Love makes you do crazy things...

I'm not a violent person. I've never been in what I would consider a fight. In first grade, I punched a boy because he said I wouldn't. In 6th, a girl stood on my jacket, and put me in a headlock when I pulled it from under her and she fell. Not fights. Barely confrontations.

My mother taught me not to be violent. To family or strangers. There was the "if someone hits you, hit them back," but we do not condone or initiate violence. She didn't even like the power rangers cuz they fought every episode.

She also, subconsiously, she taught the power of a well placed threat. In 9th, there was this girl named Renee and we HATED each other! One particular winter day she said something out of the way to me, and I responded that if she were to try my gangster, she was gonna have to catch a chair to the head and I was gonna beat her with my boot. She had actually recently made a comment about my boots being big and clunky- they were the doc marten style, and my feet were quite toasty- so this was effective in shutting her the hell up. I got this from my mom, who would put a very vivid image of herself whooping me in my head to make it so she wouldn't have to actually do it.

So, with all this nonviolence, imagine my surprise when I found out my mother was in an physically abusive relationship, and she was the aggressor.

Watching tv the other night, I asked the question, "why would people stay with these people when they treat them so bad?" my mother then spun a yarn about how my father played her and my brother's mom and another woman throughout the pregnancies that resulted in me and my brothers. At one point she breezed by "that time I hit him with the phone."

"you hit him with a phone?"

"Right after you were born."

Let's go back to 1984. Do you remember rotary phones? I remember my grandma asking me to bring her the phone when I was about 5, and it being a two handed job. They're not the lightweight creatures they are today. And my mom, who was quite skinny at the time, just had a baby, hit my father across the head with the phone after she made him break up with his "other" girlfriend. He wasn't expecting it, she wasn't defending herself against his violence, she was a woman scorned. And he was a man bruised. Concussed, really. Then she kicked him out.

Mom. You hit daddy with a phone? Then ya'll got back together and had another kid? I don't know who's crazier!

That was the first instance.

The second time he may have deserved it, but the fact that she hit him already negates that fact, and he should have known what would happen when he did what he did. I will not mention what he did this time, but just know that it was so bad that I would have punched him too. Let's just say he was acting a bit Judas. My mother was standing over him and wailed on him as my oldest (but younger than me) brother's mom watched.

And they still got back together after that.

What? Seriously? They goaded each other. He was an ass and she cursed him out and hit him. When I was 7 she threw a glass mayonaise jar at him and put a dent in the wall. She then ripped his shirt and and kicked him out. In the snow. Its no wonder I never saw them be affectionate towards each other.

Maybe he took it because he felt he deserved it. She was doing to his body what he did to her emotions. But why keep coming back? They were clearly not good for each other. The only good that came of it was me and my brother.

And they are both single to this day. My dad may still have his crazy girlfriend (I still haven't talked to him, but I am going to call him soon so he can fix my car) but my mom broke up with her ex in December.

Long story short, she couldn't answer my question but to say that despite all that they loved each other. Happens to the best of us, I guess.
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