Getting an Answer
Is it weird to still want an answer after all of these years? No. I tell people all the time, in our counseling sessions, and in group settings, and with just people in general, that you have to get used to not getting an answer, but it doesn't make that urge just stop. We are human. We all want answers. Especially to things that you just don't understand why certain people could do what they did. I feel this way with my abuser and my boys abuser. Even after all this time, and thankfully I still have yet to see him since he got out of prison, so it has been about 6 years now that I have had to run into that monster. Does it stop the random longing of wanting to just run into him and getting an answer? No.
Will I ever get an answer of everything he did? No.
Do I have to come to terms with that? Yes. Have I? Sometimes.
Does it have anything to do with wanting to have him back in our lives? Definitely not. That would be a nightmare in its own all over again. It has to do with those random moments when I sit here and am enjoying so much with my kids and my husband and then something in my kids shows a glimpse of a younger sibling of our abuser and it makes me wonder how could someone possibly hurt a child and a woman who had done everything and anything for that person. It is just wondering how that monster can even exist in someone. And then that fleeting thought is gone. But does it still randomly happen? Yes. Are there longer periods between ever having those thoughts? Yes. One day I hope they will never exist but I know that will not be true.
I believe that as the boys get older these moments of those thoughts stick harder with me simply because as they get older I start to question when do we tell them about the beginning part of their life? We know that we have to. We do have to tell Brayden that his disabilities that he has are because I was punched in the stomach so much when I was pregnant so your brain stopped growing, and now this is a life long thing for you. We have to tell Jaxon that when he was 3 months old that he had 30 multiple rib fractures and a broken clavicle bone, and it was a miracle that a rib fracture poked his lungs and that is why he coughed up blood so I rushed him to the ER. I say it was a miracle, because without that part happening, then I don't know how much longer it would have gone on for before I knew or the doctors finally really looked him over. When we tell them these things, they will most likely search out that monster for answers, right? And what will they get? Disappointment. Manipulation. Hurt. Anger. I wish I could protect them from that too.
How do we also tell them when they ask about that family, that that family was fully unsafe too. We had to have a PPO against certain ones and there was nothing but threats of violence and continued manipulation. How do you tell little boys, or teenage boys, that the family stood next to their abuser and didn't care that they almost died and then tried to blame it on me for staying, instead of the abuser taking responsibility? Thinking that just doing prison time was a sufficient enough punishment for his actions? Especially such a short time? Or to say that the woman who was getting abused, was the abuser of the children and that that monster just covered for her? There is so many things wrong with that family and it is just the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully, I have kept all documentation from social media, the courts, the hospitals and everything in between, but it doesn't make it easier. I know that they may want answers one day, but all they will get is hurt. I know I cannot protect them for forever, no matter how much I want to.
All I can do is be thankful that I have an amazing family and that my husband has claimed them since the day we started dating, even when I was scared and didn't want them around any other men. My husband and I have continued to do our best in getting them counseling and on whatever medications they need to give them the best chance at a "normal" childhood. They have grown up in a household, and surrounded by family, with so much love and structure, in order to make sure that they have the best chance in the world for them. They have never not been fought for.
But it is always nagging sometimes, why. Why would someone do the things that they did? Why would biological family members not really care about them? But then I remember something, if we understood why monsters did what they did, or why they thought the way they did, then we would be the same, and then I find myself being okay with not knowing. I find myself remembering that even getting an answer would be opening that dangerous door again and that is something that will never be worth it.
