[Author’s Note: As part of the #BareYourMind campaign, here’s a story of an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE). Traumatic events such as witnessing parental conflict can result in long-term negative effects on mental health. If you struggle with mental illness, I encourage you to share your stories as well. Let’s work together to de-stigmatize mental health in our society by giving it a human face.]
A teenager watching his mother have a nervous breakdown is as bad as it sounds.
It happened on what seemed to be just another weeknight. My father was prepping for another one of his barely disguised dates with a woman that wasn’t my mother. He splashed himself liberally with Brute by Faberge, the men’s fragrance so famously lampooned by Eddie Murphy on one of his comedy albums.
My younger sister and I were watching TV in the living room. I was fifteen and she was nine. My dad walked in, adjusting the collar of his button-down shirt before he carefully laid the blazer he was carrying across the back of his favorite recliner. He reeked of bad cologne and hubris, a shit-eating smirk on his face. He was getting away with murder, once again.
He barely spared us a glance as he walked into the kitchen to give my mother one of his paper-thin excuses for going out. I heard my mother mutter something in reply. My father reappeared and started putting on the blazer.
Then my mother came running out of the kitchen screeching like some alien creature. She held a hammer in one hand, poised high over her head. No doubt the hammer was one of my dad’s wayward tools he always seemed to drop randomly around the house.
My mother ran straight for my dad. Her eyes were wide and wild, and tears streamed down her face.
“You son of a bitch! You son of a bitch! You son of a biiiiiiitch!” she screamed over and over. Her face was distorted into a terrifying mask of anger and anguish. My dad staggered back and got one hand up in time to grab her wrist before she could brain him. When her free hand came up to claw out his eyes, he grabbed her other wrist.
My sister and I leaped to our feet and bore witness to an epic struggle. Here were the two “gods” of our childhood, engaged in a terrible battle that was the culmination of years of deceit and depression. My mother no doubt had massive strength born of long-suppressed rage. My dad visibly strained to hold her back. My mother weighed more than him, thanks to years of overeating in an attempt to bury her sadness in food. It was a defense mechanism I myself had adopted.
My sister and I could only stand there dumbly, frozen in place, as my parents struggled for control of the hammer. Every horrible second was being indelibly burned into our memories. My mother’s screaming had degenerated into incoherence, her mad gaze boring into my father’s face. Her jaw worked strangely from side to side and her teeth were bared, as if she imagined biting into my father’s cheek.
The two of them staggered, and my father managed to fall on top of my mother and pin her down on the couch. That was when my father glanced up to look at me. His formerly smug expression had been replaced by one of utter shock and disbelief.
“Call the cops! Call the cops!” he bellowed at me.
I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed as I tried to process what I was witnessing, something no kid should ever see.
“Call the fucking cops!” my father shouted at the top of his lungs.
Continued in Part 2…
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