Silenced

When I was a little girl, I had a recurring nightmare that someone or something was after me and I would scream out for help and no matter how hard I tried to scream, nothing would come out. Later in life I got interested in looking up dream meanings and since that one was so frequent I looked it up. Apparently, the dream means you feel trapped and silenced. And that meaning made a lot of sense to me. There were multiple scenarios in my childhood I was silenced or condemned for not being silent. The first one that really sticks out in my memory being when my father took us to a restaurant two days after my birthday. As the hostess approached us, she asked how many and my dad said, "2 adults, 1 kid." She asked how old I was because they offered a discount for children under 7. (I was too young to know this or even understand why this mattered.) But he answered her, "She's 7." I spoke up and said, "No I am not. I just turned 8 a couple days ago." In the front of that restaurant in front of everyone, my father exploded and embarrassed me so badly that I sat in the bathroom and cried the entire time they ate. He looked at me and started screaming at me and called me a dumbass and told me I needed to learn when to keep my damn mouth shut... I felt two inches tall and had absolutely no understanding as to why me correcting him because I thought he forgot my birthday and/or age had just changed. It wasn't until my mom came into the bathroom to tell me the food was at the table, and she found me crying and sniffling. I told her I didn't want to eat I just wanted to know why he got so mad at me. She said that I embarrassed him because he was saying I was younger to get a discounted plate for me. I just shook my head and watched as she laughed shook her head and walked out of the restroom. I stayed there the whole time until she came to tell me they were leaving. Another time, I had asked my dad if I could walk around and look at the toy isle while they shopped. He said yes. I was walking around for what felt like forever and eventually I wondered why they hadn't come to find me and tell me it was time to go. They never shopped that long. I started walking around looking for them and they were nowhere to be found. I walked to a cashier and told them I had lost my mom and dad, and they called for them over the loudspeaker. Still, no answer. Finally, I gave them the only number I had memorized which was my granny's and they called her. She called my dad, and I waited until they made it back to the store. They had physically left me there. When I got into the car, my dad called me a dumbass multiple times and made it clear that he didn't have time or the patience to hunt for me. Another incident that happened when I was 11, involved him bringing his large dog to my granny's house and the dog kept jumping on her and cutting her arms making her bleed. I asked him to grab her, and he got mad at me and slammed me backwards into the closet door because I apparently sounded disrespectful in my tone. I hadn't meant to if I did, but I was concerned about granny's arms getting cut. When he slammed me backwards it caught me off guard. He had never really put his hands on me before... but he slammed me so hard that it almost made me black out. Afterwards, I completely went off frantically and every ounce of anger come pouring out. He grabbed my finger and almost broke it. And when granny was walking into the kitchen, he reared back to punch me and when he reared back, he accidentally hit granny so hard her glasses flew off her face and she told him to leave. He finally took the dog and left. I prided myself in being one of the very few teens that I knew that didn't smoke weed, take pills or do anything drug related (other than smoke cigarettes... which I thoroughly regret ever starting.) One day, he came to granny's early in the morning and woke me up saying he had a surprise for me. I jumped up thinking maybe it was a new coin for my coin collection or something. I went in the living room, and he handed me a drug test. I was so offended. However, I walked to the bathroom, peed in the cup and brought it back to him. When my stepmother read the results and said everything was negative, he looked at me with so much disdain and said, "It's probably Mountain Dew and toilet water. I should have made her watch you pee in it." After that, they left, and I just sat there heartbroken wondering why on earth he would do something like that. When I was 15, he came into my room at granny's and woke me up saying "I ought to.." and pointed a gun to my head. I ran into the living room to granny crying and he told her he did no such thing and that he was just "playing" with me. He told me repeatedly that he was already preparing himself to bury me because he didn't like the friends I hung out with. He said I was too much like my aunt that got murdered and he just knew I was taking the same road as her. It was a lot. Not to mention the constant silencing every time I tried to talk about any of my traumatic situations. Because of all these things and how I was raised, I was always afraid that if I disagreed with someone or had to say no, I immediately thought it meant I would lose that person. They would disown me or hurt me or take what they wanted no matter what I said. It took me a long time to realize that it is okay to say no. It is okay to disagree. And this entire blog makes my dad sound like a monster, and some days he absolutely was. However, he learned over time how to react better. He learned over time that I was not on drugs and a lot of the stories he was hearing from his wife and his brother were made up for whatever reason and he regrets our relationship being so harshly affected by all the bullshit that came from them. But when you silence your children or treat them like they are not allowed to have an opinion or boundaries simply because they are children, you are giving them a different form of trauma. Now I am a feisty outspoken mama bear that will silence the world if needed for my child to be able to express their feelings and be heard. It took a while, but I have learned that I can and will speak my mind no matter who doesn't like it and one of two things will happen. They will hear me and respect my feelings-- be it respecting them and agreeing or respectfully disagreeing and still be in my life. Or they will leave. If I am surrounded by the right people, they will not leave. If they leave, they weren't meant to be in my life to begin with.