If Hypocrisy Was A Person
She’d Have a Podcast, Cluster B Diagnosis and a Call Herself a Self-Help “Guru.”
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- Graphic content, including descriptions of physical abuse.
I made the easy decision to remove my mother’s husband, let’s call him Stan, from my life before I got married.
I made the difficult decision to remove my mother, let’s call her Rachelle, from my life before my daughter was born.
Stan began physically abusing me at the age of three. How do I know? Because I can remember.
My first memory: My little brother, Cody, was about 6–9 months, playing in a walker. Cody was crying because he dropped his binky, so Stan shouted at me to run into the bathroom and wash off the binky for Cody.
Apparently I didn’t follow directions and found myself with my two bottom teeth through my bottom lip. Moments later, Stan was holding me over the bathroom sink and I was crying because I could see so much blood washing down the drain.
Stan was panicking, telling me not to tell Rachelle when she got home. The bleeding eventually stopped, my lip was swollen and when Rachelle returned home from work, Stan told her I fell.
I can remember the look on his face when he looked at me while telling Rachel about the “fall.” He was (and still is) scary. He is a 6'2", 300lb. man and was a body builder at the time, likely abusing steroids or drugs.
Rachelle denies having a history of drug use, but my father has now confirmed this is not true. Rachelle has a history of drug use since around the age 18.
Stan and Rachelle were so bad with money management that we moved around about every 6–12 months. I changed schools every year, going to 14 schools from kindergarten to high school graduation.
While living in the same house that my teeth went through my bottom lip, we were eating Taco Bell for dinner and I was sick. I felt sick to my stomach and did’t feel like eating.
Stan, of course, forced me to eat when I could not eat. Eventually, I vomited at the dinner table.
Naturally, Stan took me to the bathroom and held my head under the toilet water to clean my face from the vomit. At the time, I did not feel like my face was being cleaned of vomit, I felt like I was being drowned.
Being held under water happened on more than one occasion at this same house. Being under the age of four, I cannot recall the reason, but I can remember being held under water of the toilet and of the filled bath tub.
Stan’s large hand on the back of my neck, forcing my little head under the water and I was fighting back. I was fighting for my little, three, three-year life.
Holding me under water and splitting my lip was not enough.
Our family would buy hand sparklers- the celebratory sparklers people use for the sendoff at their weddings. On one occasion, the sparkler burnt my hand and Stan “treated” my hand with butter.
Perhaps using butter to treat burns is an old wives tale, but knowing his treatment of me over time, it’s difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt. For me, it felt like he was trying to hurt me even more.
So much chaos and just a few years later, when I was eight and in second grade, my little brother was 7 and my little sister was 5.
We moved to Colorado because Stan had such poor self-esteem, he followed my Aunt and Uncle when they moved to Colorado.
My uncle owned a business, employing Stan, but Stan destroyed a job and was asked to leave the company. While under so much stress, I became Stan’s victim again.
I was physically abused, held up against the wall by my neck with my toes off the ground. Threats that if I ever told Rachelle, she would be killed and I would be sent on a one-way bus.
Terrified, I never told anyone about the abuse. Until I finally told Rachelle. By the end of my second grade school year, Rachelle’s father drove a moving truck from Arizona to Colorado.
Once that moving truck arrived, Rachelle loaded myself and my little sister, Charlee up, taking us from Colorado back to Arizona. Once we got back to Arizona, we stayed with family until Rachelle got back on her feet.
I grew close to my extended family, relying on them for safety. My grandparents turned into my parents, they protected me at times when Rachelle wouldn’t protect me from Stan.
Sadly, Rachelle fell back until Stan’s spell. By the time I turned 9 in 1997, I was living with Stan again, Rachelle had another baby and we went from a family of five to a family of six.
A nightmare.
Age 13, our family of six was living in a three bedroom house. My three-year-old sister shared a bedroom with my eleven-year-old brother.
This is 2001, the year our country was under attack. My home was also under attack.
I was being abused, physically, emotionally. I was being thrown through bedroom doors, through shower doors, I was excluded from eating meals with the family.
This was the time my little brother noticed the abuse I was receiving, escaped his abused by participating in abusing me. Being an abuse victim of a younger sibling felt embarrassing and something only a few people have known until now.
Stan and Rachelle moved our family to a Flagstaff ranch in the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school.
A local church paid for our family to live on a ranch if we took care of the twenty horses and one zebra, until the church realized Stan and Rachelle were mooching. Eight months later, our family was cut off and we moved back from Flagstaff back to Phoenix.
During those eight months living in Flagstaff, I made a date to visit my best friend for her birthday in Phoenix.
My aunt and uncle drove me from Flagstaff to Phoenix, as long as my friend could drive me back from Phoenix to Flagstaff the next day.
Sadly, the next day, while I was stuck in Phoenix, my friend was no longer able to take me from Phoenix to Flagstaff.
Being a victim of Stan’s abuse, I was terrified to call Rachelle to tell her that I was stranded in Phoenix without a way to get back to Flagstaff. I knew this would result in a severe beating from Stan.
At the time, I made a silly decision to call a male friend, knowing his father would be willing to drive me from Phoenix to Flagstaff. This was a friend that was always supportive in the past.
Reliably, my friend’s father gave me a ride from Phoenix to Flagstaff. Once I arrived back home, the door was locked, I was without a home keye and I was forced to spend a few hours at a friend’s house until Stan and Rachelle returned home.
Stan got wind that I did not follow the original plans to return from Phoenix to Flagstaff with my friend, then staying at another friend’s house for a few hours. He became enraged, arriving at my friend’s house.
Arriving at my friend’s house, I was ripped out of the house, my head was smashed into the car windshield where my little sister, just six-years-old, was sitting.
The friend, I’ll call him “Cam” that was letting me stay at his house for a few hours until Stan and Rachelle returned home is black. Stan is racist and after I was ripped out of Cam’s house, then Stan assaulted Cam, using racial slurs.
Fortunately, this was the first time anyone outside of my house witnessed the physical and emotional abuse. Cam told a school teacher.
The school teacher saw the bruises on my neck, telling the school counselor. The school counselor reporting the abuse and bruises to CPS and the Flagstaff Police.
This was the first time anyone took the abuse seriously, but this is when Rachelle’s treatment of me worsened. However, the physical abuse finally stopped.
Why hypocrisy?
My daughter’s father knows about the abuse I suffered. He knows that I cut Stan and Rachelle out of my life for my own mental health and to protect my daughter.
My ex-husband respected these wishes until after our divorce and he remarried a very unstable woman.
Now, My ex-husband and his wife have gone behind my back and re-connected my daughter with my abusers.
What makes it even worse is that my ex-husband’s new wife shares a similar childhood as myself.
His wife has also cut out her own parents for the same reasons I have cut out my abusers, yet has supported the re-connection of my daughter with my abusers.
I would find it hard to believe that my ex-husband’s wife would support anyone connecting her abusers with her three young daughters. But, then again, my ex-husband’s wife is clearly an unwell; podcasting; B-Cluster; and a self-proclaimed, self-help “guru.”
For someone to share a similar childhood, then to put their step-child in the way of harm is a dangerous person. That person shouldn’t have any authority over children and especially is a hypocrite.
