boundaries (nonexistent) in the household

This was going to be a digression from the aftermath post, but I think it will end up being long enough in its own right that it could be separate.

There was no privacy in our house.  No boundaries were respected.  At least, that I can recall, not by my father, nor by either of my two brothers (now that I think about it, not by me either, at least when I was a young child; I do remember as I got older that I did learn them, somehow).  My mother probably respected them the most, herself at least, but she wouldn't even try to get anyone else to respect them.

If there was a closed door in the house, that didn't mean anything.  If someone needed to talk to whoever was on the other side, they (meaning father or either brother) would just open the door and walk in.  It didn't matter what may have been going on on the other side of the door, or who was in there.

There was only one door in the house that had a lock on it, and that was the bathroom.  The only room that was safe.  This was never a conscious realization on my part until much later, but that is where I did effectively all of my masturbation as a kid... sitting on the toilet.  (If you know or have a child who is a teenage boy, and he spends a lot of time in the bathroom, this is why.)

Eventually I joined the military, spent four years in it, then came home (and, incidentally, spent a lot of time in a depressive state, living off of unemployment...) only to be pointedly reminded of the lack of privacy.  (I was in my room, or rather "the room in which I was sleeping," having phone sex and masturbating... and middle brother decided he needed to come in and ask me something.)

(Digression:  After I got married and lived on my own, and had a family, I somehow managed to forget all of this, only to be reminded of it again.  One Thanksgiving, we lived in another state, and invited my parents to stay with us.  They hadn't seen us in a long time and our child never.  At one point, my wife had just gotten out of the shower (master bathroom off of master bedroom), and was in the bedroom with the door closed, drying herself, totally naked... when my father decided he needed to go in and ask her something.)

God fucking damn it, will you people just respect a closed door?