The Wrong Set Up

You can wonder as I do what exactly these ramblings are for, what are they really about- I'm not sure yet. I think it's so I remember where I have been, the situation I am in, and the real truth that I know of love out there.
There were always fairy tales to rely upon as you drifted off to sleep as a child, the tales of innocence, backdropped with strife and adventure, finishing with the one true love and happily ever after. There were the family members celebrating 50 years, 75 years, dying within amonth of each other "because they just couldn't bear another day without their love, the love of their life". I never questioned that this wasn't the norm, that this would be virtually impossible in this day and age -I accepted it as fact, all the stories "from the moment he saw her, he came home and told all of us that he had met the girl he was going to marry", that strangers remarked "after all these years your husband looks at you like that", the list goes on, as do the memories - I saw tthese things with my own eyes. Actually a day before my great uncle died I visited him, told him how muched I loved him, admired him, and how much in life I wanted a man one day to look at me the way he still looks at his wife -- I still do, with a deep ache in my heart, almost like an empty piece waiting to fill my soul.

With all of this knowledge and personal witnessing of this kind of deep love, even today, why do I look into the relationship I am now and the ones in the past with disgust and a roll of sickness. Now I am getting beat, disrespected, lied to, yelled at, demeaned -yet I am here. Is this do to the "love" my parents showed me? A cheeseboard, razorstrap (3 pieces of leather), belt (especially buckle), hand ("your father is hand happy today so behave"), fists, knuckles into my spine between my veterbre(ruined my discs), kung fu torture techniques (that ruined my hands), fractured my wrist, choke me til I pass out (hands around the throat, yes multiple times), throw me out of the house naked, oh and maybe I should mention the flashes of memory of my father watching porn with me at a young age and the movies I found that I had to have a friend watch and her brother said they could only watch so much, but it had me young in the shower (hence why no locks on my bathroom or bedroom door ever). Never a word of encouragement, I was the scapegoat. Never saw me in plays, recieve awards, purchase copies of anything I got published. I was to be grateful for the roof over my head and the food in my mouth no matter what the cost to my soul. Feels that way now.