Ten Demerits

One of my dad's favorite things was to try and turn us against each other. He always made a point of mentioning that Lucas was my mother's favorite (not true in the least; she never played favorites) and tended to punctuate compliments with a "not as good as -insert sibling here-. I like to think that we were able to ignore it, for the most part, but it got to us. Whenever we got into a particularly bad fight, dad inevitably came up at some point, no matter what started the argument.

Usually dad was a bit subtle about it. The incident with the demerits was not one of those times.

He decided (I can't remember what prompted it) that he would award his children points for doing things he wanted, such as getting him a glass of water or massaging his feet or taking his side in a fight.

Rather than rallying us to him, it pushed us together. When one of us got between him and mom, or pointed out one of his lies, we did it knowing we wouldn't hate each other for it.

Eventually, dad's shouting out the demerits given became a bit of a joke for us, and he moved on to other things. It might not seem like much, but it gave us hope to stand up together, even against something so simple.

Cycle of Violence

So, I think I've made it pretty clear that my father isn't the most balanced, rational person. Part of that is down to unfortunate genetics; he never had a chance at being completely normal.

But he could've been better; not normal, but less messed up if it hadn't been for his own childhood.

He was abused, far more than he ever did to us (not that I'm excusing him.) His father was a coal miner that made his family's life a living hell until he died from black lung. His mother wasn't much better; she just couldn't hit as hard.

I won't go into the details about how many times he saw his sisters thrown against the wall, or how many times he had to cover the bruises, how many times he had to sneak food because they refused to feed him.

His sister tried to poison his father, and none of her siblings objected.

That pretty much sums up how much they hated him.

Around forty years later, my brothers and I wished my dad would get into a car accident on the way home.

We tried to convince my mom to just pick up and leave, even though we had nowhere to turn.

I've read about the cycle of violence; I've seen it in action.

The pain of being abused pales in comparison to the pain of knowing that your father became what he hated and doesn't even see it.

The Pieces in Play

So, I have a pretty big family, mainly due to my dad acting like he's on a one-man mission to impregnate almost every woman on Earth.

Full Siblings
Lucas
Elijah

Half Siblings (that I know of)
Sabrina
Tanya
David
Joel
Dustin

Other than Dustin, we all have the same dad, but I haven't met all of my siblings. Lucas and Elijah I was raised with, and Joel and Dustin were occasionally present, but the rest I have little to no contact with.  For the most part, I don't even think about them other than to do a quick mental check on whether I'm related to somebody I just met or do a headcount on how many siblings I have when I'm asked.

Sometimes I don't even bother to include them in the count because it's a bit difficult to explain how we're related without having a flowchart handy.