A Thief in Maine

My Experiences With Domestic Mental and Emotional Violence

by Russ

I am the black sheep of my family, and there were a lot of stereotypes and judgements they used to put me down, but being called a “thief” was especially painful.   I’ve grown up, being told I was a sociopath, because I didn’t feel guilty enough about things, that I was a liar, that I was stupid.  My family has always made me what I was to them, sometimes, if you treat a kid like a reject, he will learn rejection.  Sometimes, we become what others think we are because they treat us as such. I have always had a big loving heart and I loved myself - even if I make a mistake, I am still a good person.  No one has ever been able to take that from me yet.  But they tried.

So to my family I became the thief.  I played with my brother’s toys as a kid - thieving the toys, and his happiness. I remember when I first understood what a thief was, and what the pain of conscience was.  I was at preschool and when a kid wandered from his toys, I ran over and stole the one I liked.  I took it home and added it to my collection of figures.  I never felt right about it.

When I was 12, I heard my brother tell his friend that “kids at school said I looked like a vampire ‘cause I’m tall, thin, and white and have fangs.” (he needed some dental work).  He must of overheard me telling my friend that someone had said that about me, because he stormed into my room all pissed off that I had lied.  I had stolen his self esteem, or his ego.  I was a thief and a liar.

My mother bought me a house when I was 28, and I had been living with my brother.  When I told him the good news he told me to take what I needed from his house because there was ten of everything there.  So I came to him with many items and he ok’d them.  I didn’t want to bother him anymore but took a queen set of sheets from the closet and two pillow cases.

A few days later L came over to see my new house.  First he saw a mug on the counter that I hadn’t asked him about and I could tell he was irritated.  Then I took him and my mom upstairs and showed them my new bedroom, the sheets were on the bed.  My brother started telling me I stole the sheets, and to give them back, and I said no, and he started pulling the sheets off the bed and I ripped them out of his hands and threw them across the room and told him to get the fuck out of my house.  He starts piping up “You’re a thief!  You’re a thief!” and he must have said it twenty times.  That’s when it started to make sense to me, what I had been labeled as all along.  I’m the second son, I stole mommy and daddy’s attention away from my older brother.  

My father told me many times, that I didn’t pay my dues.  I never understood what he meant.  As if I didn’t pull my own weight, or didn’t contribute enough, or owed someone something.  But I get it.  If I didn’t want to mow the lawn, or didn’t feel like working in the garden, or spreading dirt, or shoveling the walks, I’m stealing from other people.  I hadn’t paid my dues - I had stolen and made off with my own energy - a de facto thief.  Later on I realized that being four years younger than my brother I was always compared to him, and when L was 18 I was still an irresponsible kid at age 14 but expected to be much more.

All of this has affected my sense of masculinity.  Just so you understand how miserable I was and how much I hated my brother and parents at the time, know that there was a lot more than just the thief stereotype going on, I’ve only brushed the surface of my personal pain here.

I was not just the thief or liar, I was something none of them knew about or understood, but I understood it completely.  It encompassed all the stereotypes they used and all the ways they treated me.  I was more than a thief, or stupid, sociopath, drug (marijuana) addict, or liar (i lied a lot to cope with my over controlling mother).  It’s the one thing they still tell me I’m not.  I'm the black sheep, and to be called all these things and know the truth that it was not true and that I was only the black sheep gave me a lot of emotional pain.  I am the black sheep - never given any credit, always doubted by my family, my brother is entitled and I am not. I wasn’t a man, or a boy, I was just shit.  But I still loved myself.

I knew even  as a little kid I was a good person.  I was born kind, and I am still kind, and even if I have stolen, those who know me know I am generous down to my last cent.  But at age 16 my self esteem was in shambles, I had a miserable home life and I tried to kill myself.  Later I was diagnosed with manic/depressive disorder (bipolar), a stress induced condition.  It’s as if my well being was stolen from me.

I am the victim of domestic mental and emotional violence.  As victims of mental/emotional violence our voices are muted next to the issue of physical domestic violence.  Once I ran away from home and a policeman picked me up.  I told him my family treated me like shit and he asked me if they hit me.  I said no, and he said, so what’s so bad about it?  And it was just another case of an adult not understanding or acknowledging my pain.  Unfortunately, emotional violence is seen as incidental.  It doesn’t leave scars on your body.  It doesn’t leave evidence that a court can see, but it can be just as devastating to a person as murdering them outright, though entirely legal if appearances are kept up (there’s no apparent physical violence).

We each carry pain with us from past experiences.  That’s unavoidable.  But it is the judgments of others that can ultimately shape our lives and ourselves.  Even within our own families judgments can drive us apart, stereotypes can take over our perceptions and rule our senses.  I urge you, the next time you judge someone, take your own perceptions with a grain of salt, and consider if your thought is harming or healing.

 A person in a box is always miserable - afflicted by a kind of claustrophobia. Mental and emotional walls have closed in, and there's a sensation of being trapped by your own family, controlled, cajoled, manipulated, and stuck. If you have a sibling, be kind to them.  If you have a second son, consider that he is not the same person as your first son and love him for it anyway.  If you love someone don’t put them in a box or that is all you will see.