Father’s Joy
*TRIGGER WARNING: ABUSE*
Abuse is unfortunately so prevalent for both women and men alike, yet such a forbidden topic to discuss. Today, many women and men are bringing sexual abuse to light and bringing awareness to it, but there are many other forms of abuse that are so taboo to this day. Whether it be verbal, physical, or emotional abuse, they’re all equally as important to bring to light. Statistically, 1 in 7 children have experienced child abuse in the past year alone. While neglect is the most common type of child abuse, it is followed by physical abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. This week I was lucky enough to interview Katie McGovern and listen to her story. Katie, a member of my 69 all-girls graduating class, opened up to me about going through her parents’ divorce with a sick, abusive parent. Keep reading to see her journey as a survivor. It’s time to fucking talk about abuse.
Tell me a little bit about your childhood before the divorce. What are some major events you remember as a young child?
My parents separated when I was 2 years old and divorced officially when I was 4, so I don’t have any memories of when they were together. I remember being the only kid with divorced parents, but that changed in middle school. I remember going to the courthouse. For me, it's weird to see old videos or pictures of my parents even together. It’s a total mind fuck, I’ve never seen them get along, let alone look like they’re in love. When I was 13 I found their wedding photos and it was really weird. My mom still keeps all of the videos and picture books around, even the dress.
What was it like seeing your parents get divorced at such a young age?
I was 2 years old when my parents divorced so I didn’t see it coming. It was for sure really weird to grow up like that. I never really knew anything other than switching back and forth between houses, and for a long time I was the only kid with divorced parents. I felt really different from everyone else. It was difficult having to explain things like needing two different forms or permission slips to my teachers as a kindergartener. For a while I felt like the divorce expert, I know that sounds weird, but in middle school all of my friends' parents started getting divorced and everyone I knew asked me what it was like because I had lived through it for so long.
Did you see it coming? What was the reasoning for the divorce?
To this day I still have no idea the specific reason why my parents divorced. They have both told me drastically different stories. Personally, I believe that my parents were both struggling with their own personal identities when they married and both felt that settling down and having kids might be the answer. However they quickly realized that they were two completely different people with different ideals of how to live and raise kids. My father was also very emotionally abusive to my mother and was very disappointed that she only had girls; he always wanted a son and wasn’t too keen on having daughters. My mom left shortly after seeing my father’s resentment towards my younger sister.
Do you think your parents divorce has made you approach love differently now?
Yes completely. I know I personally will never get married. My parents divorce was bitter and they still battle it out in court to this day. After growing up seeing how hateful and blind they both were by their anger and resentment, it made me realize I’m never going to marry someone or have children. I don’t want to become my parents and I never want to put another human through what I went through. My father used to tell me that I would marry someone who beats me and not to come crawling back to him when that happened. I would like to think that didn’t affect me, but I know that I always have that fear in the back of my mind. I am not really open in relationships, I’ve only ever had one serious relationship and truthfully I wasn’t very honest with myself in that relationship. I’ve never imagined myself in love, if that makes sense. I’m extremely cautious of love because I’ve seen people fall out of it multiple times. I saw my parents fall out of it as a baby and I watched my father and stepmother fall out of it as a teenager. I feel most often as if I have the manual of what not to do in a relationship, but it doesn’t give me any comfort in starting one. I read a study once that children of divorce are much more likely to get divorced themselves because they emulate their parents' way of expressing love. After reading that I just kind of assumed love was off the table for me; I don’t ever want to hurt another person the way my parents hurt each other.
After the divorce, who did you spend more time with? Was this your choice?
Throughout my childhood, my mom and my father had 50-50 custody of both my sister and me. This was not my choice and both parents went to court numerous times begging for full custody. The real tricky part of custody is that there are two forms of it, legal and physical. Physical custody determines who and where you spend your time. Legal custody determines who makes decisions for you and about what you do, where you go to school, what doctors or insurance you are on, even down to the medication you take. Before high school my parents shared legal custody of both my sister and me.
