Lessons in the abuse I suffered as a young person

Picture of myself as an 18-year-old (1985) pulling a bore pump.

A body covered in untreated sewage, held down for a spontaneous ‘haircut’, legs wrapped in blisteringly hot tape, and spending three days in an industrial bin looking for something that everyone, including myself, knew wasn’t there.

Just four memorable instances of abuse I sustained as a late-teens mechanical apprentice. There was also an underpinning of daily verbal abuse for three years to add to the physical abuse. (Thankfully, my fourth year as an apprentice was pleasant.)

All of it normal in its age
and nothing to raise an eyebrow about!

Yet, that was how it was in the 1980s in remote Norwest Australia. Men grew up tough, and there was only one way of making that so. Apparently. As if toughness were an admirable trait. Of course, sexism (among possible other isms) was rife and you lived with it, either as someone who engaged in it or as someone who suffered from it. And all seemingly accepted it, which is not to say they enjoyed it.

It was a toxic environment, yet I didn’t know it at the time. As my mother used to say, generically, and not to justify the abuse which I’m sure my parents had no idea about, “if you can’t beat them, join them.” So, I did, as much as my conscience would allow me. I took up fierce drinking, and, because I was introduced to it through my workplace as a 17-year-old, I took up smoking marijuana. I adapted to my environment. And I eventually became popular within my environment. I could drink like a fish and I never refused ‘cones’ before going out to many remote occupational environments. It was what you did. I was led that way. Oh yes, it was a toxic masculinity alright!

I had thought all along that the goal was to adapt; that success would come when abuse morphed into acceptance. But I think you can see that this led me down a dark path. Again, not that I could see it at the time. I seemed to thrive in such an environment. At least I was accepted. It was all I had bearing for. It was all that mattered.

Acceptance meant I was free from attack, and when all you know is the anxiety of imminent attack, you go with the flow downstream to the only better alternative reality.

When the ‘love’ on offer is toxic,
you take it with thankful gulps of compromise
to the extinguishment of courage,
and you learn to keep quiet.

Abusive systems never lead anyone to good outcomes. They poison our sense for what is good and right, and then we capitulate out of a need for self-protection. Can you, the reader, ask yourself one question: for that negative or costly consequence you bore, was there an abuse that you either propagated or suffered? You’re probably wondering why I placed the word “propagated” in there. Yes, those who propagate abuse also bear negative, costly consequences, because evil brings good to nobody, and abuse (the wrong use of power) is evil.

Tricks and practical jokes can be a lot of fun, but there are exceptions, particularly when someone suffers as a result. And it usually is one. Where one person is scapegoated, that is they are run off out of town or it is unconscionable for them to remain, an abusive system has made it happen.

There is often an upside to abuse for the ‘resilient’, and that’s what engendered my passion for becoming a registered safety professional; I didn’t want other apprentices behind me to suffer what I’d suffered. It wasn’t right.

Where what’s learned
on the other side of abuse
is called ‘resilience’,
we have made a sought-after commodity
out of what is toxic.

I guess the point I want to make is that even though I knew the treatment I received was wrong I just went along with it because I believed it was the only way through. I persisted within a system that was intent on teaching me the right lessons the wrong way. I knew it was wrong, because from this platform I became the safety professional who sought to protect future employees from this kind of abuse. And I have attempted to carry this attitude through into my ministry for God.

As I consider what I had written in the book of my first 30 years, I see I wrote extensively on these matters, and yet never once used the word abuse. That is remarkable. To think, that even 20 years ago there wasn’t the use of the word abuse in our vocabulary.

What we don’t know won’t hurt us. No, sometimes what we don’t know is very harmful.

The abuse we put up with and tolerate for the overall good of the many is personally destructive as well as destructive for everyone. Silence helps nobody and abusive systems set up the climate for generational trauma.