Chapter: The Weight of Small Shoulders

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t responsible for someone else.

Before I was even nine years old, I had already spent years being more than just a child. I was a babysitter, a caretaker, a crisis manager. But more than that—I was my mother’s emotional punching bag.

A Child In the Line of Fire

Before she met my stepdad, my mother was extremely physically abusive. When she drank, she fought. And if there was no one else around, she turned on me.

There were nights when her rage filled the house like smoke, suffocating everything in its path. Her words were just as sharp as her fists—telling me that men only wanted one thing from me, that I was nothing, that I would end up just like her. And then there were nights when the rage collapsed into despair. When she would drink until she was sobbing, telling me about her plans to end her life. Telling me who I should turn to when she was gone.

I was a child holding my mother in my arms, whispering that everything would be okay, that I loved her, that she wasn’t alone—even though I was alone.

And when words weren’t enough, when the pain in her was too much to contain, I was there too.

I watched her drag a knife across her arm. I heard her wails, raw and desperate, filling the house. I was the one who called the ambulance. I was the one who told the paramedics what happened, even though I barely understood it myself.

And when it wasn’t her own body she was hurting, it was mine.

One day, I watched her boyfriend at the time beat her. The sound of it still echoes inside me. And I was the one who called the cops. I was the one who did something.

I was a child.

But I was never allowed to be one.

When the Beatings Stopped, the Isolation Began

The last time my mother hit me, my stepdad stopped her.

She had been chasing me through the house, throwing the TV, swinging a belt, lost in one of her rages. He came home and saw it. And he stopped her.

I ran.

I didn’t go far. I didn’t have anywhere to go.

He found me and told me he would protect me. That I would never be hit again.

He was right. The physical abuse ended that day.

But when you take an abuser’s favorite plaything away, they don’t just stop. They adapt.

And my mother still had so much anger, so much resentment, and she still needed somewhere to put it. If she couldn’t beat me, she would break me in other ways.

She shut me out. She isolated me. She found new ways to remind me that I was unwanted, that I was a burden, that I was the reason for all of her pain.

It was emotional.

It was mental.

It was even spiritual.

She tore into me in ways that couldn’t be seen, in ways that didn’t leave bruises, in ways that made me question my own worth, my own existence.

And when someone convinces you that you are nothing, you start to believe them.

The Psychological Toll: What Happens When a Child Is Forced to Carry This Weight?

1. The Loss of Safety

Children are supposed to feel safe with their mothers. I never did. The person who was supposed to protect me was the danger. And when the beatings stopped, the neglect and manipulation took their place. I learned that safety wasn’t something I could count on. That love came with conditions. That I had to earn my right to exist.

2. The Parentified Child: Becoming the Caregiver

While other kids were playing, I was holding my mother through her breakdowns. I was cleaning up her blood. I was dialing 911. I was looking after babies. I was fixing what should never have been my responsibility to fix. And in doing so, I lost the ability to ask for help. Because I had learned that no one was coming to save me.

3. Hypervigilance & Chronic Anxiety

When you grow up in a house like that, you never let your guard down. You read every shift in tone, every change in expression, every sign of an impending explosion. And that stays with you. Even as an adult, my body still waits for the next blow, the next outburst, the next moment where everything will go wrong.

4. The Trauma of Emotional Abuse

Physical abuse is visible. Emotional and mental abuse burrow deep, shaping how you see yourself, how you interact with the world. My mother convinced me that I was unlovable, a problem, a mistake. It took years to recognize that those were her wounds talking—that they were never mine to carry.

5. The Isolation Wound

Being physically hurt was one thing. Being ignored, shut out, discarded—that cut deeper. That left a different kind of scar. It made me believe I wasn’t worth anyone’s time or attention. That being alone was my default setting. That I didn’t deserve connection.

Breaking the Cycle

I spent years carrying the weight of her choices.

I spent years trying to earn a love that was never freely given.

But I am not that scared little girl anymore.

I have had to learn that I do deserve love. That I am not a burden. That I am not responsible for fixing other people’s wounds at the expense of my own.

I have had to teach myself what love is supposed to feel like—because I never saw it growing up.

I have had to learn that safety is real. That I don’t have to live in survival mode forever.

I have had to forgive myself for believing the lies she told me about myself.

And most importantly, I have had to promise myself that the cycle ends with me.

I will not raise my daughters in the shadows of what I went through.

I will not turn my pain into their burden.

I will show them what safety feels like.

What love actually looks like.

What it means to be cherished, not just tolerated.

Because I know what it’s like to be a child waiting for someone to save them.

And I refuse to let them ever feel that way.