Damage that never quite healed

I have had a lot of struggles and drama in the past few weeks.  It all surrounds my uncle Gary and my relationship to him.  I have a long history with him, much of it bad, and after my visit to my parents this January I finally snapped and had to do something.  People I have talked to about this have remarked on how this has big similarities with a lot of the #MeToo stories that have come to light over the past year or so.  I am a man, so it isn't going to be the same because the gendered element is important, but there really are a lot of parallels.

My uncle Gary has been an abusive bully to me as far back as I can remember.  Some really early memories I have of family celebrations involve him grabbing me, pinning me down, and jabbing at my stomach and chest hard enough to make me scream.  I am extremely ticklish so I was laughing and begging to be let go and wailing all together.  It was horrific to me, but he was always laughing, smiling, and seeming to have a wonderful time of it.  He seemed to particularly enjoy letting me go, pretending it was over, and then when I ran he would jump up to catch me just before I could escape and then pin me down and start it all over again.  I feared him then, because I never knew when it would start.  Like all long term abusers he figured out how far he could push it - if he did it constantly every time he saw me people would have stopped him, so he only did it occasionally.  You can't just go around punching strangers, because society prevents it.  But if you are generally likeable and friendly you can get away with regularly punching people you know because otherwise you are such a fun fellow - could it really be that bad?

But it was always there.  I was always frightened of going near him because sometimes he would lash out, grab me, and pin me down and make me scream.  The half of the room he was in was always dangerous, and he made it worse by regularly lunging at me but not actually grabbing me.  He thought it was hilarious that I flinched and jumped away, and made out like it was a game.

A little kid who is hurt by someone like that does not see it as a game.  It is terrifying, and the fact that he played it up just made sure that when he was around I was constantly worried, constantly on edge.  He had fun with the fact that he could make me jump and freak out any time he wanted.  He could just ignore it and focus on something else if he felt like it, but I couldn't.  If I ever stopped looking I would end up on the ground begging to be let go.

Things changed as I got older, of course.  He would sneak up behind me and pinch me or jab his hands into my sides or back. Sometimes when he came in from the cold he would grab my sides with his freezing hands, just to watch me jump and yelp.  He was quite strong so he took great pleasure in hurting me by crushing my hand when I had to shake hands with him, and body checking me into things.  I won't forget his face, and the feeling I got.  He sent the message that was stronger than me, that he was going to use it to cause me pain, and there was fuck all I could do about it.  It always felt to me like half of the reason he did it was to keep me constantly worried and paranoid so I could never quite relax.

Gary is a joke teller and a goof.  He loves to play the clown and entertain people with ribald humour, often poking fun at them directly.  If you are the sort of person who wants to insult people and is okay with being insulted back I can deal with that - my relationship with Naked Man is a lot like this.  But Gary, while he loved to insult others, has a very thin skin.  The few times in my life I tried to play back at him when he mocked me or belittled me he got angry and violent, making everything worse.  I learned not to do that, and that the only way to get by was to take whatever he was dishing out.

Once I tried to talk to him about it, to explain how upsetting it was, hoping that it would help, that he would see my point of view.  I don't recall the response precisely, but the gist of it was crystal clear:  The world is harsh, the things he was doing were just a game and not serious, and I need to get tough and deal with it because it wasn't going to ever be any different.

What do you do when faced with that?  When you tell someone things they are doing are hurting you, and they tell you that it is your fault for being hurt, and you know that you cannot win a fight against them, should it come to that?

You just put up with it, is what you do.  I couldn't get away, and I couldn't fight, so I gave in.  I learned to dissociate, so have that distant, grey, unreal feeling that allows people to cope when they are being hurt and they can't deal with the hurt.  Of course it isn't at all reasonable to lay it entirely at Gary's feet - the great majority of my pain and struggles in my early life were the horror that is other children.  But this sure didn't help.

As an adult the way he interacted with me changed, but the fundamental feelings did not.  I always felt a distinct unease, knowing that he would push boundaries, do things that I did not like, and that when he did my only option was to simply put up with it.  Over the years there were a couple specific incidents that enraged me but which I could do nothing about.

As an example, after Pinkie Pie was born we were visiting my parents and things were really terrible.  We were barely sleeping and were not functional.  Wendy had finally gotten Pinkie Pie down to sleep with me in the bedroom and she was crashing on the couch, desperate for sleep.  Gary came over to visit, was asked to be quiet because she was sleeping, and yelled and shouted to wake her up.  Gary has kids, he knows what that awful exhaustion feels like, but her suffering was irrelevant.  It was funny to him to refuse to let her sleep, and to stay around to visit, making sure she stayed awake.  What do you do with that, when you can't even tell someone "Hey, that hurt me" because they obviously only did it *because* it hurt you?

