By Tara Overzat
I’ve been quiet on this blog lately for a couple of reasons. One of which is that I have a couple of book manuscripts I have been working on, but the other is that I was considering the feelings of a family member who after not speaking to me for a very long time, rang me up to discuss this site. In considering this family member’s feelings, I stopped writing for a little bit.
But, like I have said before on this site, child abuse thrives on silence. On secrecy. On being too afraid of what someone will say or do to you.
If you ask me to stop helping myself and others, then fall off the face of the planet again, then why did I stop in the first place? The “favor” you ask of me is to shut up and sit down. And when I do, you disappear again. You don’t support me. You don’t maintain a relationship with me. Remind me why should I do you a “favor” again?
Anyone who asks you to do something that hurts you, or is a huge step backwards for you, is not your friend. This person does not have your best interest at heart, only their own.
By Tara Overzat
My life is pretty good these days, and I have had some very bright, shining moments, seeing and doing things some people only dream of.
However, I do have my regrets. My biggest one is that I hid the burden of my child abuse for way too long. I realize some people never talk about it, and others don’t begin to talk about it til middle age or later, but I have already seen the consequences of keeping this a secret.
I dated someone in college whom I fear I hurt the most with this secret. Read more »
By Tara Overzat
Despite everything that happened, I had happy times as a child. In retrospect the things that made me happy were so minuscule, the things that children in healthy families take for granted. In addition, I think some of it was just my perception of happiness and my warped perception of what was normal.
Before I was old enough to look around and say, “Hey something’s wrong here…” I remember times when I got along with my mother. Read more »
By Tara Overzat
Not only has going public been difficult, embarrassing, and painful, it was something that even a few months ago I would never have dreamed of doing. I had always kept my mouth shut, and suffered the terrible consequences of doing so- one of which was not allowing people to get too close to me. My denial of the past cost me people I wish were in my life today, people I may not be able to get back.
I tried quietly to handle Read more »
Tags: Adeline Yen-Mah, child abuse, Dave Pelzer, fear, Jeannette Walls, Living With Child Abuse, Oprah Winfrey, secrecy, speaking up
Healing, Personal, Surviving | admin, 7 Jul 09 | 
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By Tara Overzat
I never remember being spoke to as a child by either of my parents. My mother used me, from about the age of 5 on, as confidant and, surprisingly, advice giver. So dependent was she on my father, that when he mercifully left, she sincerely did not know how to do the simplest of things.
Not long after my father left, we went to visit my fraternal grandfather, who lived 3 miles away from us in our New York town, a town she had lived in well before I was born. Leaving his home, she got to the stop sign down the street and asked “Left or right?” Read more »
By Tara Overzat
Another coping strategy I used as a child was dissociation. I daydreamed a lot. By daydreaming I could have fun and do things while being quiet (silence was what all the adults in my life wanted Read more »
By Tara Overzat
My mother squandered what little money she received from the divorce, and for years we went without.
My father, through means never shared with me but indeed shady, had money to spare. He liked to eat out at nice restaurants, and as usual, me and my brother’s presence would not keep him from doing whatever he wanted. As such, I was going to school unshowered with holes in my shoes Read more »
By Tara Overzat
Back in February, I wrote a piece on my current events blog shyextrovert chastising my middle school teachers for not getting involved when it was very obvious there was something going on in my home. The piece was called “The Tyranny of Looking the Other Way.” Read more »
By Tara Overzat
Some of the things I’ve written about are going to sound horrible and shocking to people. But for me and my brother, this was normal. This was life. So, along with the bad times, in our perception, there were plenty of good times too.
Now, our good times may not be your good times. Read more »
By Tara Overzat
I would discover years later that not only was the divorce decree between my parents never kept, it was extremely different from what I thought it would be. It would also prove to be completely unenforceable in the State of Florida that my father had cleverly moved to, since my mother never made a move to have it be made legal in that state.
That being said, what started out as short afternoon visits a couple of Sundays out of the month, where we returned to the relative safety of my mother’s care in the evenings, turned into weekend long odysseys where we weren’t quite sure what would happen.
My mother, knowing my father was a drunk, knowing he’d abused us Read more »
