I remember the fight that led up to my testimony in court. We were in a screaming match because I wanted to go home, which definitely wasn’t unusual for us. We were both sitting on the carpet and every time I tried to yell at him, he would tickle me because he knew I was ticklish and that it would shut me up. It was frustrating and I was crying. I was so mad at him but every time I tried to shout and show him how angry I was, he would lunge forward and tickle me to the ground. I would descend into a puddle of laughter and I wouldn’t be able to get up until he decided to stop. I would try to prop myself up to a seating position and speak but then he would start again. He laughed, taunting me as I lay there in a flailing, mangled state. I was laughing sharply from my chest as glass melted from my eyes. To this day, it is the most painful sensation I have ever felt. I despised that he knew how to press a button and make me stop. He completely disintegrated me into a ball on the floor and held me down, preventing me from expressing what was pulsing inside of me. The worst part was that he disguised this torturous gesture as something that could be easily interpreted as fun and games or a father cleverly distracting his hysterical child from the heat of the moment. It was a physically disabling trap, a literal block to my advancement. He liked the idea of an 11-year-old’s defenseless to avoid words that might be to his detriment. He didn’t want to hear about ways that his most prized possession could be taken away from him. Don’t get me wrong; I was a very valuable object but that’s as far as I got.

Emotional, verbal, sexual, and physical abuse all fall under the category of psychological abuse. Abandonment and abuse are closely linked. Being abused is a form of betrayal and abandonment feels like abuse or can cause someone to abuse himself. Technically, I’m not an expert on the topic and I haven’t received any formal training, but I do have enough firsthand experience to make some bold declarations without sounding like a babbling idiot.
    

First of all, it’s not a competition; all forms of abuse are awful in their own right. Just because you don’t get a black eye, it doesn’t mean that it’s not bad. The most painful part of physical abuse is probably the emotional effects it has on you after it happens. I was never a victim of physical abuse, but I was on the receiving end of physical harassment. The police officer made sure to make the distinction because, apparently, they’re two totally different things. And they’re certainly handled as such.
    

I never broke anything when my father twisted my wrist. Instead of kicking me like a soccer ball across the room, he would kick at my feet just enough to inhibit my movement. I didn’t bleed when I was shoved around the apartment or slammed down into a beanbag. The visible marks it made were not severe. I just got a few bruises that I could have easily gotten from tripping on the playground. Abuse doesn’t have to mean that you get beatings every night or slapped across the face every time you make your abuser angry. However, the civil court system enforces the false message that psychological abuse is livable and generally not a cause for taking a father’s rights away.
    

Feelings don’t make an impact on judges because it’s part of their job to be completely objective. I get that. However, I believe that judges should have a thorough understanding of the human mind before taking their position. The judges I’ve met don’t understand pain they can’t see. They teach children to discount their feelings. Because feelings are easier to dismiss and harder to justify.
    

One judge disregarded my testimony because I wasn’t crying. She said I was actually robotic, so I guess she thought that meant I couldn’t have been going through anything that bad. However, I was really just mastering the art of suppression, as I had been doing for the past few years since my parents’ unnecessarily chaotic divorce. It was a survival tactic.
    

A child simply reciting facts about a painful experience, showing a total lack of emotion, is more disturbing than a child balling on the stand. This type of occasion was a run-of-the-mill chore to me at this point so I didn’t really have a reaction to it anymore. The level of intensity in family court should not be normal. A fifth-grader should not know how to shut down and put on a tough face like a soldier on the battlefield. But what else can you do when you’re testifying against your father in open court?
    

Not all people who have been abused are poor, uneducated, or in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods. Abuse is certainly not an isolated thing that takes place on a deserted land somewhere far, far away. It may be hidden but it’s prevalent without exception. Class and knowledge have nothing to do with abuse. Nobody is immune. Money cannot save you from misery. If you saw me prancing out of Bergdorf’s in a Moncler after a day at the salon, you would never guess how much or how deeply my father hurt me. I am not what abuse looks like. So believe it or not, privilege does not equal invincibility. Anyone can be put down.
      

Not all people who have been abused are trembling in a corner, quiet, distant, and alone, or locked up in a mental institution somewhere. They might even go to your school or sit at your lunch table. Maybe even they say hi to you when they see you in the hallways. Who knows? Maybe you’re pretty good friends.
     

I know that the majority of my friends aren’t aware of my father’s abusiveness. Sure, I probably show some signs that point to Daddy issues but it’s not that noticeable because no one’s looking. My friends who knew me when I was younger definitely know I had a bad relationship with my father. They knew that I wanted to get away from him because all I did back then was cry for help, but they didn’t know the extent of what happened to me. And by now, they’ve probably forgotten, which I’m happy about. As for me, I will never forget and, little by little, I’m still discovering the extent of what happened to me– and I know I’m not done.
    

Now all of this is like a smudged, blurry dot in my past. I’ve come a long way, but there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about my father. Like it or not, it’s in my foundation and will be somewhere in my core, whether I realize it or not. Maybe I’ll fully exorcise my demons in the euphoric state of being that is found at college. Maybe then I won’t be reminded as much. Possibly, I’ll always be processing this, even if it is in the way back of my mind. And I’m okay with that. That’s definitely understandable, especially since I could’ve turned out a lot worse and I live with relatively minor side effects. According to my old therapist, I’m “resilient” and I “have good innards”– even though it hasn’t been easy.
    

