#Potential Trigger*

I’m going to start writing about the memories of abuse from my childhood that come to me, as they come to me.

I’m not sure what prompted this particular memory, but here it is.

If I swore my mother would take me to the bathroom and wash my mouth out with soap. 

She wouldn’t just take me to the bathroom through. No. It was usually a struggle and would go something like this.

Her shrieking,

“What did you just say????”

“Come here!!!”

GRAB*

SLAP*

SHOVE*

HAIR PULL*

YANK HEAD BACK*

“LET’S GO!!!”

*try to get away*

run*

ouch*

She would not let me resist or get away. It was a struggle like a predator chasing it’s prey. I’m sure if I did ever get away she’d fight me to exhaustion to win.

She enjoyed this part. She couldn’t just hit me and get it over with. No. She made a big production out of it.

I don’t even remember what emotions I felt even though I’m remembering the visual memory of it. I know what I should have felt.

Fear. Betrayal. Hurt. Horror.

She’d be shrieking the whole time. Grabbing at me to keep me from getting away.

I remember having bruising on my inner arms from her digging her nails in so hard and sore spots on my scalp from her pulling my hair.

She’d get me to the bathroom in front of the sink and she’d grab the bar of soap. She’d already have a hold of the back of my head by my hair. I can remember trying to put my leg out around the door frame to get away from her. She’d fight me like her life depended on it.

When she finally had me where see wanted me she’d scream in my face,

“OPEN YOUR MOUTH!!!”

and she’d shove that bar of soap into my mouth. Then she’d make sure to scrape it across my upper teeth on the way out. The thought of it now makes me feel like gagging.

I remember feeling so defeated. So humiliated. So beat down afterwards. All because I said a bad word.

My mom insists that she never said a bad word until she started working when us younger kids were teenagers.

She insists that is when she started using the eff word. I call bullshit. 

She has one of the nastiest mouths I’ve ever heard. Her mother was pretty vile too.

She always told people in front of me how she never started swearing until she started working. 

I only remember feeling uncomfortable and not wanting to look her in the eye. I didn’t disagree or call her out either. That wasn’t allowed. And even though I couldn’t put my finger on it, I knew she was lying.

She gaslit us a lot. Mostly it was to cover up her crazy behaviour.

The irony is I’m sure she was swearing her head off while she was fighting to get me to the bathroom for my punishment.

Even though it is not that unheard of to hear about this kind of thing happening, the way she did it tells me I endured so much worse. You know? Like, what am I not remembering?

That remains to be seen.

~ Poking Holes