@PhoenixSerenity @Quasit

You are blessed with instincts that ought be cherished, as such instincts, despite what that term implies, are not evenly distributed.

It took me a year (six months? too long ago to remember exact duration) of daily reciting to myself that the next time my mother struck me, she'd get a swipe in return, to actually have enough presence of mind to respond the next time it happened.

Her boy toy spent the next hour shouting and punching and kicking me with his steel-tip work boots, on the back porch (so it's not like the cop family that lived in the next row-home over, let alone the rest of the neighborhood, didn't hear what was going on), as myself lay there huddled up defensively, before they then committed me to a psychiatric hospital, for still refusing to apologize for defending myself.