Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of domestic and sexual abuse that may be triggering for some readers. Please proceed with care
“I share this not to dwell in pain, but to transmute it. My journey of remembering includes walking through darkness – not to remain there, but to reclaim the light I had to leave behind.”
I’m telling this story now with a beard nearly white – a sign of time passed, of lessons learned, of a long journey walked. It began many years ago, in a small town in Ukraine named Berdichev.
I won’t mention the dates or names – those details may come later. For now, I will do my best to tell it without judgment, and to remain as detached as possible from the scene and the characters.
I was born into a warm and vibrant family, large and full of life. We all lived together in a small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a five-story building, part of a modest residential complex. Just a few meters from the building’s entrance stood a kindergarten – its presence a symbol of childhood, innocence in early beginnings.
In that apartment lived my grandfather and grandmother, their children – my father and his sister – as well as my mother and me, my aunt’s husband, and their son. The apartment was often filled with cousins, relatives, and visiting friends. It was crowded, yes – but never lacking space for love.
Every pair of eyes I looked into greeted me with warmth. There was no trace of hatred or jealousy in those early days. Only love. Gentle voices. Open arms. A sense of belonging that wrapped around me like a blanket., the atmosphere buzzed with life.
From the early age, I was an empath, I could here between the words, could read the attention of everybody and I was supper healthy and strong. Not just in body – but in spirit. There was a fire in me. An inner push, a silent whisper that urged me to grow, to become, to rise. I didn’t yet have words for it. But I felt it: I was meant to become strong.
The Day Everything Changed
I was three and a half years old when my world is shifted.
One evening, I was left at kindergarten long after the other children had gone. My mother arrived late, clearly upset. She had expected my father to pick me up, but he hadn’t shown. He was working – or rather, staying late at work.
When he finally returned home, I remember overhearing my parents talking. The tone of their voices was different – subtle, but unmistakable. Something in their energy had changed, and I could feel it. I didn’t hear the words, but I understood the emotion.
The next morning, my mother came to me. Kneeling to my eye level, she asked me gently if I wanted to stay with my father or come with her – because she was leaving. Without hesitation, I said, “I’m coming with you.”
At three and a half years old, I had no idea what separation or divorce meant, but I knew I couldn’t let her go alone. I felt, instinctively, that she would need my presence, my protection, even if I was just a child. I didn’t understand how a little boy could protect a grown woman, but it didn’t matter. The feeling was immediate and strong: I couldn’t leave her to go into the unknown without me.
I believed it would be temporary – that we’d come back soon, that this was just a short adventure. But we never returned.
We went to live with my grandmother – my mother’s mother – who stayed within walking distance, maybe a kilometre away. Her home was part of an old communal apartment: a shared kitchen and living space, with each bedroom rented by a different tenant. We squeezed into that single room and made it our own.
The next morning, my mother had an errand, and she took me with her. Instead of taking the bus, she noticed a man offering rides – like a private taxi. It wasn’t official, just a man in a car. He drove a Volga GAZ-21, a luxurious vehicle at the time, while most people drove the boxy Zhigulis. The Volga stood out – sleek, stylish, different. I saw her eyes catch the car, and maybe something more. Perhaps she saw something in him: youth, wealth, charm.
She spoke to him, and we got in.
At some point during the drive, she leaned toward me and whispered a request: “Ask him if he will be our father.” And without thinking – out of love, loyalty, obedience – I did.
It was a mistake.
A deep part of me wishes I had said, “But we already have a father.” Maybe if I had spoken it aloud, things would have turned out differently.
When the ride ended, they spoke privately outside the car. I don’t know what they said, but it was clear they made plans to meet again. There were no phones back then, so she must have given him an address.
That was how we met the man who would become our stepfather.
From an early age – I could pick up on people’s intentions. So, when I sensed her connection with this man, I felt clearly that she didn’t truly want him. It wasn’t love. It was a provocation – something she did to upset my father. I felt she believed that if she connected with this younger guy, someone with money and charm, my father would get jealous, chase after her, and beg her to return. That was the energy I picked up back then.
But none of us realized the kind of trouble we were inviting into our lives the moment she let that man in.
He came to pick her up in his flashy car, wearing a suit. Later I noticed that the suit was rented – just another part of his illusion. He brought her flowers and took her to the fanciest restaurant in our city. He knew how to make an impression. On that first date, he played the role of a gentleman – rich, elegant, successful. Everything that could impress a woman in her early twenties. My mother was about 21 at that time and he was three years older – around 25.
