History Doesn't Have To Repeat Itself

Recently I have been going through some of my books that I have and I came across a book that my grandfather gave me about the history of the Linch side of the family. The Linch side of the family is my father's side. My grandfather loves to research our family history and their roots. He's really into genealogy. When I came across the Linch Family History book the other day, I decided that I would skim through it. Needless to say, I ended up reading it because it caught my interest. I noticed a pattern in the history of my family.

The history of the Linch side is kind of dark. I've always known that there were problems on that side of the family but I never knew just how violent and bad things were on that side. As I read about my ancestors, I found out that some of them committed suicide, one actually killed his own baby because he thought the child was demon possessed, my great grandfather committed murder and then killed himself instead of being arrested, my great grandmother went missing in the late 1940's but it doesn't say what happened to her or if she was ever found, my great uncle was murdered because he had an affair with someone else's wife, and the list goes on. I even remember when I went to my grandmother's funeral back in 2005, one of my great uncles talked about a family feud that has been going on in the Linch family in which relatives of mine on that side shot at each other. So you could say that there is a history of violence that runs in my family. I also noted a history of abuse as well.

That got me thinking about what I do know about my dad's background. My father grew up in a broken home. He saw the abuse that went on between his own parents. One of the stories he use to tell me was how one day his parents got into a fight and my grandmother picked up a knife and threw it at my grandfather's foot. My grandfather then turned around and decked her hard across the face. I don't know much about my grandmother and unfortunately I never got to meet her; she passed away in 2005 from diabetes. I know that she did go through some pretty rough times in her life though. My grandfather never spent time with my dad at all. It's interesting to see the pattern in my family. My grandfather was an orphan after his father killed himself and his mother went missing, leaving behind her 3 kids. My grandfather didn't spend time with my father at all and they don't even get along to this day. Then my dad never spent much time with me and put me through abuse. So it's like there's a cycle in my family that keeps being passed down from generation to generation.

If you look at my mom's side of the family, her dad left her mom after he had an affair with a nurse; he was a doctor. He never spent time with my mom at all when she went to visit him. It was her stepmom who would spend time with her. I know that my grandmother would pick on my mom all the time for her weight and my mom and her sister fought a lot. In fact, it was my aunt who was my grandmother's favorite and this later reflected when it came to the grandchildren. My grandparents would have pictures up of my cousins and they would go to all their events and hardly ever go to anything that involved me and my brother. I always noticed the favoritism; I always felt it. My mom in a way treated me exactly how her own mother treated her. She would get onto me for my weight all the time. She would say negative things about me too. She never played favorites though between me and my brother. Well, sometimes she did. There were times she'd tell me I should be more like my brother and say he was the better kid. So the way she was treated was the way she treated me. She was even jealous of the relationship I had with my father. She wouldn't allow me to go near him and got mad if she saw me talking to him or anything. She admitted to me one time that she was jealous of me because she was never close to her dad and at one time I use to be close to my dad. But my mom helped ruin that father/daughter relationship for me.

Then, I grew up and married someone like my father. Before getting married, I went through a period where I didn't respect myself and would just date a lot of guys. I started drinking to try to get rid of my problems. My life was going downhill. Then I managed to get back on the right track and quit drinking and quit dating around. However, I married someone like my father who abused me and put me through hell. That's when I finally realized how my mom felt all those years that my dad abused her. The scary thing is that during those times he would abuse me, I became angry and violent. A side of me came out that I never wanted to see, that I never wanted to come out. I battled with self infliction once again; a habit I developed at the age of 13 but had broken it for awhile. I started losing control of my life and although I went through abuse in my marriage, I will admit that because he drove me to the point I wanted to end my life, because he would keep making me angry when I would try to walk away, a violent side did come out where I did fight back. It's a side of me that I am determined is never going to come back because I am not a violent person by nature. But he brought out that dark side of me with everything he put me through.

If it's one thing that I determined, it was that I was going to break the cycle and not repeat the family history. I didn't want to be like my mom and stay with my abuser. I didn't want to be this angry, violent person who just wanted to die all the time because of the emotional pain I felt inside. I battled dark days, reliving painful memories of the past. I knew that I had to get out so I would not end up destroying my own life. Just because my family has a history of being violent, does not mean that I have to continue that pattern. I knew I had a choice to make. I could either continue that pattern passed down from previous generations, or I could stand up for myself and take my life back, breaking that cycle for good. I took my life back and I am breaking that cycle. One day, if I have the opportunity to be a mom and have a family of my own, I know that I am not going to be like my mom and I am not going to put my children through abuse. I honestly don't know how anyone can hurt a child. Children are precious gifts, angels sent from above. How anyone could dare hurt a child and traumatize them, I just don't understand. That is why I decided to dedicate my life to reaching out to victims and survivors of domestic violence and child abuse. I don't want to see any more innocent lives shattered from the nightmares of abuse.

For those of us who have gone through abuse in our lives, it is so easy to be bitter and hate the world because of what we went through. It's easy to let hate fill our hearts. I admire those survivors who have gone through so much in their lives and have not allowed the hate and bitterness to take over in their lives. Instead, they fight for those who have gone and are going through abuse, making a difference and saving lives. There was a time where I was bitter and I hated the world. I had to learn to love myself again and learn to forgive those who had hurt me before I could move on and be completely free to begin healing from the wounds of the past. I don't hate those who hurt me, but I do hate what they did to me. I guess you could say I don't hate the person, but I hate the actions. I am not close to my family at all and they haven't exactly been there for me through the years. I don't want to be like them. I give with all I have to give and I love with all I have to love because I have one of those compassionate, caring hearts. That doesn't mean though that I have to tolerate or put up with the way my family treats me. I made the choice to walk away for good so that I could live for me and so they could no longer hurt me.

You don't have to repeat your family history. You do not have to become like the people who hurt you. History doesn't have to repeat itself because you can decide to make a change. You can choose to break that cycle and tell yourself that the way you were treated is not the way that you will treat your own family and your own kids. We know how it felt to go through that pain, to suffer those traumatizing events, to bear the scars from it. Since we know how it felt, we know that we could never do that to our own kids and families. We have future generations to protect here. So it's time for us to make a change and take a stand. I refuse to repeat my family's history. Instead, I want to write new chapters and start a new history in my family. Don't repeat the history of the past; instead, rewrite your history. You can stop the past history from repeating itself. Our children are our future so let's protect them from harm. Let's start a new chapter in the family history, a better history without abuse, that our future generations can pass down to their kids and grandkids and great grandkids, etc.