Jamie Norton: The Long-term Effects of Abuse
Why THE SECOND ACT COMEBACK was MY story to tell
My stepfather never harmed my mother. At least, not to my knowledge. But my younger brother wasn’t the most well-behaved kid when he was young, and our stepfather let him know it. When he misbehaved, an open palm was never enough of a punishment. So, my brother was on the receiving end of sandals, shoes, spatulas, and other everyday items that weren’t designed for child discipline. I was fortunate, I guess, that I was the “good kid,” and only got slapped in the face once or twice. But I was there when my brother took the brunt of my stepfather’s wrath, listening to the screams from two rooms away and experiencing the trauma second-hand.
When I was deep in the querying trenches trying to sell THE SECOND ACT COMEBACK, one of the most common questions I came across was “Why are you the right person to write this story?” The simple answer? Because it is, essentially, MY story.
I don’t just mean it’s my story because it’s the one that I wrote. Like many (maybe most?) first-time authors, I wrote a story that was strongly inspired by events and people from my own life. In fact, on my original copyright page, before I connected with Valenza Publishing, I even included the disclaimer, “This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, etc., are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. That being said, if anything in this book reminds you of you and you don’t like it, maybe you should think about what you’ve done.” It was kind of a joke, but also an acknowledgement that maybe not everything in THE SECOND ACT COMEBACK was completely made up.
One of the biggest themes in the novel (which I abbreviate as 2AC) is the long-term effects of domestic abuse. Mickey freezes in fear whenever someone yells at him or shows any kind of aggression toward him, and this causes him to make unhealthy, self-destructive decisions in his life, career, and relationships in his effort to avoid these confrontations. Anyone who knows me personally can tell you exactly where those character traits in Mickey came from.
I’ve referred to 2AC as “My Literary Love Child” several times on social media and elsewhere because so much of it hits close to home for me. And not just because it’s my “first-born.” Sure, a lot of Mickey Patrick’s thoughts are my own. Sure, he likes baseball and writing, much like me. And, sure, he’s from a small town and has a small group of friends. Those are obvious. But the stuff that REALLY gets the reader into my head – the stuff that REALLY makes it MY story – is the stuff from the heart. The emotional honesty that I only could have written having lived it.
It took years of self-examination and therapy to admit that I was no stranger to emotional and verbal abuse, intimidation, and aggressive threats, and that these “child-rearing” tactics my stepfather himself was brought up on and then used on us were not normal. Mickey and his brother, Mason, grew up in a similar situation. And in the same way that Mickey’s response (or lack thereof) to his adulterous, manipulative spouse is the result of the trauma he endured as a child, the manner in which I respond to conflict, confrontation, and other life challenges is a direct result of my own trauma-based fear. And it didn’t come out of nowhere; it’s something that has manifested through the last three generations in my family. Maybe (probably) even more.
My grandmother’s ex-husband choked her and tried to push her out a second-story window. The same guy abused and molested my aunt and uncle, and only spared my mother because she was a baby when he abandoned the family, never to be heard from again. I never met the guy and never considered him my grandfather, except biologically, just my grandmother’s horrible ex-husband. I heard he died a while back. But the trauma he introduced to our family lives on.
In her effort to come to terms with the abuse, my aunt has battled with alcohol addiction her whole life and has done everything she can to keep her own children from going down the same path. My uncle grew up emotionally stunted, had a hard time trusting anyone enough to build any significant long-term relationships, and passed away a few years ago at age 70 never having gotten married or produced children. My mother dropped out of high school, got pregnant at 19 and, after her useless marriage to my irresponsible father inevitably fell apart, was relieved to meet and marry a seemingly more well-to-do and put-together man to take care of her and her two young children.
She’d live to regret that.
To be fair, I shouldn’t dismiss the abuse my stepfather himself endured when he was growing up. According to his stories, it was not uncommon for the “discipline” he and his siblings received to come in the form of beatings with belts and blunt objects. I have no idea how true those stories are, but if they are, I suppose he did his best to give my brother and me a better experience growing up by not beating our asses ALL the time, just once in a while. My brother dialed it back even further; he has spanked his nine-year-old exactly ONCE her whole life, and he felt so terrible about it that he called our mom sobbing with guilt immediately afterwards. So things have gotten better. And I never had children of my own, which may or may not (at least subconsciously) be a trauma response in its own right. Who knows?
While many of the scenes from THE SECOND ACT COMEBACK are fictionalized accounts of things my brother and I went through, the emotions that surfaced while writing (and later re-reading) those scenes came from a very real place. My brother himself said they were “tough to read” because, even in our forties now, we are both fighting to reconcile with the way abuse has impacted our family for generations and us as individuals to this day. And while that fight never truly goes away, we cope with it the best ways we can. My brother does it by blowing off steam listening to death metal and by being the very best father his daughter could as for. I do it by hitting softballs with a softball bat and writing.
Writing 2AC was cathartic for me; it brought me closure and peace I never knew I needed. and if my readers get nothing else out of it, I hope they at least feel hopeful after reading it. Yes, I committed a writing faux pas by using “hope” twice in the same sentence. But at its core, that’s what THE SECOND ACT COMEBACK is about; finding hope, fighting back, and helping yourself when you feel the most helpless. It took me years to learn that lesson. It was a hard one for me, and it will inevitably be harder for you if you’ve been through even worse shit than I have. But I hope (there’s that word again) that anyone who reads it will know: 1.) You are not alone; 2.) You are an awesome person and you have value and; 3.) Whether it’s abuse, an unhappy relationship, a job that makes you miserable, whatever, you don’t have to suffer.
That’s what I learned while I was writing my story. And that’s how I know I was the right person to write this story. Because it was MY story.
If you or anyone you know is a victim of domestic abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1-800-799-7233.
Until next time, so long…so short.
