Dad, DARVO and Holidays
Dec. 12th, 2025 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seeyatI feel concerned and hopelessly hopeful about holidays with family where dad is involved, especially if he is mandatorily the only ride I'm permitted, there and/or back.
Dad has physically attacked me, lied about it and DARVO maneuvered too many times for me to trust him around such circumstantially emotionally repressed and vulnerable events as holiday gathers with family and extended family where passive-aggressive tension is the only thing I can taste, even with delicious food and otherwise deep family connection involved.
Between chasing me out my window in high school and telling people... and this is so insane I'm baffled anyone believes him... that I scared my stepmom, let alone anyone.
Me... the person who jumped out of a second story window.
I didn't jump out of a window to impress my friends because I had to call them back to the house. Sure, they were just down Independence but they weren't in view until I reached the driveway.
It's insane that anyone would believe him but I'm not surprised because he also creates social isolation conditions around his DARVO (deny attack, reverse victim and offender) tactics.
His recent DARVO was shoving me violently against his linen closet by the neck then slamming his own foot in the door and telling people I attacked him.
This is why I will not trust any circumstance or event for which I am forced to ride with dad.
I've already been deeply conditioned to keep my mouth shut about everything and barely speak or express myself in his presence around strangers and his community... and I'll be very clear, he has made my sister's husband's family HIS community.
I remember being punished for embarrassing him in front of his coworkers and friends, usually for crying and the same thing happened with our stepmother, Lisa yelling at me for "making a scene" with silent tears about restaurant coleslaw that tasted like mom's mother, grandma Nucich's slaw a few months after she passed away.
I still find it baffling that people accept Dad's bullshit commentary about mom, "manipulating the divorce" when she took my sister and I to Turning Point Domestic Abuse Shelter in Mount Clemens because Dad grew increasingly resentful, rageful and violent as mom consistently asked him to sign divorce papers until one of his outbursts stimulated our stay at a shelter.
He did sign them with court authority pressure while we were at Turning Point. That's not "manipulating a divorce." It's self and child protective measures.
This is where people might claim I'm trying to make myself look good or make dad look bad or whatever sliding scale of reputation-based nonsense they manifest so I want to also remind the world, I've done dumb and violent things, too... especially in the name of being left alone or keeping my comforts.
Notably, I chased a kid with scissors in kindergarten to scare him into giving my show and tell toy back when he stole it from the teacher's desk. I stabbed the back of a couch my sister was sitting on when she hogged the TV after her permitted time. I chased a babysitter out of mom's basement by slinking into the garage for a baseball bat to wave around so I could keep playing with my LEGO city table when she came to put me in bed before mom's usual time. I shoved my mother off me with a bat hidden under my covers when she leaned in for her second wake up kiss before school because life felt particularly heavy that morning and I wanted to hide from the world. I burned my hand to warn and frighten a man I was living with then attacked him a day later after half a year of him hitting on my mom and making comments about her. I busted out a long row of ceiling lights in a psych hospital after they dragged away a patient who did nothing but flick his shoe off from boredom because I was fed up with the injustice and violent ignorance in the Michigan mental healthcare system.... I have permanent scars from the hand burns and the grid pattern from those lights and I wound up in jail for destruction of property...
I am not, nor will I ever claim to be perfect... but I OWN that stuff and REMAIN in therapy for healing the underpinning behavioral mirroring issues.
I will ALWAYS hold not only myself accountable but also anyone who enacts or threatens harm on another person or living being.
I find it ridiculous I'm the only person in my immediate paternal family to be actively pursuing therapeutic healing and adaptive, empathetic relational understanding.
I will show up to family events under my own power or not at all.
Dad has physically attacked me, lied about it and DARVO maneuvered too many times for me to trust him around such circumstantially emotionally repressed and vulnerable events as holiday gathers with family and extended family where passive-aggressive tension is the only thing I can taste, even with delicious food and otherwise deep family connection involved.
Between chasing me out my window in high school and telling people... and this is so insane I'm baffled anyone believes him... that I scared my stepmom, let alone anyone.
Me... the person who jumped out of a second story window.
I didn't jump out of a window to impress my friends because I had to call them back to the house. Sure, they were just down Independence but they weren't in view until I reached the driveway.
It's insane that anyone would believe him but I'm not surprised because he also creates social isolation conditions around his DARVO (deny attack, reverse victim and offender) tactics.
His recent DARVO was shoving me violently against his linen closet by the neck then slamming his own foot in the door and telling people I attacked him.
This is why I will not trust any circumstance or event for which I am forced to ride with dad.
I've already been deeply conditioned to keep my mouth shut about everything and barely speak or express myself in his presence around strangers and his community... and I'll be very clear, he has made my sister's husband's family HIS community.
I remember being punished for embarrassing him in front of his coworkers and friends, usually for crying and the same thing happened with our stepmother, Lisa yelling at me for "making a scene" with silent tears about restaurant coleslaw that tasted like mom's mother, grandma Nucich's slaw a few months after she passed away.
I still find it baffling that people accept Dad's bullshit commentary about mom, "manipulating the divorce" when she took my sister and I to Turning Point Domestic Abuse Shelter in Mount Clemens because Dad grew increasingly resentful, rageful and violent as mom consistently asked him to sign divorce papers until one of his outbursts stimulated our stay at a shelter.
He did sign them with court authority pressure while we were at Turning Point. That's not "manipulating a divorce." It's self and child protective measures.
This is where people might claim I'm trying to make myself look good or make dad look bad or whatever sliding scale of reputation-based nonsense they manifest so I want to also remind the world, I've done dumb and violent things, too... especially in the name of being left alone or keeping my comforts.
Notably, I chased a kid with scissors in kindergarten to scare him into giving my show and tell toy back when he stole it from the teacher's desk. I stabbed the back of a couch my sister was sitting on when she hogged the TV after her permitted time. I chased a babysitter out of mom's basement by slinking into the garage for a baseball bat to wave around so I could keep playing with my LEGO city table when she came to put me in bed before mom's usual time. I shoved my mother off me with a bat hidden under my covers when she leaned in for her second wake up kiss before school because life felt particularly heavy that morning and I wanted to hide from the world. I burned my hand to warn and frighten a man I was living with then attacked him a day later after half a year of him hitting on my mom and making comments about her. I busted out a long row of ceiling lights in a psych hospital after they dragged away a patient who did nothing but flick his shoe off from boredom because I was fed up with the injustice and violent ignorance in the Michigan mental healthcare system.... I have permanent scars from the hand burns and the grid pattern from those lights and I wound up in jail for destruction of property...
I am not, nor will I ever claim to be perfect... but I OWN that stuff and REMAIN in therapy for healing the underpinning behavioral mirroring issues.
I will ALWAYS hold not only myself accountable but also anyone who enacts or threatens harm on another person or living being.
I find it ridiculous I'm the only person in my immediate paternal family to be actively pursuing therapeutic healing and adaptive, empathetic relational understanding.
I will show up to family events under my own power or not at all.
