Living With an Abusive Parent

Over the past four years this has made recovering from depression, self-harm, anxiety, and an eating disorder very difficult. I love both of my parents dearly but it’s hard to feel that way when my dad makes me feel worthless and then my mom has to do damage control. Many times growing up my dad told me that I was “bigger than the other kids.” Not meaning that I was taller, but that I was fat. He wouldn’t let me do any of the sports I wanted to do because I was fat. My mom would then try to tell me otherwise and say that he didn’t mean it. My dad isn’t physically abusive anymore but for sure psychologically/emotionally abusive.

Because I still live with my parents, I still have to experience this at least once a month. Like today my dad yelled at me on the phone because I didn’t leave soon enough to pick up my mom from work. I still would’ve made it there by the time she got off with out speeding but he decided that it would be best to make me feel bad about it. Sorry, I didn’t realize what time it was. But it’s okay for him to pick me up late from appointments and school when he just forgets or decides to take a nap. Also, he gets all bent out of shape when my mom and I have our phones on silent or vibrate and we don’t hear them. There was once he just started yelling at me when he came home, not even saying what for and then finally saying that he called and that it’s unacceptable for him not to be able to get in contact with me. I guess he forgets that I go to school and that I can’t have the ringer on during the school day at that I forget to turn it back on when I leave school. 95% my phone is on vibrate because I am in a place where I can’t have the ringer on. He calls once and doesn’t give any time for us to try to call back and just assumes we are ignoring him when in reality we might be in the bathroom or charging our phone in another room. But, he does this all the time. We call him 5 or 6 times with no immediate response and then we wait and wait for him to respond. We send text messages and leave voice mails and get nothing. But if we come home and start yelling at him for it he tells us that it’s not that big of a deal and that we shouldn’t be upset about it. And it turns out that his phone is on silent, in the car, or dead.

My dad used to tell me that I was ungrateful for everything that I had. This would usually come after me trying to get him to pay attention to me or if I was upset about something. If I complained about not being able to go outside and play with my friends, he would lecture me about how I needed to be grateful for the things I had. When in reality I could’ve cared less about all of the stuff he bought me when all I wanted was for him to tell me that I did a good job in school, or coming to my swim meets, or just to be able to talk to him without it turning into a lecture from him.

The only person at home that I can talk to about how I’m feeling without being told how to feel, is my mom. If I tell my dad that I’m feeling anxious, he tells me that there is no reason for me to be anxious. Yes because I can totally just flip some magical fucking switch in my brain and turn that off. My mom struggles with just letting me vent but she’s improved a lot with it. There was once that I completely took my anger out on my mom and I yelled at her and said some mean things (which she knew I didn’t mean because she knew I was not mad at her). My dad then told her that she shouldn’t allow me to talk to her like that because it’s disrespectful. My mom tried to explain that it’s not that I’m being disrespectful, I was upset and needed to get it out using my words instead of cutting myself. But all he cared about was that I was being disrespectful. Another time was after I came home from the hospital and my social worker told me to talk to my dad about how he makes me feel using “I” statements because my emotions are what I feel and no one can tell me how I should feel. So I was explaining this to my dad and he said “Weeeeelllllll…that’s not true.”

Basically in my dad’s eyes I’m not allowed to make any mistakes and if I do (no matter how small) I need to be reprimanded. I am disrespectful, I am ungrateful, I’m fat/”bigger than the other girls,” I should not feel the emotions I do, he can tell me how to feel, and I should not talk about my feelings with my mom.

I realize that what he is doing is abusive and I’ve known this for a while. Child Protective Services (CPS) has been to our house multiple times and my dad would of course behave himself and tell us that if we really think that he doesn’t love us that he hopes they would take us away. He always pushed the blame on us that the reason CPS kept coming was because we didn’t know how to keep our mouths shut and that everyone doesn’t need to know our business.

The interesting thing out of all of this is the way he treats my nephew. He treats him as if he could never do anything wrong and never yells at him when he gets in trouble at school or when he’s actually being spoiled brat. There’s always an excuse my dad comes up with for him. In no way is my dad abusive towards him, only towards me and my mom.

Every time something like this happens it’s a set back for my recovery. I keep telling myself that it’s not true, but it’s hard because memories and feelings from those memories come back. And I go back to wanting to self-harm. I begin to stop eating because I keep feeling that I’m fat. I go back to wanting to kill myself because I feel so worthless. I went for a walk after my dad hung up on me and it was so tempting to just take one step in front of a moving car, because I knew that if something happened to me my dad would feel so bad for the way he treated me and for being so upset over something so small. I was so angry with myself because I kept telling myself that it was my fault. I should’ve paid closer attention to the time, I’m such an idiot, I can’t do anything right, and I just wanted my mind to stop and I wanted to stop feeling. So I stopped walking, sat down by the lake and just sat.