Unfortunately, my mom and I were both very depressed during my middle school years. Not a knock on my mother, but I took a lot of the responsibility for the house and my sister since my mom wasn’t doing well mentally and was working a lot (as a single mother). I also took care of my sister at my father’s house since he still resented her for not being a boy. Often I took much of his abuse so that my sister wouldn’t have to. My father once told me that he would hand me the gun to shoot myself to toughen my sister up, if I didn’t give him legal custody. It was at that point that he received legal custody of my sister and I.
Briefly when my father and step mother first separated during the summer before my senior year of high school, I went back to the courts to ask if my sister and I could be relocated to live with my stepmother. My father convinced the courts that I was not mentally stable and the petition was denied. He did allow us to go stay with her, but it was only when he thought appropriate or was truthfully just sick of us. When my stepmother moved back in, this stopped and we lived with my dad 50% of the time.
What were some of the first memories you have of experiencing abuse from your father?
The first memory I have actually took awhile for me to accept; it had been foggy from being so young and hearing different stories of what happened. I remember being around four years old and my father grabbing my arm and throwing me up the stairs into my room. He used to grab me around my biceps a lot when he was angry and I remember telling him it hurt a lot. I remember it hurting. One of my pre-school teachers noticed the bruises and I told her something along the lines of I got in trouble so my dad grabbed me and put me into time-out. My teacher reported it and my mom sued my dad, but nothing ever happened and my father never did it again. When I was eight I thought I had schizophrenia because my father would gaslight me so often. I remember being so confused because my father would tell me things that never happened or that seemed so out of the ordinary. But I was eight and he was my father, so I must’ve been the crazy one, right? We read a book in class one day and one of the characters had schizophrenia and I remember thinking, “oh hearing voices and seeing things, that must be what’s happening to me, that must be why my dad keeps saying I’m making things up in my head, I must be schizophrenic.” I’m not by the way, not to speak badly to people who actually have schizophrenia, it just seemed like the most logical option to an eight year old who didn’t understand what emotional abuse and gaslighting is.
How old were you when your dad was diagnosed with cancer?
I was 13 when my dad was diagnosed with cancer. It was March. I was in the 8th grade and just found out I would be switching schools for high school. It's not the best time in a person’s life and getting the diagnosis turned everything upside-down.
What was it like having a sick parent who in turn was abusive? Did it alter anything?
Having a sick parent is already a very challenging experience to go through in it of itself, but when that parent is also abusive it truly puts a lot of things into perspective. It made the abuse worse, but I couldn’t see it at the time because of my internal guilt, shame, and anxiety. When my father was first diagnosed I felt extremely guilty. For a long time I had not necessarily wished for him to die, but longed for a way out. I felt extremely guilty because I had wished for a way out of my situation and the opportunity could present itself very soon. I felt ashamed, because what kind of daughter wishes for something like that? I was anxious because I didn’t actually have a clue of what I would do if he did happen to pass.
During his diagnosis, I listened to everything he told me, took every ounce of abuse, and helped take care of him when he was home. For a while he was nicer to us, but shortly after my grandfather (his father) was diagnosed with a severe form of the same cancer. It was at this point where my father became even more abusive. Yelling at us all of the time...it didn’t matter what we did, if we tried to help he would refuse. He turned into a very bitter and terrible human being. My grandfather ended up passing, while my father recovered. This really altered things as I’m sure he was grieving in his own way. I vividly remember the day my grandfather’s passing. I was at a sports game when my stepmom came and picked me up early, which was weird because I was with my mom that day. My sister was in the car and we drove to the hospital to see my grandfather, and it became clear it was coming to the end. I was in such denial. All I could think was please god don’t let him die, because I knew that if he did my father would continue to be the dark person he was turning into. After saying my goodbyes to my grandfather, my aunt slapped me across the face screaming, ‘why won’t you cry?!’ My grandfather died that night and I sobbed to my mother, knowing this was not only the loss of my grandfather, but that this was the loss of any normalcy I had in my fathers house.
When I went back to my father’s that week, I was grounded and forced to attend all the funeral planning. My father made me sit next to my grandmother as she cried. He then made me apologize to my dead grandfather for my actions at the hospital. Actually, I had to apologize twice because the first time I didn’t touch the body. I think that was the moment where I knew my father was never going to get better, even if he survived the cancer.
