The past few days have been a blur as I've worked through the latest flashback regarding the time I was 8 years old and tortured by my dad.
You are under no obligation to read this. It is disturbing.
One evening, after everyone else in the house was asleep, my dad led me down to his workbenches in our basement. It was going to be a new game called, One Two Three Cookie.
In order to "win" a cookie I had to endure 3 seconds of my dad burning a spot on my back.
I heard him light up the blow torch. The sound of gas hissing followed by the sound of his lighter flipping open.
Okay, ready, he would say as he pressed the red hot eating end of a spoon into the flesh of my upper left back. If I didn't flinch or cry, I earned a cookie.
I ate 5 cookies that night.
I'm not sure what happened as I tried to get the sixth. I don't know if I switched or I couldn't handle the pain anymore but as the sixth burn hit someone cried out because I distinctly remember my dad's right hand quickly, firmly covering my mouth and I was in tears.
Recalling this i had an image, a couple actually. The first thing i saw was excess candle wax dripping. The second image was of that horrid Indiana Jones scene where the bad guys started melting. Yeah, that's how i felt these past days off and on, like i was on fire and the skin of my back was melting off.
I couldn't find relief from the body memory. I just had to acknowledge it and feel it.
I remember when i went to school the next day. I couldn't sit all the way back in my seat because it would hit the lower burn spot. At recess I parked myself with my back to the school wall so I wouldn't accidentally get touched on my back. I was highly cautious to avoid suspicion and getting touched on the upper back.
When I got home from school I used the bathroom mirror to see what the burn looked like. Mostly it was one hand-size area of bright pink, like a sunburn. It wasn't until the next day that the angry red crescent shaped burns emerged. Like if you pressed just the tip of your spoon into ice cream or something. Five crescents and one half of a crescent clustered in the area of my shoulder blade.
Recounting this in therapy, it just made no sense. There wasnt anyway I could have guessed or predicted that my dad would decide to heat up a spoon and burn me repeatedly. There was no reason for it. I never knew if he would do it again. He tended to do things more than once, and I remember nights lying awake staring at the doorway waiting and watching.
From what I can gather, torture sessions with either my dad or grandmother probably amounted to once every month or two, based on the evidence and memories I currently have.
Being tortured is, rather different, from being beaten or molested or starved in that, here is someone, someone who claims to love you no less, who is purposefully inflicting intense physical pain for Absolutely No Reason At All.
How do you escape that? How do you escape the thought pattern that people who love you or not, enjoy inflicting pain on you at random?
It kinda makes one suspicious and leery of anyone who gets within two feet of me, you know?
It probably contributes greatly to my fear of people; being touched unexpectedly and anyone who gets near my back.
Sad but true..my boys quickly learned not to hug me from behind. They'd jump on my back to play and I would lose my fricking mind. Gently and safely throwing them off in a panic with a stern warning to never do that again. They learned and I learned to be very gently with them when they forgot. They didn't know. How could they know? How could anyone know?
Enough.
Yeah, things are starting to make sense.
Why my back was numb. Why I'd get upset when people would pay me on the back.
Yeah. I get it now.
Yeah, that was vicious. That was torture. That was my dad.
You are under no obligation to read this. It is disturbing.
One evening, after everyone else in the house was asleep, my dad led me down to his workbenches in our basement. It was going to be a new game called, One Two Three Cookie.
In order to "win" a cookie I had to endure 3 seconds of my dad burning a spot on my back.
I heard him light up the blow torch. The sound of gas hissing followed by the sound of his lighter flipping open.
Okay, ready, he would say as he pressed the red hot eating end of a spoon into the flesh of my upper left back. If I didn't flinch or cry, I earned a cookie.
I ate 5 cookies that night.
I'm not sure what happened as I tried to get the sixth. I don't know if I switched or I couldn't handle the pain anymore but as the sixth burn hit someone cried out because I distinctly remember my dad's right hand quickly, firmly covering my mouth and I was in tears.
Recalling this i had an image, a couple actually. The first thing i saw was excess candle wax dripping. The second image was of that horrid Indiana Jones scene where the bad guys started melting. Yeah, that's how i felt these past days off and on, like i was on fire and the skin of my back was melting off.
I couldn't find relief from the body memory. I just had to acknowledge it and feel it.
I remember when i went to school the next day. I couldn't sit all the way back in my seat because it would hit the lower burn spot. At recess I parked myself with my back to the school wall so I wouldn't accidentally get touched on my back. I was highly cautious to avoid suspicion and getting touched on the upper back.
When I got home from school I used the bathroom mirror to see what the burn looked like. Mostly it was one hand-size area of bright pink, like a sunburn. It wasn't until the next day that the angry red crescent shaped burns emerged. Like if you pressed just the tip of your spoon into ice cream or something. Five crescents and one half of a crescent clustered in the area of my shoulder blade.
Recounting this in therapy, it just made no sense. There wasnt anyway I could have guessed or predicted that my dad would decide to heat up a spoon and burn me repeatedly. There was no reason for it. I never knew if he would do it again. He tended to do things more than once, and I remember nights lying awake staring at the doorway waiting and watching.
From what I can gather, torture sessions with either my dad or grandmother probably amounted to once every month or two, based on the evidence and memories I currently have.
Being tortured is, rather different, from being beaten or molested or starved in that, here is someone, someone who claims to love you no less, who is purposefully inflicting intense physical pain for Absolutely No Reason At All.
How do you escape that? How do you escape the thought pattern that people who love you or not, enjoy inflicting pain on you at random?
It kinda makes one suspicious and leery of anyone who gets within two feet of me, you know?
It probably contributes greatly to my fear of people; being touched unexpectedly and anyone who gets near my back.
Sad but true..my boys quickly learned not to hug me from behind. They'd jump on my back to play and I would lose my fricking mind. Gently and safely throwing them off in a panic with a stern warning to never do that again. They learned and I learned to be very gently with them when they forgot. They didn't know. How could they know? How could anyone know?
Enough.
Yeah, things are starting to make sense.
Why my back was numb. Why I'd get upset when people would pay me on the back.
Yeah. I get it now.
Yeah, that was vicious. That was torture. That was my dad.
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