Even as a child, I could sense there was something missing in him. He felt like an empty shell, like there was no real essence behind his mask. From the first date she came back different, something didn’t sit right with me in her behaviour. But I thought it was temporary – that soon this game would end, and she would move on. I truly believed she was only using him to wake up my father.
After that night, everything changed.
He turned violent almost instantly. My mother had to obey his every request without question, as if they were soldiers in a silent war. There was no space for discussion – only command and compliance. And when she failed to follow his abnormal logic, which shifted like sand, she was punished. No matter what she did, it was always the wrong thing. Eventually, she stopped trying to understand. She simply endured. He began to threaten her, and my life. He told her if she ever left him, or even spoke to anyone about what was happening, he would do the worst imaginable to her and to me. I can’t use here the words, that came from his mouth back there. He said it calmly, directly, like a man who had done it before or was capable of it without a blink. And from that moment on, we were trapped.
For the next three years, that small room became our home. After my grandmother – my mother’s mother – left, it was just the three of us living there. There was no more kindergarten for me. During the day, while my mother and stepfather were at work, I stayed locked inside that narrow space alone. The room was no more than three by six meters – maybe even less – and had only one window, facing the outside world.
We lived on the first floor, and through that small window came moments of warmth that made all the difference. My grandmother from my father’s side would often visit me, bringing along my younger cousin, who must have been just two years old at the time. They would walk all the way – nearly half an hour on foot – just to stand by that window and talk with me so I wouldn’t feel so alone. She always brought little treats: cookies, fruit, warm food – whatever she could carry. For those few minutes, the room felt less like a cell. Their presence, their voices, their love through that window softened the silence and reminded me I wasn’t forgotten.
At night, my mother and stepfather would return, and the abuse began, again. and again. I remember the sounds. The screams. The shame. He would insult her almost every evening and every night. The violence was routine. And eventually, it escalated to something even more degrading.
They began to have “the act” right in front of me – just a few meters away. I was too young to understand what they were doing, but I knew it wasn’t right. I felt it as a continuation of the humiliation. The worst part was that I couldn’t sleep or run away. I had to witness it, without the ability to do anything about.
That was my daily reality until school began.
That part of my life I remember as darkest years, not just metaphorically, but literally. Most of the day I was looked in that room, until my mother came back from work. A single window, overlooking the park, was the room’s only source of light. where I could sometimes hear the birds – pigeons and a cuckoo whose voice I still remember.
Before I started the first grade, we moved to a new apartment in the city. It was a small one-bedroom place, but this time we had our own kitchen – not shared with other families. It felt like a step forward in terms of space, but not in safety. Even though we moved, the abuse didn’t stop. It was as if he took pleasure in it. There was no sense that he was trying to teach anything or correct behaviour. It felt like he simply enjoyed hurting.
In those early school years, I was still a strong and healthy little boy – second from the bottom in height, but far from the bottom in spirit. I had a sharp mind, quick to learn, and often excelled beyond others in sports, art, writing – everything we were introduced to. It was as if the energy from my first three years was still burning inside me. But as time passed, that fire began to dim.
The Blueprint of Violence
There was a pattern to it, a ritual almost, one that played out so many times it etched itself into my body like a memory more persistent than thought.
It usually began with absence. He would vanish for days – no word, no call, just a lingering tension in the house. Then, without warning, the doorbell would ring. My mother and I would freeze. I’d watch from the living room as she stepped cautiously into the hallway to open the door. And there he’d be – standing drunk on the staircase, eyes filled with hatred, glaring at her as though she had sinned against him in his absence.
“Where’s my scarf?” he would ask, even though it was wrapped around his own neck. It wasn’t a real question. It was bait.
My mother, trembling, would point gently and whisper, “It’s on you…”
But the truth didn’t matter. Her voice – meek, afraid – was all he needed to declare her guilty. In a split second, his hand would lash out. A brutal open-handed slap to the face would send her crashing to the floor. It was never about the scarf. It was never about anything real. It was about control. About the territory he believed was his.
Without pause, he’d grab her by the hair, dragging her toward the kitchen. There, he’d fling open the freezer door, scanning for a flaw. Too empty? Too full? Something old or out of place? It didn’t matter – he was looking for an excuse. Something to escalate his fury.
Still on the floor, she’d be met with his accusations -about food, about dirt, about money, about nothing at all. He would yell, then hit her again. Punches to the stomach, the chest, her ribs – targeting the organs like he was trying to silence her soul.
