My dad has never seem to come to terms with how awful and at time abusive my childhood was. He wasn't the abuser, but he didn't step in to stop it either. After he and my mother split up he wasn't living with us, and has said he didn't know it was going on. During the years following their break up he was very uninvolved. He has no part in my life other than maybe seeing him once a month at best and the occasional phone call. He was dating some crackhead (literally, she had a crack issue) and was living between her with her several horrid children and his mom. I DREADED seeing him because of this. He wasn't present for any of my things through middle school and high school. The one time I tried to talk to him about how badly I was being made fun of/harassed in school, he asked me if I was gay...he actually said "You're not trying to say you are gay are you?"...And for the record, I'm not. But I was always a tom boy, and had very little interest in my appearance. So for my dad, that meant I was gay...
At home I was dealing with a lot of abuse from my mother, who was never treated for her mental illness. At its worst, she used to keep a room where she kept her cats, but she never cared for them. She's put food in there, but would go months without cleaning the litter box. The room was so infested with fleas that we kept a towel under the door to keep them out of the main part of the apartment, but the apartment was infested anyway. When she would get angry which could be set off by odd and unpredictable things, she would lock me in there and tell me to clean the litter box. But it was just a congealed mess, almost impossible to clean. And as soon as I walked in I'd be covered in fleas.
When I was in 6th grade, I burnt myself ironing my clothes. It was a really bad burn, but I received no care for it. I treated it myself by wrapping in in toilet paper and securing it with scotch tape. I was mortified at school, but it was oozing and painful to leave uncovered.
School was just as bad. I had a girl one time put gum in my hair, and too embarrassed to tell my mom, I torn it out with a chunk of hair. In 8th grade when a group of girls were picking on me on the bus, I did speak up and then it went from making fun of me to them trying to attack me. My mother said I was big (fat) enough to take them. I ended up avoiding them until it blew over. We lived in a dumpy neighborhood, so most of the people I was around outside of school and on the bus were the kind of kids that were skipping school, doing drugs and getting arrested for fighting and breaking and entering. (My brother actually got arrested years ago for breaking into a liquor store, and later for under aged drinking).
I was tormented so bad in school, I started bringing a steak knife to school for fear I was going to have to defend myself. My parents were absent mentally from all this, wrapped up in their own lives. My home life was fights and physical confrontations, and my school life was torture. I actually switched schools after 10th grade because I was being so badly harassed that I refused to go back the that school, so I started using an aunts address in another (wealthier, nicer) town and I would go to her house after school (via bus) until I got my drivers license.
This is just the surface of my childhood, so much more went on.
Needless to say, I was not a happy person then, and even going into my 20s. I had a lot to work through and a lot of anger. I eventually removed my mother from my life, because her toxic presence was an over whelming source of dysfunction and drama, and I no longer wanted to be around her. I reconnected with my dad, though I still feel a bit of anger towards him as he never really owned up to being absent all those years, and still is quite emotionally dysfunctional in certain ways. I am still trying to decide what to let go of, and what I have the right to bring up to him. He is not able to talk about anything that remotely suggests he is not perfect. He definitely has so narcissism going on there and flies into a rage if it is suggested he did anything wrong.
He also has a problem comprehending that people think and behave differently from him. He assumes everyone thinks the way he does, acts the way he does for the same reasons he does and grows mentally the same way and at the same rate he does. At 33 my dad was living with his mom, working random jobs, had his license taken away for a dwi, and his life was a mess. I've always been more responsible and I am not who he was, but he cant get that. He has always had a temper, though its mellowed out a lot.
I had a lot of anger and I have over the years learned to identify my triggers, all of which can be pointed out by a Psych 101 student, so obvious to my childhood experiences. And I continue to work on those. But generally speaking, underneath all that pain I'm a very happy person.
The point I'm getting to, is because my dad was a hot head ignorant person (he says this of his younger self in his 20s and 30s) then therefor I must be as well. I've tried to tell him that my anger comes from a place of abuse and worthlessness of a crappy childhood but he doesn't "hear" me. Even my stepmom agrees that I obviously had a difficult life at that time and anyone would have had a dark time coming out of that.
My dad sent me a song that he said remind him of me and my husband, and the lyrics talk about a stubborn, pride filled hot headed childish girl and once she meets this perfect man, decides to grow up and be a woman for this guy.
Seriously.
I am just so beyond hurt about this. The killer is, my dad truly does not get why this is hurtful. And if I tell him its hurtful he will respond with rage. I am sure of this.
I just needed to get this out somewhere.