Pamela Miles - Mile 0: A Memoir: Breaking the Multi-Generational Cycle of Domestic Violence

Authors Note

A fter I shared a small part of my story in an English class in college, my professor took me aside and strongly encouraged me to write my whole story, to write my truth and bring it to light for others. This brief memoir of a period in my life has breathed itself into being as a result of the encouragement from professors and friends along the way. It has taken almost ten years to finish because of procrastination and my own life journey.

This is my story, written from my own perspective. Some of the people I write about have been named and some have names that have been omitted or changed for their own privacy or protection. I know that others may see these events differently than I do. This is my truth; my story. It is always important to give voice to our own story and to speak our own truth. This is mine.

It is my deepest hope that through my story, others will gleam a glimmer of hope; a chance for a new life. I am a survivor. I hope more will become survivors because of my story and break the cycle of violence and abuse. I broke my familys multi-generational cycle. It only takes one to change the course. Not all those who grow up in abuse become abusers. Sometimes we become generations of victims instead, because that is all we know. I broke the cycle and I am a survivor.

Prologue:

A Moment in Time

I t was another one of those nights. I lay awake in bed, listening to the arguing, and the constant swearing. The dishes broke just as easily as the jagged words were thrown. This night wasnt much different from the hundreds of others I had listened to. It had become a weekly routine by the time I was sixteen. Sometimes it was more often; sometimes, there was peace for a month.

It always started the same waythe children are putting a wedge between you and me, she would scream. And so my step-mother would curse and swear, accusing my father that his allegiance to his children was stronger than to his wifewhich, in her opinion, was just plain wrong. He never really argued back, and rarely ever raised his voice in return to her. She would hit him and throw things at him, and yet he never dished it back. At least from my vantage point, lying frozen in my bed, waiting for the peace, so I could finally get some sleep before school the next day.

Usually the arguments would end with her taking it too far: shed bring my fathers dead mother into the argument, stating that he never had a real mother, due to her drinking away the cancer pain.

What do you know about what a family is supposed to be like?! Your father committed suicide and your mother was a drunk because she couldnt deal with the pain .

When she spoke those words, Dad would respond in a quavering, almost inaudible voice.

Damn youyou didnt have to go there. Damn you.

Soon Id hear the front door open and slam. Then the cars engine would start up in the driveway, as my step-mother opened the front door to yell, Go aheadrun away!

Dad would peel out of the gravel driveway. The house would be silent, but the tension would still be there. For the next couple of hours, I would lie breathless and awake. Wide awake.

You would think after hundreds of arguments like this , the routine wouldnt get to me. Id lie there, and hed always return. But I never knew for sure. I had my doubtsconstant doubts. The fear a young child has of being left stranded alone in a dark scary room was the suffocating emotion that weighed over me. There was that constant doubt that this time was the last time. This was ithed had enough. Hed never return. Not unless I prayed. It may sound like such a naive and childish thing to do, but I felt a security in those moments of conversing with the Lord. I would talk to God, askingno, pleadingfor my father to return to me.

Please let him know and remember who hes left behind ... me ... with her ... please dont let him forget Im here. Please make him come back .

The idea of Dad being gone forever was too painful. I always felt that if I didnt plead, my father wouldnt get the messages, and he wouldnt return. Then I would hear the car drive back down the gravel driveway and the front door of the house would open slowly and quietly, hours later, and I knew he was home. Then I could breathe. I would let out a deep sighit had workedmy prayers are answered is what I thought. My step-mother was in bed, and he would join her quietly, and the house would be still again. Not a sound. Peace. Peace as I knew it at the time.

Tonight was a different night though. Usually after a few hours of arguing and the normal routine of dishes and furniture being broken, an array of words being flung, Dad would leave. The words were different tonightthey were harsher. There was a different presence in the air and I could feel this thing but couldnt describe it, but there was something different happening tonight in the house. I heard the mention of the set of rifles in their bedroom closet. My heart stopped. The next thing I heard was them running to the bedrooma violent and frantic race. Through the massive bumping down the hallway, the loud, harsh words continued. Doors opened and slammed. I heard a struggle, I heard crying. I lay paralyzed, not knowing what to door even if I should or could do anything. I waited and listened.

This night was different; Dad didnt leave. He did something much different.

Chapter One

1979

A lot happened that year which ultimately changed the path of my life forever. The year I turned five felt like the prime time of life. There were no worries other than to make sure you didnt spill your Kool-Aid on your white shirt or accidentally snort a bug up your nose while running down the street. Who could ask for a better life with such childlike stresses? The second hand of lifes clock seemed to have paused slightly during that year. There was a changing of the guard, not only in my world, but also throughout the world. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty; the British Empire freed Malta from their rule, as did Denmark free Greenland. Margaret Thatcher became the first female British Prime Minister; Joe Clark became the youngest prime minister in Canada; and Saddam Hussein became the new president of Iraq. It truly was an era of change, and only the future would tell if it was for good or for bad on all fronts.

My life prior to 1979 consisted of a humble upbringing at the logging camps where my father worked, and the neighboring trailer parks which allowed him to have close access to the camps without us living amongst their wildness. The wilderness of Northern British Columbia is where my life started, in a small place named Dawson Creek, population 700. The streets are fairly bare in this northern prairie land, and the provincial border of Alberta is just a few miles away. Dawson Creek is known as Mile 0 , as it is the start of the Alaskan Highway. What an opportune place to be bornMile 0. Either this was meant to be a prediction of what my life would amount toabsolutely nothingor that my life was meant to become the starting place of a very long highway through a wilderness land where only the strong survive.

Throughout my early years in life, my father was the person who governed our family. My father was a gangling thin man, with a brown balding tuft of wavy hair, which, even at twenty-seven years old, could never lie flat, and so he regularly hid this mangled mess under an old, worn trucker hat, usually displaying the green logo of John Deere or the bright orange Kubota tractor. His bushy side-burns were his attempt to make up for the thinning hair, and they matched his light brown eyes, where he proudly claimed to be a lookalike of Bert Reynolds. My father was always a quiet presence, not a man of many words. His frame, just a couple inches shy of six feet, was still the leader of our small family. He led us all over Northern BC in pursuit of regular employment, from logging camps to construction and truck driving, to finally being a first aide instructor at the local college at our last residence in Prince George. We followed in absolute love and belief in his steady guidance. Dad was gone a lot during those early years with employment wherever it led him, usually further away from home, where we stayed waiting.