Sometimes there was blood. Sometimes her body would collapse under the force of it. But the beating wasn’t the end. It was a means to an end. And this is the darkest truth I had to learn, years later, when I started to seek answers in books about trauma and human behaviour:
He used violence as foreplay. He couldn’t approach intimacy with love. He could only do it through conquest, through domination. Only when she was broken, silent, almost unconscious, could he impose himself on her. It was never about “the act” It was about control. It was about reducing another human being to a place where he could feel power.
That night was just one of many. A single echo of a pattern that had become my normal – etched into my memory not just as a child witnessing horror, but as a soul trying to make sense of how such cruelty could exist in a home where love was supposed to live.
Betrayal
✦ I was maybe five, or six years old – I remember the night everything shifted. Until then, I had been held in a kind of energetic bubble, untouched by fear, like something was watching over me. But that night, I stepped into a world I wasn’t meant to know so soon.
The violence was about to erupt again, and without thinking, I stepped between them – between my stepfather and my mother. I stood small, but upright, as if some invisible force had told me, “Now is the time.”
I locked eyes with him. For a moment, I saw confusion in his gaze – like he couldn’t comprehend where this stillness, this calm defiance was coming from. I wasn’t trembling like she was. I wasn’t frozen in fear. There was courage in me, though I didn’t know what courage was yet. And then, something pierced me.
My mother grabbed my shoulders from behind. Her touch jolted through me like electricity. Not the comforting kind. It was terror. Her fear entered me fully, like a lightning bolt through my spine. I turned to look at her, and I felt her, not just her body. Her pain. Her helplessness. Her fear. And for the first time in my life, I cried.
That night I was trying to understand what had happened – what I had just stepped into. And in the morning, I stood in front of the mirror and stared into my own eyes.
“If this is life,” I whispered, “I don’t want it.”
I didn’t know who I was speaking to. I had no concept of God, or higher self, or Creator, or soul contracts. But it didn’t matter. Something in me knew I was being heard.
From that day on, everything changed.
The shield I once had – whatever light had protected me – was gone. My body became sensitive. I began to fall sick often – fevers, headaches, recurring flus like my system couldn’t anchor itself. I cried often, especially when my mother was hurt. Every blow she received, I felt it inside me. It was like her nervous system became mine. My heart was too open, too exposed.
Before he entered our lives, I didn’t even know evil existed. I was so open, so trusting. I believed the world was one family – that everyone loved and cared for one another. But being around him… I couldn’t understand what he was. At first, I thought he was one of a kind. A strange exception to the humankind.
For me this experience was like trying to raise a bird in an aquarium or a fish in a birdcage – nothing about it made sense. I was placed in an environment where I simply couldn’t survive. I wasn’t meant to grow there.
Drawing was my passion, something I loved from a very young age, but when he stood close to me, or behind me – I froze. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I felt paralyzed, like my life energy just stopped flowing.
At school, I started to awaken again. I could feel energy returning to me in small sparks. But the moment I came back home, it disappeared. Vibrationally, I dropped back into emptiness. Absence. Like I wasn’t allowed to exist.
I couldn’t express myself at home. Anything I said or did could trigger his rage. And when that happened, my mother would get hurt. So, I became as small as possible. I spoke less. Moved slower. Even breathed less. I trained myself to breathe only at a minimal level – so quietly I wouldn’t be noticed. Only later in life, when I learned to breathe again, did I realize how much I had been holding my breath all those years.
I barely slept at night. When I finally drifted off just before dawn, my mother would quietly wake me, dress me, and guide me out the door. I’d head off to school half-asleep, catching a bus by myself for a long ride – about half an hour. Then I’d walk the rest of the way, often meeting other students along the route. I was still half-dreaming during those walks. And sometimes, I’d fall asleep during class.
The outside world became my true home. Not the apartment. But the open spaces – the playground, the streets. The city became my refuge. From a young age, I was curious. I didn’t rush back home after school. I wandered the city with my best friend, exploring every corner like an adventurer. It made me feel alive. Out there, I felt safe. In that apartment, I felt like a prisoner in enemy territory.
I remember once asking my mother, “Why are you staying with him? He doesn’t love you. Why are you with him? Why didn’t you leave him like you left my father?” She answered, “He doesn’t know how to love. Nobody taught him.”
At the time, I somehow accepted that answer. But now I know: love is not something that needs to be taught. You either have it – or you don’t.
This chapter closes here, but the journey continues. The next article will carry the thread forward.
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