Parents Aren't Always Right

Growing up, I believed everything my parents told me. "Don't play on the monkey bars," my father said, "You'll get hurt, I just know it." Or, "Don't ride your bike, you'll fall and scrape your knee... or worse. You could DIE!" My father was a very passive aggressive man, especially when my mother was around. He hated everything that had to do with fun, or in other words, my independence. He believed that little girls needed to stay close beside their fathers, and fear the world around them.

My mother, on the other hand, was the definition of independence. She talked down to my father every time he had something to say about me getting hurt, yelling at him, "she needs to learn, let her do her own thing! She's not as fragile as you might think, so let go of the leash a little." Though, she was someone to contradict herself, and held on very tightly to that same "leash" once my father had left the picture. She wanted nothing more than for me to stay by her side and focus on her needs. Whenever she had a headache, I had to be the one to try and fix it. I had to search for the pain killers, had to get her some caffeine, had to get the heating pad, and rub her head until my hands went numb. I was more or less the parent in this situation.

This didn't get any easier growing older. My so-called independence meant that I could have a phone, and go to school, but had to be home exactly after school ended. I could never have a school activity or else I would be reprimanded for being late. I could never have friends over... (though it's not like I wanted to have anyone over anyhow.) My father left us when I was five, and my parents got divorced when I was eight. My mom drank worse than she ever did when they were together. She drowned in the drinks, due to sorrow or her sense of self-worth being shattered, I couldn't tell you. She became so comfortable in fact, that she wanted me to drink with her, perpetuating alcoholism.

She was lonely, and wanted a man to take the place of my father. So be it. I didn't like my father anyhow. Any time she brought a man home though, she wanted to immediately compare his looks to mine, making it seem more "normal" that he was there... but I knew she was only comforting herself. The more she drank, the worse she became. She started showing signs of bipolar like her father, (he thought he was God, and beat the crap out of my grandma) having extreme highs, and extreme lows. These signs later pointed to her being similar to that of a narcissist, but I was unaware, or didn't want to acknowledge that that was happening. She only cared about herself, using my father's child support; i.e., clothing that was too small, food that was filled with salt and fat, and junk from her work that she would spend half her paycheck on.

She became impulsive, and very convoluted. Her aggression towards me and my grandma grew. My grandmother housed mom and I for ten plus years after the divorce. My grandma grew a hatred for the woman my mom became. It got so bad that my mother not only verbally and mentally abused me, and gaslight me about my memories of my father, but she physically became abusive as well. The abuse would never be seen by my grandma though, as she was never home when it happened. She threw me against the wall, using my hair to pick me back up, and slapped me across the face. Of course, she was drunk whenever she did these sort of things, and whenever I would ask her about it later as to why she did it, her response was that she didn't remember.

My grandma became so fearful of her after coming back from the hospital with pneumonia (for the fifth or sixth time). She started having this fear that my mother would throw her down the stairs. Honestly, a part of me believed she could do it, without a care in the world. She was a very negligent mom, and that negligence and carelessness is what drove me over the edge. She used me when going on a trip to the university I wanted to go to, telling me as we were just leaving town that she had no money to pay for gas or food. I had just graduated Basic Training from the Army, and she knew I had enough to pay for the trip and then some. I was disgusted as she held my hand over the stick shift, gripping it tighter as she smiled cruelly.

Months after that incident, I made the decision to move out. It was a VERY sudden choice. It was the same day I had the idea, and I started packing. I had a place to stay with my now fiancé and his family. I asked for help from a friend to drive to my place to help pick up my things and take me out of there, but once my mom heard what I was doing, she ran like a baby hippo who had to shit, bolting to the door and trying to stop me. She let me take my things, but forced me to leave my military gear with her. I later got the police to escort me back there so I could get my things, and though my grandma still has grief over the whole situation, I have tried to make amends since then.

A month after I left, my mom died. Heart attack, the coroner reported. I suspected that she had somehow taken something to cause it, because she knew when I had left that she had lost the one person who was giving her money and support involuntarily. She lost control over me. I may have some remorse for the situation, but knowing that she had taken my cap and gown before I could get to my Covid graduation let me know how bitter she was about me leaving. It's not like she could do anything else, like show up to my grad. There was no ceremony, and she only got the notification that my cap and gown was there at the high school was because she had paid for it and her name was still in my contacts.

I knew my mother was a narcissist based on her life choices and actions, but the one thing that put the icing on the cake was that when I had told her what my father had done to me for the ten plus years said custody battle occurred, I knew. Her reaction was nothing more than a "oh, I figured that was happening." She said that she had asked my father, and he didn't admit to it (obviously), so she dropped it at that. Just as my mother was abusive, my father was as well. Both of them most likely had bipolar to some degree, and both used alcohol as a way to cope instead of the medications that they needed.

The abuse that took place from my mom, though toxic, was nothing in comparison to what he did. He remarried, as one does after a divorce, but what I didn't realize before the divorce was that I spoke to the woman before they even met in person. It was over a video call, with her kids beside her in front of the shit-quality camera they had. He introduced her to me as his "friend" but soon I realized she was much more than a friend. In the process of my parent's divorce, he ran off to Texas to live with his parents. Who else was in Texas at the time but the dreadful woman he now calls his wife. Her and her 4 children at the time met me at the airport when I first arrived there. My paternal grandparents paid for the flight as they knew how "important" I was to my father. I played along, smiling as a child would at a situation that I was unaware of at the time. Later I read a letter that stated they were the "family he always wanted," so of course I was on edge.

