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seeyatIt was a reddit inquiry and another opportunity to try integrating my reality with how my now is presenting itself. The sooner I can hold my lived experience with loving kindness, the better... this requires mindful repetition... so here goes...
My father would fuck up or wind up causing pain or hurting someone and deny it. He still tells people my mother "manipulated the divorce" by bringing my sister and I to a domestic abuse shelter. She put up with almost a year of his constant aggression and violent refusal mixed with denial about the divorce papers. She brought us to Turning Point and finally brought legal representation and police into the mix to get him to sign when he violently destroyed her property after she'd been sleeping in the guest room for a few months. There were physical altercations that he instigated and escalated while mom just stood up for herself.
He also physically threw me places but his intentions were always to get me to where he wanted me or he'd pull me out of bed by an arm or leg to wake me up.
Dad once threw me out the back door in my underwear because I was "making him late for work" and I was having a physiological reaction to a newly prescribed medication so I kept taking off my clothes.
He also chased me out my second story window and refused to allow me back home, claiming I was violent instead of owning up to his rage. I had just stayed over my girlfriend's place without permission and my stepmother egged him on with, "Be the adult! Be a dad!" My friends had barely left the driveway before I called them back to pick me up. I wound up living with my girlfriend and her family for 8 months until turning 18.
Don't get me wrong. I started showing his behaviors from an early age. I chased a kid with scissors to get a show and tell toy back in kindergarten, knocked over a desk in 5th grade due to perceived unfairness, used scare tactics like slowly and loudly stabbing the couch to get my sister off the TV when it was my turn, chased a babysitter with a baseball bat so I could stay up until my normal bedtime and I even shoved my mother away from me to scare her one morning to keep myself home from school.
I was actively suicidal by age 15, sketching skulls with bits of rotting flesh meant to represent my mind and body rotting away in psych facilities and therapy while the rest of the family just teased me, shamed me and deferred all responsibility to therapists and hospitals. Any "dad questions" I had were directed to a therapist or my mother tried to answer what she could and eventually tried to have our stepdad help but he was my Boy Scout master which felt shitty.
Basically, I was the unwitting and possibly unknown scapegoat of a dysfunctional family system trying to keep up appearances for Catholic Private Schools, Boy Scouts and the Team Viper project my dad was killing himself to maintain progress on.
...
As for dad's general attitudes toward me, he was dismissive with me and sleeping with the light on, being afraid of basements and a few other things. He still says, "You're always scared!" whenever I mention a concern or fear about something. He's never once validated my experience or met my explanations in any way that indicated empathy... he seems to always have an "answer" instead of understanding around deeply emotional concerns or feelings in general.
He only hold conversations around technical things or sciences and history he's familiar with.
It was also very common for him to coerce or threaten punishments if I didn't come to his boat and he'd force me to smile and push down negative feelings when we got there. The boat was a 'no frown zone' especially when him and our stepmother, Lisa, were together there.
My father would fuck up or wind up causing pain or hurting someone and deny it. He still tells people my mother "manipulated the divorce" by bringing my sister and I to a domestic abuse shelter. She put up with almost a year of his constant aggression and violent refusal mixed with denial about the divorce papers. She brought us to Turning Point and finally brought legal representation and police into the mix to get him to sign when he violently destroyed her property after she'd been sleeping in the guest room for a few months. There were physical altercations that he instigated and escalated while mom just stood up for herself.
He also physically threw me places but his intentions were always to get me to where he wanted me or he'd pull me out of bed by an arm or leg to wake me up.
Dad once threw me out the back door in my underwear because I was "making him late for work" and I was having a physiological reaction to a newly prescribed medication so I kept taking off my clothes.
He also chased me out my second story window and refused to allow me back home, claiming I was violent instead of owning up to his rage. I had just stayed over my girlfriend's place without permission and my stepmother egged him on with, "Be the adult! Be a dad!" My friends had barely left the driveway before I called them back to pick me up. I wound up living with my girlfriend and her family for 8 months until turning 18.
Don't get me wrong. I started showing his behaviors from an early age. I chased a kid with scissors to get a show and tell toy back in kindergarten, knocked over a desk in 5th grade due to perceived unfairness, used scare tactics like slowly and loudly stabbing the couch to get my sister off the TV when it was my turn, chased a babysitter with a baseball bat so I could stay up until my normal bedtime and I even shoved my mother away from me to scare her one morning to keep myself home from school.
I was actively suicidal by age 15, sketching skulls with bits of rotting flesh meant to represent my mind and body rotting away in psych facilities and therapy while the rest of the family just teased me, shamed me and deferred all responsibility to therapists and hospitals. Any "dad questions" I had were directed to a therapist or my mother tried to answer what she could and eventually tried to have our stepdad help but he was my Boy Scout master which felt shitty.
Basically, I was the unwitting and possibly unknown scapegoat of a dysfunctional family system trying to keep up appearances for Catholic Private Schools, Boy Scouts and the Team Viper project my dad was killing himself to maintain progress on.
...
As for dad's general attitudes toward me, he was dismissive with me and sleeping with the light on, being afraid of basements and a few other things. He still says, "You're always scared!" whenever I mention a concern or fear about something. He's never once validated my experience or met my explanations in any way that indicated empathy... he seems to always have an "answer" instead of understanding around deeply emotional concerns or feelings in general.
He only hold conversations around technical things or sciences and history he's familiar with.
It was also very common for him to coerce or threaten punishments if I didn't come to his boat and he'd force me to smile and push down negative feelings when we got there. The boat was a 'no frown zone' especially when him and our stepmother, Lisa, were together there.
