YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I never saw my father smile. What passed for a smile was a corrupted smile, a grimace. A chill passed through me whenever my father's grimace appeared because I knew something awful was about to happen.

Warm water flowed into the tub. Mom was away for the evening. I was six years old. I don't know what my father was doing in the bathroom, fumbling aimlessly through the medicine cabinet, looking for something while whistling softly. A strange feeling came over me, one I'd never known before. I had visions of Bambi strolling through a wood. It doesn't get more erotic than that. Hey. Don't laugh. I was only six. I began to get an erection. What was this strange new thing? Then I spoke the word I've regretted all my life, "Look."

A grimace flashed across my father's face for the briefest of moments, one that read, "Thank you, Lord, for handing me this opportunity!" Before I knew what was happening he was on me. Fists rained down. He hollered all the while: "YOU'RE A HOMOSEXUAL! YOU'RE A HOMOSEXUAL!" My father was completely out of control. I thought he was going to kill me. When does an internal governor step in and say "enough"? Does someone like this even have an internal governor? When the "enough" moment arrived my father simply turned and left.

What had I done? Whatever I did must have been pretty terrible considering the punishment. What was that strange word again? I went to my childrens' dictionary. The trail ran cold at "Home." This could mean only one thing. What I did was too terrible for a dictionary. From this moment onward I was a mess sexually. I took special care that my mom would not see the black and blue marks on my back. I knew that she would ask about them. Then I'd have to explain that I was a homosexual. Then I'd be in for another well-deserved beating.

This story has a coda. Years later. My wife is away for the evening. It's bath night for the girls, ages five and seven. I'm to supervise; make sure that nobody slips and falls. The tub was filled with Mr. Bubbles, rubber duckies and the cutest little-girl chatter imaginable. Innocence defined. And then, as if suddenly grabbed by the throat, my father reaches from the grave to take away what should have been a cherished memory. My God. This is how old I was when it happened. Until that moment I hadn't appreciated the enormity, the sheer monstrousness, of what my father did. How sick to do you have to be attack a child in a bathtub?

Maybe you had to become a parent to see what happened to yourself from an adult's perspective, instead of from your six year old self's perspective, to fully understand the severity of what you were put through. I had to become an adult, before I realized, that what happened in my own childhood's bathroom was nothing, but an adult monstrously unleashing her rage on a completely helpless and blameless tiny child.

I hope by seeing your children at a similar age, that you can see, that nothing a six year old child can ever do, can never justify the severity of what your dad put you though. For me understanding the severity of what happened, helped me understand, why it had lasting consequences. I found indignation for my own childhood self and a little more compassion and understanding for my adult self.

His ghost might have disturbed this moment with your kids, but maybe you can use this new perspective to be the father for your children, than your six year old self also once deserved.

Thank you, Fargin. Here's the silver lining. I have dedicated my life to providing my children what I never had, a good father. According to outside observers I have succeeded fabulously.

That's so great to hear Earl, take pride in that!

So tell me, Fargin. You said that your mother took her rage out on you, also in the bathroom. Would it be too much to ask what happened?

Well... to be honest, I'm getting a little performance anxiety, telling myself that what happened to me doesn't really compare to the physical violence you experienced, but here we go:

I'm not sure how old I was, I think ten, but it confuses me a bit, because I was in the bath tub with my four year younger sister. When we would get a bath, we would be placed back to back in the bathtub and though I was very small for my age, I can't make sense of why we were still sharing the same tub. What happened was, I never ate my school lunches at school, I never ate much at home either, so I'd always get yelled at the evening table. In Denmark kids used to bring their own lunches to school, either in a lunchbox or wrapped in tinfoil. That night my mom found nine uneaten tinfoil lunch packs in my school bag. So she pulled my sister out of the bath and threw these nine lunch packs down on me, into the tub and screamed at me and kept me from getting out of the bathtub. Then she yanked me out of the tub and shook me. She then grabbed my arm and told me, that she'd throw me out naked in the street for all the neighbors to see and dragged me screaming and crying though the house towards the front door. At some point she changed her mind and pushed me into my room, told me to start packing my school bag with clothes, because she was throwing me out the house and I could never come home again. So she left me packing my belongings. While I was packing my bag, my two year older brother snug in and told me, he had packed his bag too and he had figured out, that we could sleep in the playhouse at our school and then we could ask the teacher for help in the morning. What really messes with me is, that my twelve year old big brother also believed my moms threat was real, but also that he was willing to go with me and take care of me. However when we meet my mother at the front door and my brother told her his plan, she changed her mind and send us to bed instead.

For many year I didn't give it much weight, especially because my mom would entertain guests with this story at family get-togethers, as if it was a funny anecdote.

Two years ago, I asked my brother if he remembered and he did. I was kind of curious of how he remembered our childhood, because he and my sister appeared to come out alright, while I lived all my adult life in fear. I asked him, if he really believed, we were going to get throw out that night and he did. He also said, he mainly remembered, that I were always getting yelled at every day and usually left in tears. My mom's greatest hits were detailed threats of suicide, threat of leaving us or throwing me out or as I used to say: "I had a pretty normal childhood, they hardly ever laid a hand of us."

In the last year, I've been able to look at my fearful childhood and understand, that I never felt safe in my own home, but when you just asked me about my bathroom story, I felt like a fraud, telling myself what I had no business comparing my story to your's.

You can probably tell that I was getting performance anxiety by the end of my first posting. I fumbled the wording of my last sentence. Too bad there's no way to go back and edit after pressing "Submit." But I digress.

I don't agree that you should feel like a fraud for comparing your story to mine. You were terrified, as I was terrified, and you had every reason to believe that your mother would carry out her threat. The only reason she didn't follow through was fear of consequences. Not for you, of course, but for the trouble she would get into for booting out a naked child. That your mom would relate this incident as a "funny anecdote" is truly bizarre, like she was proud of her shameful behavior. I hope the guests she entertained met her story with uncomfortable silence.

My father's emotional reward was sweetest when meting out inappropriate punishments, the more grotesquely inappropriate the better. He was the kind of person who'd drop an atom bomb to kill a housefly. Sounds like your mother was much the same.

Thanks for saying that, sometimes I know, sometimes I don't.

I think, that's the turning point as you put it, getting that outside perspective on what you always thought was normal or okay.

I've always been afraid of my own rage, because I kind of assumed, that if you expressed any kind of displeasure, the natural process would be ending in a thermonuclear outburst of rage. That's mostly why I've avoided having children, because I confused any kind of healthy boundaries with losing complete control of yourself. So basically now, I'm slowly practicing safely and proportionally getting in touch with my anger without fearing I'll go into defcon 5.

Btw, I see the lack of an edit button on this forum as an excellent opportunity to work on my perfectionism.