My Earliest Memory

My earliest memory is that of domestic violence.

My body learned tension from watching adults. From the energy in the room — or even the next room over. I paid attention to what couldn’t be seen but could be felt.

I somehow knew I needed to stay quiet. It wasn’t something I thought through — I just knew. Maybe it was fear. I’m not sure. I only know that silence felt necessary.

It became normal for me to focus on the TV when these violent situations happened. I would lock my attention onto whatever was playing and stay there, even though I could still hear the hits landing and the screaming in the background.

This stayed with me for a good portion of my life. I ended up in relationships where there was domestic violence. But that was normal to me. That's what my mind as a child inked in. "Yeah, it happens. Let it go."

But it's not normal, and it's not okay. It's terrible, and painful. It's a suffocating, scary way to live. Nobody deserves that. Even if you know, later in life, that the person getting hit was maybe not really a good person at all. They don't deserve that. Least of all, children never, ever deserve to live with that. To have their brains shaped by trauma. To live with abuse as a normal thing.