This past week Wendy, Pinkie Pie and I were visiting my parents.  Gary showed up unexpectedly.  I was not impressed, but I decided to try to just get through the visit and hope nothing bad happened.

But that was not to be.  Wendy was starting to go sledding down a steep hill and Gary rushed over to push her down faster.  She told him not to.  He did it anyway.  I just stood there, shocked that he would do that.  I shouldn't have been, of course, as this is the way he always is, but somehow I didn't react.  I knew that Wendy had brakes and could slow herself down so she wasn't in danger, but the raw disregard for her wishes made me angry.  Then when we went inside I was showing Gary my chest tattoo, trying to find some common ground to have a civil visit, and he called his girlfriend over and reached out and grabbed my nipple and twisted, hard.  I just stared at him and didn't flinch, feeling that familiar dissociation sealing me off from the pain, just like in years past.

Later on a few people were in the hot tub and Gary decided the thing to do was to throw snowballs at everyone.  Of course we couldn't throw back as we were in the tub, so he took great joy in pelting the kids right in their faces.  They were upset and didn't like it... but he thought it was absolutely grand. 

That is what prompted me to write this.  I can take all the nipple grabs in the world now, if I have to.  That primal fear is gone, because I am big enough and strong enough to fight him if required.  But what I can't take is the look of fear on my wife's face when someone lays his hands on her after being told not to.  I can't ignore the upset and worry on my daughter's face when she realizes that a man feels entitled to hurt her and she knows that if she objects he will just do it more.

Worse than that, she knows that her father didn't do anything to protect her.  That makes my gut twist, and that feeling is one I cannot allow to continue.  It isn't like the things that Gary did these few weeks ago were so hideous.  It isn't like Wendy or Pinkie Pie asked me to do this.  But the combination of my history and these actions is beyond what I can or will endure.

I am fucking DONE.  I can take Gary's childish abuse when only I have to endure it.  But I will never again stand by and allow him to hurt people close to me in the name of family unity.  I am cutting him out of my life for good, because the alternative is watching him go after my wife and child again, and having to choose between just watching them get hurt, or starting a fistfight.  Gary has made it clear that asking him to stop doing something is utterly pointless and a brawl will only make things worse, so this is the only option left to me.

You might ask why I bother to write this if I am going to cut him out.  What is the point?  The point is that when someone is like this, they usually hurt lots of other people too, whoever they can get away with.  I want them to know that they aren't the only ones, that it is Gary's fault, not theirs, and that they will have people on their team if they choose to do something about it.  Our society spends way too much time worried about the reputations of abusive men, and not nearly enough time confronting them with consequences for their actions, and this is part of my step to finally start fixing that shit in my own life.

Writing all this was gut wrenching and hard.  It wasn't hard to talk about the bad stuff that happened to me.  The hard part was figuring out what not to say.  I don't want to give a shit about Gary's reputation, but I don't want to exaggerate or give impressions that aren't true.  When the subject of men abusing kids comes up, everyone immediately jumps to 'pedophile!' but that isn't at all applicable in this case, and I don't want to suggest that it is.  On the other hand, why the fuck, after all these years and all this garbage that happened to me, am I the one twisting myself up trying to protect this guy from inaccurate accusations?  Why isn't that *his* problem?

There are always excuses.  Gary grew up in a rough and tumble household, with a father (my grandfather) who loved to sneak up behind people, grab them, and yell loudly to make them jump and scream.  He did that to me any number of times, so I know that this is how Gary lived at home.  But you can learn any number of things from this sort of upbringing.  Gary learned to tear down people who couldn't stop him from doing so.  The shit that happened to me taught me that you only touch people when they confirm that they want you to, because I know what it is like when you are on the other end of unwanted, violent touch.

I have no interest in excuses, apologies, or reasons.  At some point my question becomes "Can I live with this?" and for a long time I could.  I didn't like it, but I could live with it.  Now I cannot.  I am the sort of person who works hard to make things smooth, who puts enormous effort into finding ways around strife, but when I am finally pushed so hard that I simply cannot, I fucking burn those bridges.  I am done begging for mercy, I am done asking for kindness, and I am done enduring.  The pain and struggle of coping with a family member I am refusing to be around is less than the distress and upset of living with him, so that is what I am going to do.

There will be casualties of war, in this.  I know that family relationships will be pushed and strained.  I don't like that.  But I know that despite those challenges, I am looking forward to finally hitting submit on this beast of a post and having that decision be done, out there.  There will be a real sense of relief in finally having done what I have wanted to do for literally as long as I can remember.