Was there a breaking point that made your sister and you bring this relationship to court? If so, what happened? Walk me through the steps of how you guys did this.
After failing to transfer custody to my stepmom and then watching her move back in with my dad, I lost all hope in ever breaking off my relationship with him. I assumed that after college I would be able to get away. Until I left for college, I checked out mentally every time I walked through the door to my fathers. My sister is a much better person than I am and refused to give up. She knew my father resented her and after I left for school his resentment turned into negligence. My father and stepmother would leave and go on vacations together, he and my sister could barely be in the same room without arguing, and my stepmother was absolutely no help to anyone. Right before I left for my second semester of freshman year, my sister told me that she was going to leave my fathers house. She said, “I will not go back to that house and I won’t ever do it alone again.” She went to my moms the next day, my mom filed a petition for full legal and physical custody, my sister went to court and provided testimony, and my father let her go. He has reached out to her since this happened, but he still refuses to pay child support or give her any of the money left in her bank account that she has with him. My sister has not returned his messages.
What was the breaking point for you to cut off ties from your father?
After seeing how everything went down with my sister, I was pretty furious. When COVID hit, I made the decision not to go back to my fathers house, which made him furious. I kept in contact with him because he had access to some finances and resources I needed at the time. In May he told me that I was a money sucker, brainwashed by my mother, and that I was ungrateful of everything he had ever done for me. I was done. I had enough. It was at this moment that I said fuck this. My 17 year old little sister said that she would no longer take his abuse and if she could do it, then damn it so could I. I let him know that he has not changed, that I didn’t need any of his fucking money or resources, and that he could go fuck himself and kindly lose my number after that. I removed his name from any financial record, changed my address officially, froze my bank account, and never went back to his house for anything. We talked briefly about logistics for removing his name from certain documents, he convinced me to attend a therapy session with him, but since then my stepmother filed for divorce and haven’t talked to him since.
How is your life now without him in it?
He’s not completely out of it, he keeps showing up to my sisters school meetings on zoom (I literally just had to yell at him to get off two seconds ago). So I guess I lied when I said I haven’t talked to him since May, but this is not the first time he keeps showing up to things uninvited. He is no longer a parent of my sister in any legal or emotional sense. Other than him popping up uninvited, life is pretty great. I have been able to go to therapy, which is very nice. He never let me go to a therapist who wasn’t pre-approved by him and most often I was pulled out of therapy by him. It’s a very weird thing to suddenly have complete autonomy over your life, and without having to question whether a decision will be worth the backlash you will get from them. I don’t really know how to be a human yet, if that makes sense. Right now I’m exploring who I really am without the constant pressure of my abuser around. I’ve dyed my hair, I’ve played around with fashion, I’m baking a lot more, and doing new hobbies. At this stage I just don’t want to look in the mirror and see my father or the person my father always wanted me to be. I’m discovering who I really am, which is a bit weird to have a whole personality awakening at 19, but my friends and family have been supportive of the changes. I am currently in the process of changing my last name, but that will be a surprise christmas present for my mom.
Is there a piece of advice you’d offer to someone with an abusive parent, if they’re reading this right now?
My advice to them is, if you take anything away from this interview, know that you are not that person. You are not who they make you out to be. You are strong and relentless and you deserve to live. I think a lot of times children of abuse feel unwanted because if your own parents can’t give you the love you deserve then something must be wrong with you. That is the farthest thing from the truth. No matter what they say, what they do, or what they make you do, know that you deserve the love they cannot give. My younger sister, the girl I promised myself I would protect, was able to demand that she get the life she deserved. I followed in her footsteps and I’m proud that no matter how hard my father beat down on us, that she kept her hope and her courage. My mother likes to think it was because she wasn’t exposed to it for as long as I was, but I think that it just proves that no matter how you handle your abusive parent, keep faith, keep courage, and demand the love you deserve, even if the only person you demand it from is yourself.
IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS EXPERIENCING CHILD ABUSE, PLEASE GET HELP AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. RESOURCES:
The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4-A-CHILD or 1-800-422-4453
Child’s Bureau Express: https://cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov/
