Coming from a broken home doesn't make me broken

Everyone at some point in their lives goes through a difficult point that they think they will never recover from. My whole life has been a difficult point that I have struggled through.This is my story.

My father was what some people would call abusive, but what I grew accustomed to. After I was grown I learned that the first time he ever hit my mother was when my oldest sister was just a baby. Little did my mother know that the abuse would continue for seventeen years. Abuse became a normal everyday thing that my siblings and I became used to. We expected it everyday and on the days it didn't happen we could rest easy, but not for very long. I would lay awake at night and listen to my mothers cries and my fathers rage.

My father always tried to make us feel better by saying the phrase that was repeated so many times over the years "It has nothing to do with you kids, me and your mom are just having problems". I grew to hate those words and most of the words that came out of his mouth. When I went to school I was ashamed. I felt like everyone around me knew what went on in my home. I was also outraged at my family members that knew what was going on and turned their heads. They ignored the pain that my siblings, my mother and I where going through.

My mother wasn't the only one that suffered my fathers abuse. My siblings and I would get hit whenever we tried to protect my mother. When it was all over he would always apologize and say it would never happen again, but of course it always did. When my mom finally did start fighting back I thought things were finally getting better. But every time she kicked him out it was only a few days before she took him back. She said she didn't think she could do it without him. What she didn't realize was that she had been doing it alone her entire marriage. She was a single mother even before she finally got enough courage to file for divorce.

Most children are devastated when their parents tell them they are getting a divorce. But when I heard those three words "I'm divorcing him" I was overcome with relief. The nightmare was finally over.

My mother became a different person in the days after he left for the final time. She was a happier person. The fear was gone from her eyes, only to be replaced with worry about how a single mother of five children was going to survive. It was hard at first. I recall one particular day when we didn't have any money and very little food. My mother went hungry just so her children could eat. I realized then that my mother was the strongest person I knew. Not long after that we became a welfare family. Something that hurt my mother deeply. I think it made her feel like less of a mother, but to me it made her a better mother because she put aside her pride for her children.

My mother went to work. She took jobs cleaning houses for less then minimum wage. I think it gave her a sense of pride that she was working supporting her family. We went through some tough times but anything was better then enduring my father's abuse.

Not having a father has influenced me to make a lot of wrong decisions, but it has also made me a stronger person. Because I didn't get the love I needed from my father I was always looking for it in all the wrong guys.

There are a lot of things in my life that I wish I would have done differently or not experienced at all. But all the things I went through has gotten me to the point I am in life today. My mother has gotten stronger through her past also. I believe her experience with my father has helped her in her relationships today.

My father moved on and remarried with a step-daughter. He's still not in our lives like he should be. When I looked at his relationship with his new family i was outraged. I think why couldn't he have been a good husband and father like that us. Why did his second family have to get all the good parts of him.

Over the years my father has been married three other times since my mother. He is a drug addict and has no family left that have contact with him.

I think if things would have been different then maybe I would have been a different person then I am today.