parents, and she would travel from Northern California to see him. My dad was still married to his wife. A year and a half later, my dad had gotten his wife and my mom pregnant again. This would be his third kid with his wife and his second with my mom. Similar to my birth, my dad was not present when my brother was born. He was born 3 weeks before my dad’s wife had my half-sister.

After my brother was born, my dad decided to leave his wife and be with my mom. Once my mom moved in with my dad, the abuse began.

My dad was a drug addict. We lived in cheap apartments on the bad side of town in every city we moved to. He could not hold a job and would not let my mom work. We survived off of welfare checks from the state and food stamps. We’d frequently run out of money and would move back in with my mom’s parents in Northern California or my dad’s parents in Las Vegas. We’d usually get kicked out after a few months because my dad would steal and pawn whatever valuables he could find so he could fuel his drug habit.

In ten years, he and my mom had four more kids, bringing the total to 6 kids: 4 boys and two girls. He told us later that the only reason he kept my mom pregnant was because he didn’t want her to leave him. Throughout my childhood, we experienced food insecurity and housing insecurity. We’d move at least 3 times a year. My dad still could not hold onto a job for more than a few weeks and preferred to get drunk or high and yell at us for simply existing. We’d cycle through cheap apartments, motels, homeless shelters, and with relatives for my entire childhood. We were so poor that we never had toilet paper. Often, all 8 of us would have to wipe ourselves with a dish rag hanging over the towel rack in the bathroom. After each use, we’d have to wash it under the bathtub faucet because the water pressure was usually enough to blast all the “stuff” off so the next person could use it.

My dad was a very abusive person. One of my earliest memories of this was when I was 5 or 6 and lived in a roach-infested motel. I could hear my mom and dad in the bathroom. I could hear my mom screaming, my dad yelling, and the sound of her being kicked, shoved, and hit. I remember him coming out of the bathroom, and I was too scared to look at him. He did what he often did after hitting my mom and laid down in the only bed in the motel room (he made all 6 of the kids sleep on the floor). I remember my mom coming out a few moments later, her face puffy and swollen. I distinctly remember that the shape of her nose looked different. She sat on the foot of the bed and just stared at the wall for a while.

He would also target us kids, especially me and my brother, who was a year younger than me. For some reason, my mom and his two oldest boys got the worst of the abuse. If we made any mistakes, he would beat us. I used to dread coming home from school because I never knew what I’d get beaten for. Sometimes, I’d get beat just for existing. Once, I left a sock on the floor, and he stomped me out for it when I came home. I was a good kid. I never once got in trouble at school. Never. But at home, despite my attempts to appease him and walk on eggshells, I’d be his target. Since my brother and I were only a year apart, we were almost the same height for most of our childhood, so it was common for my dad to grab each of us by the back of our heads and smash our heads together whenever he was upset with us for simply existing.

Over the years, we’d become numb. His beating didn’t hurt anymore. I stopped feeling the punches to the face and stomach, his bites, and stomps. Emotionally, I was a wreck. My brother never showed any emotion at all.

He got away with all of this because he threatened to kill all of us if we ever left him. He’s also told us kids that if we told the school, child protective services would take us away and separate us and we’d never see our mom again. So we stayed silent.

It wasn’t until I was 16 that I finally had enough. By then, he was forcing my brother and me to illegally sell candy at school so that he would buy weed with it. He wasn’t very smart and would frequently accuse us of stealing the profit despite how thoroughly we’d explain the cost vs. profit to him. I was old enough to see that the way we were treated wasn’t normal. I began thinking about what I wanted out of life and realized that I’d never achieve my dreams of a happy and stable life if I stayed.

I began emailing my aunt and asking if it was possible to come live with her. She was a single working mom raising two daughters and caring for my elderly grandma. She told me she didn’t have many resources, but if I were willing to work to support myself and finish school, she’d agree to let me live with her. I spent a year emailing my aunt from my school’s computer lab, sorting out a plan for me to escape. On the last day of school of my junior year of high school, I secretly packed what I could into a duffle bag, took my essential documents, and went to my friend’s house to call my aunt to be picked up. I was 17.

That same day, I made the difficult call to tell my dad what happened. He yelled at me on the phone. He called me a coward. He told me to come back to him and face him like a man. He kept yelling, “You’re MY son. You’re MY SON!” My brother told me a few years later that my mom stayed by the window all evening, hoping I’d return. By nightfall, he said she cried like he had never seen her cry before. I still feel bad about that. I loved my mom.

I completed high school in a different city, attended a well-ranked college, and found a good career. I struggled with addiction and mental health problems throughout my 20s. I’m in my 30s now, sober, and still working through my childhood traumas. I do not have much contact with any of my siblings. I have not seen or spoken to my parents in almost 10 years. I live alone in my quiet one-bedroom apartment with my dog. I am great at my job and am an aspiring writer in my spare time. I am working on my physical and mental health and trying to quit cigarettes.

I am still working through processing what I experienced. The details of this post only scratch the surface of what my family went through. I hope that my siblings are doing well. I assume they must also navigate their own life and process their traumas. I think about my mom a lot. My parents are still together. I hope he’s not hitting her anymore. I love her so much.