I know I've written loads and glad if I have helped in any way, but wanted to add my mum started drinking heavily while with my dad. -- She doesn't drink like this since separating/divorce.
Her drinking triggered rows and was challenging at times in itself, but wasn't what caused him to be abusive, it was a way of trying to deal with the stress of her unhappy and abusive marriage. I wonder if the drinking and gambling is similar for you, though obviously they could be issues on their own?
And the kids know. Watching and listening to my mum play down my dad's mistreatment was really disturbing, sometimes more so than the abuse alone. It basically condoned the behaviour and I could see it was bad and sometimes very upsetting, but she tried to hide it. That taught me I shouldn't tell the truth or be honest about my feelings either, and made it harder to deal with my emotions around what was happening.
I often heard things in the night or from another room. I'd seem like I was watching TV but I was still aware.
Sadly, one memory that stands out is how it suddenly escalated one day without warning and I witnessed him assaulting my mother, over something similar to the choc orange issue. She maybe argued back more than usual at his unreasonableness when he complained about this minor thing, but he just went for her. I was so quiet they didn't know I was there for most of it (watching from an adjacent room. I'd been doing my home work). I was too scared to move or speak. He was telling her how he could kill her if he wanted.
The look on her face when she noticed me watching her be pinned against the wall will stay with me forever (she was horrified I'd seen) as will the terror in her eyes that accompanied the big false smile she put on her face once he let her go. -- Like I hadn't just seen what he'd done and heard her begging him to stop. Like I didn't know it had scared and hurt her.
Of course I knew.
That smile was the worst part. The fiction she was trying to spin around our seriously fucked up reality. -- if she'd come to me after and hugged me and said it was wrong and it was awful, and cried with me, somehow that would have been more okay. It'd have given me permission to feel my own pain. Validate my own awareness of the wrongness. Been comforting.
That smile wasn't protection. It didn't change the reality of the abuse we experienced, it was facilitating the abuse continuing, minimising it, messing with my head. Isolating me from support. I wanted to call the police after he attacked her but it felt a huge thing to do, and I was so scared mum wouldn't tell them the truth, and then what might he do to me? I'd seen what he was capable of, and over something small. And what if it was actually a normal thing and I'd cause a load of fuss over nothing?
I had no one I felt I could speak to about what I was going through and what was going on at home. I knew it was a secret thing, embarrassing so had to be minimised or hidden, and as it was my normal I felt I was the problem. That me being in pain or troubled by it had to have some other cause and I had to be a selfish daughter for resenting aspects of my upbringing. After all, I was told by mum I had a loving father and a good life, she acted as if it was all okay, I wasn't neglected in terms of food or clothing, or shelter. He could be fun, too. He didn't hit with a closed fist, or regularly attack my mum. He brought me nice things and he was my dad, so he had to love me, right? He mostly just had these awful mood swings and said mean things, but if we did what he wanted he was generally alright.
On the outside most people wouldn't know anything was wrong, though I tended to be a bit quiet. I seemed a happy child, but inside I had a lot of pain and anger which had nowhere to go. I knew how to fake a smile and disassociate mentally from what was going on, you see. I learned it from mum. I didn't even know I was feeling unhappy or depressed or angry exactly, as I didn't remember a time before feeling that way. It was only after I escaped the abuse and stopped seeing my dad. I was sitting on a train and I became aware I felt the absence of this pressure inside me which had always been there, and I realised. -- That I'd been stressed out and sad and angry at a constant low level all my childhood, and that this new feeling was how life was supposed to be. I wasn't happy, necessarily, I just wasn't actively hurting underneath everything else all the time anymore. It was both wonderful and utterly heartbreaking.
It's not your fault, you are suffering too... I don't blame my (lovely) mum for what happened to me as she was just doing her best and didn't understand what I was going through (or herself, really). I didn't have the words or understanding to have explained it as a child, and she was so consumed with getting through each day, but please, protect your kids from this. I'm saying these things now that I can for those little people who don't have the words.
I wish you well and safety. x