Discussing some of my experiences with trauma

Hello I was doing research on trauma and found a good description/definition on
http://www.aboutourkids.org:

A traumatic situation is one involving an actual or threatened death or serious injury. Sometimes when people experience an event so terrible and frightening that it is difficult for most of us to imagine, they suffer from shock. This can happen after a one-time natural catastrophe like a hurricane or a flood or after an experience like seeing a bomb attack or seeing someone shot. Sometimes this kind of shock can happen when an unpleasant experience occurs time and time again in a child's life, like being beaten or sexually abused repeatedly. Particular signs of stress can occur after experiencing an event directly, from witnessing an event, or even hearing about such an event in regard to a family member. People who suffer from a prolonged reaction to such shock may be diagnosed as having Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

I am going to talk about post-traumatic stress disorder later in the week, but it is a common diagnoses that strongly correlates with traumas.
Some of what I am going to share is going to be hard to read. I just wanted to give the reader a heads up on this. One of the things that I experienced when I was young, 4 or 5 years old, was severe neglect. I remember being locked in a closet with 2 of my siblings and 2 dogs. I wasn't allowed to eat for a period of time. Ruth had fed the dogs the food that was supposed to be for us. She fed the dogs right in front of us off of the dishes we were to have eaten off. I don't know the exact period of time we were locked up in there. It was at least from the time Jack, my father left for work until he came home from work that evening. When one of the dogs threw up I ate it. I know that sounds disgusting but when you are trying to survive unfortunately you do things you normally wouldn't. If I told my father anything Ruth would punish me more severely the next time. At the dinner table Ruth would act like we all had spent a wonderful day together.

I thought she was really good at hiding it when I was young, as I grew older it became apparent that almost all of the neighbors knew about Ruth's neglect and abuse. When she was pregnant with me, (I am the middle child so I had three siblings older then me) they lived in a house that Jack had inherited. The house had no mortgage or anything on it. Ruth insisted on them moving because neighbors would call the police (in the late 50's & very early 60's) because my two brothers would be heard crying and crying for hours on end. Then when Jack got home from work the neighbors would come over and tell him that she was neglecting my two brothers. Apparently she would  put them outside and just leave them there for the day.

Instead of putting his foot down and seeing that she had some type of help with the kids Jack sold the house and moved everyone to the house I grew up in. He bought a house that now had a mortgage on it. Now they had added financial stress on top of everything else. Jack was a passive abuser, he never abused us outright but he didn't do anything at that time to stop the abuse. He could have hired a babysitter since they had no expenses on the house. I remember some of the neighbors who lived there telling me that they had offered to help with the kids and Ruth refused. I can understand that both Jack and Ruth were only 26 years old when I was born and they had four kids. Their stress level was very high and the marriage was on the rocks within two years of marriage, but that doesn't negate the reality that they were both neglecting their children.

Ruth had chosen to move to a neighborhood that was in a part of town where everyone was generally poor. She told me once that she moved there on purpose because she knew the neighbors wouldn't do anything but mind their own business. She said they had to move from the house they were at because the neighbors were to nosy and she didn't want nosy neighbors. Neither of my parents had good childhoods. So neither had the skills to be in a strong marriage. Ruth's mother Elizabeth was in my experience mean and her father George was a passive abuser and also partook in touching his youngest daughter and his youngest granddaughter's inappropriately. Jacks mother Roseann died when he was 6 years old. His father Jack Vito was extremely abusive. Vito remarried when Jack was 10 years old to a woman Sophie who was very abusive. Vito died when Jack was 16 years old and he had to live with Sophie who pursued a sexual relationship with Jack. Jack refused and shares this story of how proud he was of himself for being able to do that.

It is a lot easier to see as an adult that both of my parents were emotionally damaged from their childhoods. When your a child you don't have the ability to abstractly think things out. I just felt unloved and unlovable. I thought for a long time I had done something really bad to have Ruth hate me as much as she did. A positive thing out of this is that once I had children I vowed to always tell them how much I loved them and how special they were to me. Changing the trajectory of my children's lives was one of the ways I was going to learn how to live a redemptive life.

I'll share more tomorrow. Have a great day everyone, Rosie