When a parent sets patterns of mistreatment at home, it creates expectations for mistreatment in the world. So I lost this automatic outrage that is instinctive in most people who haven’t been abused because I expect people to be mean to me or skim through me like a bad book. Every time someone is nice to me, it’s almost like a pleasant surprise. And a lot of the time when someone would treat me like crap, I would think “c’est la vie” and/or make up some excuse to blame it on myself. I would just play along, feeling obligated to be nice because, if I wasn’t, then it could be thrown back in my face. I don’t do that anymore though. This is all because I was forced to accept things that were not okay and, even though it might bother me, getting too upset about it wouldn’t get me out of my situation.
    

I couldn’t use it against my father so I could be taken away from him for once and for all. It would have no desired effect on a judge because there is no concrete evidence for a buildup of debilitating pain in your soul– until you burst and your insides make a mess around you. I could tell her things he said, but I knew the best response I could get out of her was essentially, “That’s not nice, but tough. He’s your father and there’s nothing I can do about that.”
    

So I never learned how to be upset for myself. I learned how to kick and scream when I had substantial evidence to back up my case. I learned how to read people, for better or for worse. When I combined these two life skills, I learned how to compare my problems, to discern which one was worse than the other and what would or wouldn’t make someone care.
    

When I was twelve, I used all of these important tools to finally get what I wanted. I read in a magazine that Demi Lovato slit her wrists. When she sought help, she escaped from her hard situation into a rehab where she could find the time to heal. And so I put the jagged pieces together. This almighty judge wanted to see pain? She wouldn’t know pain if it smacked the stick that was shoved up her ass, but I did. I could show her pain. I was taught that physical proof was the only answer and I was always a good student; I learned a little too fast. I had been pushed far beyond my limits so what I did was simply inevitable. In sixth grade, on the bus to a history field trip around the city, I cut myself with the bottom edge of a small composition notebook.
    

Writing this down is beyond embarrassing. It’s humiliating because it’s not who I truly was and far from what I am today. No matter how much my father intended to convince me and everyone else otherwise, I wasn’t crazy. Remarkably, I still don’t suffer from any sort of mental illness. Believe me, I didn’t want to do it, but I was desperate so I pretended I wanted to hurt myself. Upon closer reflection, my decision was exactly as calculated as I’m portraying it to be. Getting away from my father was my constant underlying motivation, so nothing I was feeling during this event was particularly special. Ultimately, I wanted to get out of myself and hope that someone would rescue me somehow– or at least understand me– if they saw me like this. The last thing I wanted was to have one more dreaded dinner with my father. I couldn’t bare the thought of spending one more night trapped in a hole that would never be my home with someone that I could never call family. I did what I knew I had to do. And guess what?
    

Mission accomplished. On January 20, 2012, only a few days after the field trip, my therapist officially ended visitation with my father because she thought it would be unhealthy for me to continue seeing him. As much as he tried to tell her that he wasn’t the problem and there was just something horribly wrong with me, she knew who she was dealing with. She knew I was a child who got thrown into a madman’s crossfire. She knew that he was the one who was off. If you asked him how it all ended, he would say that he let it happen. He let go of his beloved parental rights, ceased his precious control, and set me free. In reality, he had no other option. A trained and respected professional typed up a formal statement saying she feared that “She would go down a self-destructive suicidal path if she continues visitation” and signed it. That’s serious business, and a judge would listen to that. Now he had blood on his hands.
     

My old therapist summed up my aftermath perfectly. She said, “I like to think of it a sunken ship in the ocean after a shipwreck. All of the stuff inside of the ship has floated to the surface and now you need to sort through it; see what to salvage and what to leave behind on the sea.” I’m a writer, but I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s basically what I’ve been trying to do since I was eight years old. Not fun, but I have enough distractions.
    

Not to sound like an asshole, but now that Dad is out of the picture, I thrive in most aspects of life. Brace yourself because I am not going to come off as someone you would want to have lunch with and would like it if you vowed to take mercy on my soul. I found writing, what I love to do, and I get a lot of praise for it. I have a solid family– if you avoid the gaps, of course. I have the best supportive mom who would do anything for me and probably has already. She drives me all over the place and gives me the freedom to do any crazy s*** I think up next. I also have doting grandparents and a really adorable dog– and all three of them love me unconditionally. I love my school and the people in it. I have a lot of friends. Obviously none of these people are perfect, but I know they would never want to hurt me and that’s all that matters. I’m smart. I’m co-editor of my school’s literary magazine. I do well at school and I know how to be around other people. Despite what my father did to me and the trust issues that remain, I actually like most people I know. It might be due to the fact that my standards were set nice and low early on, but I get along with pretty much everyone. I have a good sense of humor. I know it’s hard to believe but, outside of this context, I like to have fun. When I’m not analyzing the darkest time in my life, I take things lightly. I think I’m pretty most of the time, now that I don’t beat myself up on my father’s behalf as much anymore; I have acquired more evidence to back up my case as I’ve gotten older– I like evidence. Day to day, I have next to nothing to complain about.
    

Even though I’m doing a billion times better than I did back then, none of it erases the residue of truth that clings to my walls. As much as I tried to scrape it back down, recently I realized it’s still going to sit at the bottom, even further from the light. I’m still working on that. Maybe it’s why I had to construct a whole paragraph about my good qualities to prove myself to you somehow. It was partially to put this piece in perspective and talk about who I am now, but also partially because I need to hear these things sometimes to keep myself going. To make me see that I’m more than my past; more than what either of my parents ever made me out to be; more than what the cruel, little voice that lingers in the back of my mind from a long time ago says to me when I get insecure.
    

There are still some things left to deal with and other things to just accept. In the years since I stopped seeing my father, I tried to cover the cloud with the rainbow– that is the chunk above– or just screw the rainbow and ignore the hovering cloud. Now I’m trying to look at the whole sky for what it is and find some better weather for tomorrow.