Crushed Not Cursed

Written By: S. Tuttle

Here’s an acronym for you: CEDV.

It stands for Child Exposed to Domestic Violence. It’s one I wish I didn’t know, but more than that, one I wish I hadn’t spent so many years unknowingly living out.

You’ll often hear children who grow up around domestic violence referred to as survivors. Maybe you’ve wondered how someone can survive something when they weren’t the one being beaten. The truth is, they were victims too. The bruises may not have been on their bodies, but the damage was real. I was there, too. 

I didn’t understand that until many, many years later.

For me, like most of my marvelous story, you’ll find my mom somewhere near the center of it. I’ve asked myself a thousand times how things got so bad. How could she care so little? How could she keep going back? But the older I get, the more I realize that was probably never her intention. Life didn’t become what it was because of one bad day. It was years of hundreds of bad choices, all linked together like a tangled-up extension cord. Eventually, nobody knew where one ended and the next began.

I’ve dug as far back into my memory as I can, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. I guess it was never really a when.

It was a who.

His name was Bobby – most called him something else, but I appreciate a government name; he seemingly spent his life running from it, so why not piss him off one last time.

He was the president of a biker gang out of Dayton, a group that took pride in a name associated with Satan. Like him, everybody in the club had a nickname. I’ve often wondered if there was something deeper to that. Maybe it was just biker culture, or maybe, spiritually speaking, it was another way of surrendering the identity God had given them for one the world had created.

Regardless, Bobby took his role seriously. He spent his days making sure he rained hell down on anybody within reach.

And for about fifteen years, that included my mom.

One of my most vivid memories is sitting between the two of them in a vehicle after a night that had turned into an episode of WWE.

I joke about it now. Maybe because I have to find some light in the trauma. 

Maybe that’s how I heal. 

Or maybe it’s because, even today, I can hardly believe that was real life.

But there was nothing funny it back then.

On this particular night, He had beaten the absolute piss out of my mom.

As a kid, witnessing something like that does something to you. You scream until your throat hurts. You cry until your eyes are dry. You beg somebody to stop, and eventually you realize your voice has no power over what’s happening.

To the person doing the hurting, your fear doesn’t necessarily make them stop. Sometimes it seems to fuel them.

My Granny was at the hospital and my mom eventually convinced him to take me to her. 

I remember the drive there vividly. I was sitting between them, my arm stretched out as if it could somehow keep the peace.

“Please don’t hit my mom.”

That’s all I could say.

Over and over and over.

I doubt I understood fight or flight back then, but I know what it felt like. I was terrified.

I was trying to protect somebody I loved from somebody I was powerless to.

She was bloody and swollen, it was bad. Really bad. 

I can still the condition of her face when I close my eyes. 

Another memory is even harder to put into words.

After another long night of being smacked around, Mom took off running out the side door, screaming for help. 

I don’t know what was going through her mind. Maybe she was trying to escape. 

Maybe her own fight-or-flight response finally took over. 

But the kids were still there.

So, in an attempt to be the big strong man he so desperately wanted to be – he grabbed my little sister. 

She was essentially still a toddler, and he held her to the screen door so my mom could see; and strangled her until her bowels released. 

That takes force, time, and intention. 

He told Mom that if she didn’t come back and take her beating, he would end my sister’s life.

She knew he was serious. 

So she came back inside.

She laid down and took it.

This time, with a baseball bat.

The best part was he produced off-spring who were as sick and twisted as him. 

When he got tired, his grown son would take over and beat her unconscious. 

They would stop, have a cigarette, wait for her to come to, and then start again.

These beatings would last for hours.

While me and my two siblings would sit tightly together, trying to comfort one another.

Even typing that now, my stomach is weak.

I don’t know how many times something like this happened. 

I couldn’t begin to count them. 

But over the course of roughly fifteen years, there were more than any child should ever have to remember.

And the thing about growing up in that kind of environment is that eventually, fear starts turning into something else.

Anger.

I remember one night, being in my early teens when things went south again. I knew where the tools were (if you catch my drift), and for a moment, I seriously considered ending his life. Imagine your momma, being beat like this for more than a decade. I was ready for it to end so much so that I was willing to end it for her. 

I thought dropping that hammer would end the violence. 

It would end what had consumed most of my life. 

It would end what he was doing to women and children.

But it would have ended my life too.

I thank God for the small, still voice that spoke to me even back then. 

I didn’t have the words for it at the time, but something kept me from making a decision that could never be undone.

Looking back, that something had to be God. 

Not long after that, another incident happened. He stabbed Mom in the skull.

Kentucky State Police pursued charges. He fled, and she ended up on a ventilator in the ICU.

When she came to, she immediately dropped the charges, left the hospital against medical advice, he picked her up, and they went home together.

That was the moment something in me changed.

I gave up.

Not because I stopped loving my mom. Not because I suddenly stopped caring what happened to her. But because I had spent so much of my life trying to save somebody who kept returning to the very thing that was destroying her. 

Granny used to tell me, “You can’t help people that won’t help themselves.”

I hated how true that felt this time. 

I had to learn to separate loving my mom from carrying responsibility for choices I could not control. That’s a hard lesson for anybody, but especially for a child who has spent years believing that if he could just say the right thing, do the right thing, or stand in the right place, maybe the next beating wouldn’t happen.

Maybe that’s one of the hardest parts of being a CEDV survivor.

You grow up feeling responsible for things that were never yours to fix.

You learn to read a room before you learn to understand your own emotions. 

I’m still so guilty of overthinking and overanalyzing people. 

As a CEDV survivor, you recognize the sound of a door closing, the change in somebody’s tone, the look on a face. 

You become an expert at anticipating danger because, for years, anticipating danger was how you survived.

Then you grow up, and the danger may be gone, but your body and mind don’t always get the memo.

You wonder why certain situations make you anxious. 

Why you feel the need to control everything. 

Why conflict can make your heart race. 

Why you carry anger you can’t quite explain.

And eventually, you realize that the child who survived is still somewhere inside the adult you’ve become.

Both Mom and Bobby have since passed away. There are questions I still have, and I’ve accepted that many of them will probably never be answered.

I don’t know why she stayed. 

I don’t know why things happened the way they did. 

I don’t know why some memories are crystal clear while others feel like pieces of a puzzle I’ll never finish.

But there is one thing I know to be factual.

God’s hand has always been on my life.

His grace and mercy have followed me, even when I didn’t deserve it. 

Even when I couldn’t see it. 

Even when I was a little boy sitting in the middle of a vehicle, begging a grown man not to hit my mom.

I don’t believe God caused those things. I don’t believe He took pleasure in them. 

But I do believe He was present in the middle of them.

I believe He has been redeeming pieces of my story that I once thought were beyond repair.

I’m still learning what healing looks like. I’m still discovering ways those years shaped me, some good and some not so good. And I’m learning that surviving something doesn’t mean it no longer affects you.

Sometimes survival is just the beginning of the work.

But I also know this: what happened to me does not get the final word over who I become.

The violence was real. The damage was real. The little boy’s fear was real.

But, so is the grace that carried him through it.

I may have come from the bottom, but by the grace of God, I was never created to stay there.

*****

If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, please know that help is available. You do not have to wait until things get worse to reach out, and you do not have to figure out your next step alone.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7. Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org to chat with an advocate. They can help you talk through your options, create a safety plan, and connect you with local resources.