Abuse was all I knew growing up
The first time I experienced physical , mental and sexual abuse was as a child. My first impression of what relationships looked like stemmed from my toxic family environment. It was all I knew growing up, and what I accepted as normal.
I was seven years old when I was sexually molested by a family member. But I had witnessed and experienced physical and verbal abuse well before then. In fact, everyone in our household was subject to it, and it was quite a regular occurrence to be physically punished for mundane, ridiculous things, like looking at someone wrong, or being to silly, as children often do when playing. We weren’t allowed to do anything that made our abuser angry, which was pretty much everything.
But it wasn’t just in our household. It was a family thing. A family thing that no one dared to speak about aloud. And I carried on the family legacy to build future toxic and abusive relationships.
Anonymous Survivor