I loved my grandfather, so it was great to see him after years of not being able to. I was more happy to see him than any of the other people who were there. My grandpa was an honorable man who served in the military, he did 3 tours in Vietnam during the war. Later we found out that the Agent Orange that he was exposed to most likely led to him getting cancer. The cancer killed him within a year, even though he was the most healthy man I had ever seen at his age. If he would've been the one to stay alive instead of my grandma, maybe things would've turned out differently. He was guaranteed a spot in Arlington Cemetery with his fellow comrades who were in combat with him. My grandmother, though, was a very selfish woman who told him to his face that he would not be sent there after he died, and in fact would be placed behind her church in their garden trail. She dishonored him, and spat in his face. My father wouldn't allow me to go to his funeral because I was "too young" but I was 8 at the time. Though my last memories of both him and my mother were when they were alive, a part of me wishes that I could have seen them at rest.

A part of me dies thinking about what my father has done to me, and I think that is why it's so hard to retell. I've gone to therapy for a very long time, but am still at a loss because of how empty I feel. He was a sick man who, when I was still young, and he was still married to my mom, would go into my room without my mother's knowledge and touched me in places I did not understand. Being that I was only four or five at that time, I could almost have seen it as natural at the time that he would touch me like that, because he said it would be "fun"... but why would he keep me from having fun outside of my bedroom, and yet tell me that we were having fun there?

His wife walked in on us once. She acknowledged what she saw, grabbed something from their room, and walked out like she didn't just see what had been going on. He was on top of me, causing me to bleed from both holes... he raped me until I could no longer feel anything below my waist. Once he was done with me, he would leave me to go to the bathroom and clean up, and his wife would come in and help me, then take me to a closet to be left there with only a bucket and applesauce to keep me company. She knew what was going on, and perpetuated the abuse. I wasn't her child, so I wasn't her responsibility.

When he took me out of the house once a summer, we would go to a music store an hour away, stop at a diner for some pie and a milkshake, and before we got to the music store, he pulled over, beer in the center console, and put my seat all the way back so he could take advantage of me there. Since these things had gone on for so long, I couldn't move. I felt helpless, frozen in time. It normally was an out of body experience, because I no longer wanted to feel what was happening. I feared that he would get me pregnant, but only once had I miscarried because I had barely ate anything, and was taking pain killers to get rid of the pain and the headaches.

My step mother perpetuated my eating disorders, and I am still reverting back to not eating... or when I can eat, I am in so much pain that I have to vomit to feel normal again. My acid reflux is so bad that I don't want to eat; I have been trying to work on this for years. My step sisters were the ones who taught me how to self harm, and my father perpetuated that behavior. He told me I didn't deserve to be pure, and that I would never find a man who would want me because I was disgusting and impure. He told me that he was helping me, and that that was what I truly deserved. Now that I am engaged, I don't have the courage to wear a white wedding dress because of what it represents. He would also make the excuse that he was drunk, and never took credit for any of his actions. Later in my life, I finally had the courage to get another guardian ad litem that would listen to me, (my first guardian ad litem sided with my father, was ageist and sexist) and let her know that I wanted to say that things happened to me without specifying what did indeed happen. She was okay with that, as she understood I didn't want an investigation and make this court process even longer for me, so she complied.

Once her statement was out into the court, my father immediately responded, "I didn't do anything! She's lying, I would never do anything to hurt her, I just want MY time with her." I knew that my experience was true based off his words, because for years I had blocked it out of my mind because I didn't want to admit that his behavior was NOT that of what a father should do with his daughter. His side of the family sided with him as well, sticking to the belief that I had lied about what he had done, and that my mother had "brainwashed me."

I always watched how my friends and their fathers would interact, and it was nothing like what he did. I just thought it was normal. I didn't want to admit that what my parents had done was wrong. That when I burned my thighs with ramen noodles and was neglected for 3 days in the shower until he FINALLY decided to take me to the hospital; how could I think any of this was normal?! I wanted to ignore it all so badly. I wanted to look at my cuts and burns on my thighs and think all of that was just my fault... but it wasn't.

I was a victim of sexual assault, of physical abuse, verbal, and mental. Adults in my life made it normalized that their actions were just how life worked, but I know differently today. I am no longer the victim of my past. Yes, I am still working through these things, but I will prevail. I will get past these things. Yes, I have been suicidal, yes I have been so numb I can't get out of bed because my mind is racing a thousand miles a minute, but it's okay.

I am not to blame for what happened, and anyone else who has been through this or something similar, I want you to know it is not your fault. I know that due to this, I had a pattern with who I dated as well, but it can be fixed with self care and self love. It takes time. I don't blame my mother as much as I used to, because I am giving her the benefit of the doubt, and trying to let her rest in peace without hatred towards her; but no matter how much people say I should forgive my father, I say screw off. Nobody has the right to do that to anyone else, just because they know they have power over someone else.

My parents made their choices in life, for better or worse, but I can make different choices, for the better. I can choose who my family is. I can cut ties with whoever I need to in order to become a better person. I must take it one day at a time, and keep moving forward.