When I Was a Child...it wasn't safe to speak

 Do you remember, as a child, the thrill of mastering a new skill? From walking to talking, to feeding yourself or getting dressed all by yourself? Your little chest would swell with pride in an accomplishment anew.

When I was 2 years old, I started saying words and partial sentences, feeling a sense of that newfound delight and "biggness" in that I could move my lips like my older brother now, and say words just like him.

I vividly, flashbackishly recall, sitting solid on the living room carpet, directly under the picture window, playing toys with my brother. I could sense my lips moving, a small smile on my face and words flowing from my lips to the air. Without warning, the ground shook and mother came stomping rapidly into the play area and slapped me square across the face.

"Don't you ever say that ever again!" she demanded as I sat in hot silence before my brain realized my face had been struck and that red hot, stinging sensation was a fresh sheet of pain. My small, Autistic grey matter was overwhelmed at this most unexpected assault from a previously innocent and unheard of  assailant.

I wailed, stunned with half of my face on fire. I did not know what it was that I said that caused such instantaneous and egregious wrath from a previously kind mother. I believe that this scenerio, me speaking and getting slapped, happened a few times before I put two and two together and realized I must have been saying words that provoked and vexed her so. 

I did not know which words would cause this reaction, so in a desperate attempt to stop her assaults, I realized the only way to avoid it was to stop speaking. If i did not talk, I did not get slapped. Simple.

As a toddler who had been engaged in being sexually abused since earliest memory, probably infancy, my daily life was majorly affected by my serial pedophile father who enjoyed sexually abusing his children on a daily basis. My early language probably was composed of words related to private parts and sexual acts. Hence, it would be rather natural for a mother to want to slap me into silence instead of entertaining the true reality that her husband was molesting her kids. Slam the victim into silence instead of protecting your kids, mother. 

Yeah, ass backward, for sure but that was my mother, herself, a victim of incest who married another victim of incest.

Do you really think that any of her mass of children was free from defiling touches, rubs and thrusts?

Anyway, my point is that I am becoming consciously aware that I, 56 years later, still carry the thought that if I speak I am taking the risk of being slapped across the face. Acts of harm and threat and malice sting and scar children well into their adult years. 

Being a parent, you are imprinting upon your child experiences and memories, thoughts wrong, indifferent, harmful or healthy. It is a position of complete control over your offspring's entire life. How few understand the gravity of such a job.

My parent's sins cover me and coat me three layers deep.