Cereal, of all things, seems to have played an outsized role in my life. For many abused kids, what are supposed to be mundane, ordinary things — the “simple pleasures” — become lynchpins of future triggers. 

It was a late summer morning. It had to be, because mom was up and about, and that didn’t happen in the early hours of the day. I could tell she was already in a mood, so I tried to keep my head low and stay out of her line of vision. Breakfast consisted of that afore-mentioned bowl of Cheerios, and I was trying to crunch them as quietly as possible. Mom walked by several times on her way in and out of the kitchen. I could feel her glare each time, so I avoided eye contact in an attempt to stave off provocation. I got the sense she was searching for something, anything, to sink her claws into.

She came back through on one of her rounds. This time, she stopped. She had found the fodder for the next bout of torment.

“What is wrong with you?”

I gaze meekly at the top of her stubby feet. I know this is a rhetorical question.

“You’ve got milk all over that table. Did you even get any in the bowl?”

I glance at the table. There’s a couple of droplets of milk on it. The kind of tiny splatters that sneak over the bowl when you push the spoon into it. I say nothing.

“And that chewing. It’s disgusting. You’re like a rabid animal.”

Then I see the light of inspiration go off yet again. That point where I know her warped brain has concocted something especially deviant.

“You know what? Since you eat like a dog, I’m going to treat you like one.”

She grabs my bowl and sets it on the floor, sloshing milk all over the table and floor in the process. This, of course, is my fault, so I endure the requisite head slap with nary a peep. She grabs my hair and drags me out of the chair to the floor. She pushes my nose close to the bowl. Her voice changes to a sickly-sweet coo.

“Here you go little doggy. Have some breakfast.”

I jerk my head back slightly as my face starts to come in contact with the contents of the bowl. This is not acceptable to her. Her voice changes quickly to the raging roar that I’m more familiar with.

“Eat it! You’re a dog, so eat like one! Go ahead, start lapping it up. Dogs don’t need spoons.”

Her hand pushes my head into the bowl again, so I stick out my tongue and try to snag a Cheerio. Last I checked, I am still human, so my tongue doesn’t function as well for these purposes as it does for my canine brethren. Now I’ve got milk dripping from my chin, and I’m having a hard time remembering how to swallow.

“See, I told you you’re disgusting. No better than an animal.”

With that, she gives me one more head slap and stomps away. Per usual, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at this point. Do I finish my breakfast Lassie style? Do I scoop up the bowl and sit back down at the table? Do I forgo eating at all, and instead start to clean up the mess that surrounds me? Any course of action is going to be wrong, so I sit paralyzed in fear as my brain tries to compute all the options. I start to ponder my odds of winning “Best in Show” at Westminster. Surely, I am at least better behaved than a poodle.

She is not finished yet, so she returns. The “bowl on the floor” trick was just the warmup. She plods across the kitchen, slams open the lock on the basement door, and clomps down the steps. I hear some muffled shuffling of objects, then sit in dread as once again those pudgy feet take to the stairs. She appears in the basement doorway, dog collar and leash in hand.

We haven’t had a dog for a while. We had two of them — both got hit by cars. The last one right in front of my brother in what I am sure is still a traumatic memory for him. Apparently, we still have the collar and leash.

She doesn’t say anything. She marches over and fastens the collar around my neck. Then she snaps on the leash and yanks upwards. I feel my esophagus contract with a sharp rap of pain. I scramble to my feet to relieve the pressure. She chuckles that wry, sadistic laugh she sometimes gets when she’s enjoying herself. She yanks me over to the basement doorway and starts the descent down. It’s all I can do to not topple her down the steps, while simultaneously trying to avoid that horrific constriction around my throat. And I must make sure to duck my head by the gas pipe, because we’ve been warned that we’ll blow up the house if we bump it.

We reach the bottom of the steps and she tethers me to the pole.

“You can stay down here for the rest of the day. If I catch you out of this collar or unhooked from this leash, you’ll really be in trouble. I’ll let you know when you can come back upstairs.”

With that, she marches back up and I hear the lock on the door snap into place. The basement is cold and dark. It’s damp, with puddles of water leftover from the last rainstorm. The floor is uneven and cracked. The pump kicks on its noisy refrain.

I hate this basement. I have nightmares about this basement. I race up these stairs as fast as I can every time I have to come down here alone, because I know there is a beast that is chasing me the whole way. He lurks just around the corner in the dark, hollowed out crawl space under the porch. There is a wall that is only cemented halfway up, and he waits for his opportunity to sneak over it when my back is turned. I am now going to spend the day down here with him, waiting to see him peer around either corner. He will devour me when he realizes I am chained in place.

I curl up as small as I can, huddled silently on the bottom step. For the next several hours I hear the noises of the household above drift down. I wait anxiously for either the beast to attack from around the corner and the other beast to descend from above. I listen for the sound of the lock snapping back so I can hop back upright and hopefully put on a sorrowful enough face to warrant a trip back upstairs. Eventually that time comes, and I make the hasty climb back up the stairs, still unsure as to which beast poses the most immediate threat. 

I am not sure if it developed that day specifically, but I’ve always had an unreasonable fear of dark basements. Darkness in general still freaks me out from time to time. There are other reasons for that which we’ll get to later. Even now, I will sometimes have an unsettling feeling as I walk up basement stairs, no matter the locale. I have to fight the urge to sprint, turn the corner, and slam the door behind me. 

I didn’t fully realize until I had my own child how completely off the rails my mother was. Up until then, any ideas I had about mom’s behavior was all theory and conjecture. Sure, she did some crazy things, but I didn’t yet have context for anything different. Once I had access to the innate feelings hardwired into every parent — the intrinsic, unrelenting, unbreakable love for the beautiful creature that you have brought into the world — it became almost incomprehensible how she could have done what she did. Almost — because she did indeed do those things.