@PhoenixSerenity @Quasit

As an aside:

The boy toy, the youngest of seven brothers, moved out of his Italian-American mother's house, into my mother's bedroom, at the ripe age of eighteen, shortly after my sister responded to a spanking from our mother by turning around and laughing in her face.

He was her enforcer, for when the mental and emotional abuse and general neglect (e.g., we had no food in the house because she didn't eat food, only kitchen cabinets full of nutritional supplements) was insufficient to her desires, as it very often was not. She'd wind him up (he was also being mentally and emotionally abused by her) and stand and watch, sometimes silent, sometimes taunting me, or else disappear to her bedroom, presumably listening, while he broke the house and beat me.

Child me was never able to defend myself against him. Heck, even adult me would be pounded into the ground against teens and twenties him. But damn it if was gonna allow her to hit me again, however little force she could muster behind it. There was no answer to the mental and emotional abuse, but being struck had a ready recourse.

It just took reminding myself of that daily for months upon months to make it happen, as instinct it most certainly was not.