I am really looking forward to going to University and living on campus because I don’t have to come home, I don’t have to talk to my dad, and mostly I won’t live in this environment. Dad’s are supposed to show their daughters what kind of person they should marry, but my dad has shown me the opposite. University has a whole new set of experiences and challenges but I’m pretty sure that it’s going to be better than being at home.

Update!

Alright so it’s been hard to post consistently lately because I am a senior and the end of the year has come. So I have about 2 weeks left of school and then I graduate on June 7th but I am going to be super busy most days. So far it seems as though I will be graduating on a high note but I have a lot to do between school and working. I will try to post as I can but I can’t promise there will be something every week.

This past weekend I went on a women’s retreat. The purpose was to get away and connect with God on a deeper level. I won’t say that I am closer with God than when I got there but there were definitely some things that I realized I need to do (forgiveness wise) and also some unwanted feelings came with it. So basically there is a guy that I like that I haven’t seen since August last year and I hadn’t thought about him that much until this weekend. I had kinda thought that I had gotten over him but turns out I hadn’t. I’ve never told him that I liked him (and I’m not really planning on it either) mostly because if we did date then it would be long distance and that’s not what I really want for my first relationship. But then there is also my body image issues and stuff that follows that, which makes me feel like I don’t think he would want to date me anyway.

I will make a more in depth post about this next (it actually kept me up till midnight so I wrote it down to get it out of my head).

This is all for now and I just wanted to give a little update.

(I am out of state this weekend so I might not be posting again until sometime next week)

Panic Attacks at School Never End Well

Guess who had a panic attack at school? If you couldn’t tell by the title the panic attack that I had was not a minor one. It could’ve been minor but I got in trouble for using one of my effective coping skills.

I’ve had a rough time at school the past 2 weeks. I was not able to finish out my clinical’s at the hospital because my doctor never sent over a note saying that I was able to return to normal activities. So I was really pissed about that and I got in trouble because I decided to listen to music since I was upset and needed to stay calm. But my teacher is an ass and decided that he would treat me like a 5 year old and since he wanted to treat me that way why not act that way. So I refused to talk to him, a student social worker, and the guidance counselor in English, I used American Sign Language (ASL). This obviously pissed them off but that panic attack was not that bad but if I would’ve chosen to speak I probably would’ve gotten suspended because I would have told him to fuck off.

For the rest of this I am going to use a scale to rate my anxiety, 1 is barely any anxiety and 10 being severe anxiety.

Fast forward to today, I got to school my anxiety was at like a 1 or 2. I was sitting in my car in the parking lot listening to music trying not to think to much about all of the things I needed to do. Then I feel my car jolt forward (the car was off and in park) and I didn’t know what happened. I turned around only to see that the car trying to park in the space next to me hit me. This pushed my anxiety to about a 4. I texted my dad asking him what he wanted me to do about it and he told me to file a police report. This pushed my anxiety up to a 4.5. I went to the office to let them know and they had me call and one of the administrators waited outside while I went back to class. Once the police officer arrived I was called out of class and at this point my anxiety is at about a 5. By the time everything was finished I went back to class and my anxiety was still at about a 5. I started working on my packet and I was having a hard time focusing because my anxiety was still at a 5, so I decided that I would listen to music to try to calm myself. I just wanted to get my anxiety to a 2 or 3 which is more manageable but then my teacher comes in and tells me that I need to take out my headphones. I took them out and he left. My anxiety went from a 5 to a 7. It’s not because he asked me to take out my headphones he was just too close to me. I put my headphones back on and continued to listen to music. Of course he had to be an ass again and come take my headphones, but once again too close to me. I didn’t give them to him because I didn’t want him to break them (he seems like the person who would). He told me that he would be back in 3 minutes and for me to put them on the edge of the desk. He literally came back in one minute but I put them on the edge of my desk. Then he wanted to talk to me like a 5 year old telling me that I made a good decision etc. Once again too close to me. This time I asked him nicely to step back. He didn’t. I asked nicely again saying that I needed him to step back because he was too close to me and if he didn’t I was going to have a panic attack. He still continued to talk to me without moving disregarding me asking politely. I started having a panic attack and I yelled at him and told him to get away from me. He still continued to stay there so I continued to yell at him saying I needed space. He finally moved and at this point my anxiety is at a 9. After he left I tried to do other things to calm myself down. One thing is tightening my muscles and relaxing them so I was doing that and calming down. I was at a 7. Then he went and had some guy come into the classroom to try to talk to me. I yelled and said “get out.” I needed space and they refused to give that to me. Then they had everyone that was in the classroom leave except for me. Because apparently having a panic attack means that I am going to attack people around me. Then they had the guidance counselor, another female teacher, and a female office staff member come in. They kept walking closer and I told them I needed them to leave me alone so I could calm down. Of course they didn’t want to let me do that. So I told them to get away from me. They left the room for a little bit and during that time I texted my mom telling her I was having a panic attack and I texted my old therapist because I have her cell number asking her to call me. Then my mom called and I told her to tell them to leave me alone so I could calm down. I gave the counselor my phone to talk to my mom and I have no idea what they said to her but she texted my dad and told him that he needed to come get me. Keep in mind my dad overreacts negatively whenever he has to come to my school.  They told me this and my anxiety went to a 10 because now I was like, shit this is not going to end well and nothing good is going to come from this. I was pissed so I got up and went to get my phone back. I accidentally hit the teacher that has been nothing but an ass with the door pretty hard. He acted like a wuss and said that it hurt, but I really don’t care it’s his fault that it escalated this far. I left out of the classroom and said that I was leaving and they told me I can’t do that or else they will call the police. They wouldn’t let me go in the hall to walk, my only choices were to go back into the classroom or go to the office to sit in a room. So I called my mom and she told me I just needed to calm down and that they were talking about calling an ambulance (all for a fucking panic attack), so I threw my phone. I went back into the classroom closed the door and paced around. I went down to a 5. Then my old therapist called. I explained to her what happened and that I was having a panic attack and she had me rate where I was. Then she had me talk about other things instead of focusing on what had occurred. There was a lot of stuff to talk about because we hadn’t spoken in almost 6 months and we hadn’t talked about life in like a year. I went from a 5 to about a 1 or 2. Then we talked about what the plan was going forward. We decided that it would be a good idea to let the school know a vague amount about my past trauma and that listening to music is a coping skill for me. And also to talk with one person about where we go from here. So when I hung up with her I was feeling pretty good about being able to leave and go to therapy and sort through more of what happened. I walk out of the classroom and say that I’m calm and ask if I can leave. My teacher turns and says “your dad still has to come pick you up.” I continued to try to stay calm and then my dad comes. My dad is obviously pissed off. I try to be friendly and all and I ask if I can drive and he scoffs and says “No, lets go” so I turned to my teacher as I am walking away and say “I hope your happy.” He then proceeds to tell me that this was not his fault and I need to stop blaming other people for my problems. Such ignorance. I’m not blaming him for how I was feeling but I am blaming him for causing it to get that far. If he would’ve just taken a step back when I asked nicely I would not have had a panic attack. So I guess that means that having depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, and PTSD is all my fault so I need to take ownership for something that is completely out of my control.

