“I ought to get up and just beat you”
It’s not funny. It never was.
I grew up hearing my mom consistently called stupid. Fat. Ugly. Everything she ever did was criticized. “I ought to get up and just beat you,” was repeated to both of us, regularly. And we were expected to laugh. And we did. We laughed.
We laughed because this was as good as it got. This meant he was in a good mood. When he said this, it wasn’t a real threat. This was him “teasing.” These were ongoing “jokes.”
I’m not very comfortable sharing certain aspects of my childhood — including (but not limited to) being immersed in this “humor.” For many reasons.
For a long time, I believed stuff like this teasing was normal. So, I believed I wasn’t allowed to be upset by it. And, if I was, the problem was with me for being “too sensitive” (never with anyone else for being utterly insensitive).
Once I recognized the environment I grew up in was mentally and emotionally abusive, I still feared calling it out as such would mean I was being “too dramatic.”
I thought that if I tried to talk — or write — about these parts of my childhood, it was somehow a betrayal to my family. That I would be the one causing and creating problems (never that the actual abusive behavior was the problem).
