Growing Up with Domestic Abuse

I am University educated but still trapped in my mind and soul. Every time I leave this man, I eventually become weak and let him back in. Just as every abuser, he has his moments of being nice and knows how and when to be kind. But I am right back there as a scared and confused young child hoping and praying that every morning that today is the day of change for the better. Although I never carried this abuse on down to my children directly, the seed of abuse has been sown indirectly through what they have witnessed through these years.

They too have paid by my alcoholism indirectly and directly. I find my self-waking up not wanting to move from the deepest depressions at times, but for my children, I pray for this to be the morning of change. Even if it is only a few steps forward toward change, it is change for the better, because this has been like a slow painful death that I am living all over again.

My kids and I are in individual and group counseling now and I am trying so hard to be there for the kids and bring in money for us to survive without having to deal with the abusive man of my last child. The hardest thing though is the emotional tie to him. This is a point that many whom have never lived in abuse truly cannot understand. It is easy to put into one sentence. I have known nothing else since the day I was born.

It took years to program me this way and will take years to reprogram my mind and ways of dealing with these types of people and pain.