In the car with my dad he immediately goes to town on me being disrespectful and how my behavior was unacceptable. I told him that I was listening to music because I was trying not to have a panic attack. My dad is beyond ignorant when it comes to me having a mental illness. So he basically told me that I should not be shaken up by being hit by another car and having to file a police report. So I told him that he makes me want to kill myself and that I can’t talk to him about how I’m feeling because all he ever does is tell me that I shouldn’t feel a certain way. He said fine then “don’t talk to me.” I told him I wasn’t going to therapy. I told him it was useless because all talking does is get me in trouble. He can’t handle me (mostly because he doesn’t even try) so he sends me to talk to someone every week for an hour. I told him I wanted to go home. We leave and then he goes and gets my mom. My mom tries to give me a hug and I told her not to touch me. I proceeded to tell her about how my dad invalidates my feelings and that I shouldn’t have been shaken up after being hit by a car. My mom didn’t know that so told her that I filed a police report and let the office know. Then I told her that dad’s going to probably blame her for my attitude because I only get it from her even though I obviously get it from him. During this time that I am talking about my dad he is sitting right in the driver’s seat. If he wants to only focus on the negative and not realize that what happened was not me trying to be disrespectful, then I will tear him down a bit.

Then my mom went to try to go talk to my therapist but my appointment was at 3 and she got there close to 4. Since I am not allowed to drive because I was disrespectful, we had to get the car that I was driving from my school.

On the way home my mom wanted me to talk about what happened and I just told her that since everything is my fault and I am being punished for having a mental illness I am not going to therapy. I told her my teacher told me that I need to take responsibility for my problems so I told her that my depression, anxiety, PTSD,  and eating disorder. I also told her that I was not going to eat and that if I did eat I was going to purge. I also told her that I was a bad kid and needed to be punished. Because apparently being “disrespectful” is worse than stealing, underaged drinking, illicit drug use, going to jail multiple times, and assaulting a police officer just to name a few. All of the things I have listed are things that my brother has done. All I have done is gotten into trouble with teachers because I am disrespectful. His favourite thing to tell me that I am. I’ve been told that for as long as I can remember.

According to my dad I might be getting suspended or expelled all because of having a panic attack. But since he always has to go to the extremes before listening he said that they are not sure what they are going to do but they said that they are going to do something. I really don’t care anymore. I can’t wait to go to college because I won’t have to talk to my family or see them if I don’t want to. My mom thinks that I am going to talk to her but I doubt it.