My family think I didn’t experience the worst of it, but it’s all I can remember.

I had a conversation with my sister a couple of weeks ago. We were walking her dog and she brought up my mother.

My mother was in an abusive relationship with my father. They had been married for over 20 years, and although they loved each other at the start, by the end it was hanging on by a thread - me.

According to my sister, they started arguing a year before I was born. My sister said “you didn’t have the brunt of it at all. They didn’t argue around you.”

So I mentioned to my sister about how I remember this one time where my father was driving my mother and I home from a trip across the country and it was pitch black outside. We were on a road with not a lot about and they had been non-stop arguing. I don’t know how old I was but I must’ve been young as I’m pretty sure I was in a booster seat.

At one point, my mother must’ve said for my father to pull over and she’d get a bus back. Bearing in mind that it was pitch black in a place we didn’t know, and I didn’t know what was happening. My father pulled over and my mother got out. Instead of waiting, he drove off. I screamed at him to go back for her but he wouldn’t listen. Eventually after at least 10 minutes, he turned back around. My mother had walked to a little pub and was just standing outside having a cigarette. I opened the window and screamed at my mother to get back in the car but she wouldn’t. She eventually did but I hate that I have that memory.

She still didn’t think that I had the brunt of it. But the thing is, and I promise I’m not trying to diminish her trauma, but she left for uni before it got really bad. It was just my other sister and I, so I don’t know how she can say that I didn’t experience it.

All I can remember from my childhood is my parents arguing. I spoke to my mother the other day about this, and I was surprised to see her actually talk about it without getting angry.

I said about all of the stuff I can remember from my childhood is them arguing, and she told me my father was never around for them to be arguing all the time. And that they didn’t argue around me.

I flat out said that’s not true, and she did something that shocked me. She agreed with me. I changed her mind.

We had a big talk about stuff that happened. Like, my father kicking her whilst she was on the floor, and child me swearing at them and getting in the middle of them to stop pushing each other.

I didn’t tell her that I remember all of the nights where I’d wake up because they were shouting at one another. I did mention how the only time I really remember my father other than in arguments is when I’d wake up at 4-5am and go to the kitchen and he’ll be sitting there having a bowl of cereal before going off to work. He’d make me a bowl too and we’d just sit there, then he’d leave.

I also mentioned my birthday where he promised he’d be home but he didn’t. He was working.

The only things I can remember from my childhood was arguments or school. I can’t remember good things from my home life. I remember trying a Big Mac for the first time and feeling like a grown up… but then I remember screaming at my family not to let my mother take me away from home because she kept telling me “come on we’re going”. I remember my sisters shouting at my mother.

She told me there was a day where they were both hitting her.

The issue with my childhood is that I don’t know what to believe. I believe my mother, but it’s so hard to know what’s true when I didn’t witness it for myself. I remember the photo my mother showed me when I was 11-12 of her black eye.

Why a child needed to be shown that, I don’t know.

I think they were both as bad as one another. I think my dad was physically and emotionally and financially abusive, and my mother had anger issues because of that and was emotionally abusive too.

I haven’t heard my father’s side of the story, and I doubt I ever will. But the more and more my mother tells me about her experience, the more I’m inclined to believe her.

I have and always will feel guilty for existing.

I wish I could remember the other stuff. The “nice” stuff, but even in those moments, the traumatic stuff still lurks there.

I don’t know.