So we returned home after the holiday and life returned to normal or life as I knew it for several more years. My father’s drinking got worse and the fights escalated and I became more aware of the seriousness of the breakdown and toxic relationship between my parents. My mother sought attention of male attention outside of the marriage and my father disconnected and spent more time and hours drinking at the pub away from the home. I remember their being several attempts to try and rekindle the relationship and my father moving away for a time to work with friends who owned a pub in North Queensland with friends but the relationship returned to normal after a brief period of happiness in their relationship.
I think that I survived these years by staying with friends and trying to escape and live my life through other families to escape my own. It’s hard to remember when the sexual abuse started or when it ended but the emotional and psychological abuse was incredibly traumatic in that the confusion in my mind as I was very close to my father he was the only parent in my childhood that was present. He would do the cooking, cleaning, emotional comfort and he was the only parent that was present in my life as my mother had very significantly disconnected from me on every level by this time. I have very little memory of my mother being in my life in my primary school years, she would be at work all the time and on holidays I would get sent off to family friends who owned pubs to be looked after and my sister would always stay at home with my mother. I was always welcomed at others homes and felt more at home with these other families than my own. I would escape to the neighbours and anyone that would have me to escape the reality of my home life.
