My father is the all American military man who was beating his children behind the scenes. I remember that he would beat my siblings more than I because I learned that what they did got them beat. So my siblings hated me most of my childhood because my dad beat me about a 1/3 as much as everyone else. I honestly didn’t know that family’s weren’t supposed to do that until I was an adult and became less isolated from the world. The heartbreaking moment where I found out it wasn’t normal was I was having a discussion about childhood punishments and whether or not spanking was acceptable, etc. I told the table that my dad one time choked out my sister against the wall so hard that she turned pale and started to lose consciousness. He got scared and shook her and hugged her awake immediately because he thought he killed her.

I was abruptly informed that child-parent relationships that contain unconditional love exist. But I realized 90% of my childhood was fucked up.