Hi,
First of all I would like to apologize beforehand on any misspellings or grammar failures, I'm not from an English speaking country.
Second of all, I don't really have any clear objectives with this post. I figured I need to write my story down and get some feedback, maybe some pointers on how to handle the situation.
Here we go...
Growing up I never saw my family as odd or anything like that. I thought I had a normal family, with normal family issues. When my parents fought each other or had discussions, I thought that it was normal and I didn't think about that much. As I got older I started feeling something was wrong. When I lock back now I realise me and my younger brother were the real parents in the family. We always had to calm the situation down when our parents had an argument.
My father was like a child, unable to handle a grown-up discussion, anger issues which he poisoned the whole family with. When he got home from work he just went laying on the couch watching TV and let our mother do all the work at home. I was afraid of him growing up since he always became so mad when me and my brother did something wrong. He never beat me though, accept one time when I refused a command from him, he pushed me into the refrigerator, yelling at me I should never disobey him. My relationsship with my father has been increasing in distance since I was about 10 years old. When I look back at the situation from my adult perspective I know he was miserable, some of it involves embarrasment to work as a cab/truck driver. We have never had a connection, he is not a man of many words. Looking back I realise he put his own fears and embarrasments in front of his relationsships with his sons, meaning he was never there. If I would ask my father to describe my favorite hobbies, interests, what I do for a living etc, he wouldn't have a clue on what to say. The sad thing is that he always expect other people to solve his issues, especially my mother which I will describe briefly aswell.
My mother was the exact opposite to my father, too emotional, naiv and insecure. Due to an injury when she was growing up she'd became an stay-at-home mom. She did everything, for the whole family. She handled grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, paying bills (even my dads bills), hell, she even handled his taxes, time rapporting at work etc. He was(is?) a lazy man who just complained on everything. Of course, my mother never stood up to him. Instead she cried her miseries out with me and my brother from time to time. Not very adult to let your 12 year old son comfort you and give you advice. She always complained on things to us and I never felt she listened when I spoke to her, It was as if she always found a way to turn every conversations about her.
When I was about 15-17 years old I found myself holding in on alot of anger. I kept my conversations with my father very brief, just "Hi" when he got back from work, and "good night" before I got to bed. My mother on the other hand had to take alot of shit from me, I let most of my anger out on her and my brother.
At 19 I moved to Norway to work for a year (common thing to do in Sweden among young adults). It was nice to get a bit of distance to my family (accept my brother, i truly missed him alot and we spoke almost every day). After a time I even started appreciating talking to my parents on our weekly calls. Eventually I moved back to Sweden and in to my parents house with my brother.
From here on me and my brother began to spoke more about our childhood and all the crazy stuff that happened, which at the time being a child, wasn't analysed in the same way. We escaped more and more from our mother and father, just playing games locking ourselves in our rooms to avoid them.
From here on it got worse, as i got older I realized what has been going on. I would not be their safety nest, the person that came to rescue over a simple argument. More and more I started to feel hate against them, how they poisoned their two childs and used us to solve their issues and problems. I remember one time, me and my brother had just started up a game of Age of empires (nostalgic game). The game has just started and my mother came banging on my door (remeber, I'm 21 at this point). She was very stressfull (as always) and had that panic in her aura which always made it hard to take in what she had to say. She asked me if I could drive her downtown, and gave me some bullshit reason on why she couldn't herself (99% of the times she blaimed other due to her own planning failuers). I told her calm and easy that I could, but after me and my brother finished our round.
She then went up and told our father that I was unable to because "they are playing a computer game". My father raged, I could hear him coming down the stairs, smashing up my door, red in his face just yelling that I'm stupid and that I've never helped them with anything. At this point I think I let out about 110% of the anger I've been holding in against him. I couldn't say nothing, I became so mad. I told him that I was busy and that he is an idiot that thinks I'm some kind of "stand-by butler" to him and mom. He didn't speak with me for 5 days. I was the one that had to call him and tell him I was sorry for calling him an idiot (Apparently that was what made him upset) before I could even have the chance to explain why I was mad in the first place.
I got my first own apartment when I was 23 and at the time I had been dating a wonderful girl for a couple of months which I asked to move in with me. She was happy to do that. I felt good leaving my child home and again, I felt that wonderful feeling of euphoria when I got distance from that abusive home. But something happened.
After a while I started to feel sad, I started thinking and analysing my whole childhood, I became angry over how my parents had been with me and my brother. I suffered a "medium hard" depression, as my therapist told me. I went talking to a therapist about 15 times, told her the extended version of what I'm writing right now. She said to me that as I grown up, I now have a choice to do the adult thing, even though it's hard and sit down, talk it through with my family, which I did.
At the point when I went to see the therapist my mother showed concern. I told her first about all of this and showed alot of sadness. She cried and felt really guilty and even took blame for what has happened. Not standing up to my father etc. At that time she told me she'd been thinking about a divorce and that she and my father had agreed. My father didn't tell me any of this, he thought "well you already heard it from mom". I was upset again, and told my mom that the least you and dad can do is to sit downand tell me and my brother about your decision. So we did, me and my brother came up to the house to have a sit-down.
This was what I had prepared to, I told them everything, how I felt about alot of things growing up, that I was disappointed with how they handled alot of situations. I told them It was not fair expecting so much out of a child and that I was seeing a therapist. My father had alot of trouble handle the critisism and as expected couldn't see my gesture as a try to solve things into the better.
Today I'm 25, I havent spooken with my father in almost a year, he called me one time after the divorce inviting me to his new apartment. I told him I had to see and forgot to return his call. Now he hasn't spoken with me in about 9 months. He still keeps contact with my brother and asks him about me through him. My brother told me he is angry for me not returning his call. The most recent contact we had was him sending me a text on my birthday, I responded saying something like "To bad we don't talk that often", which he didn't respond to.
I feel like this cloud of sadness is hanging over me. For realizing I've never had a father to look up to, for always having to be my own parent. Some people think I should write him a letter, explaining everything again and give him one last chance, but I don't know.
Is it anyone here that can relate to this? Thanks for reading my story, I'm glad I could share this with you.
Kind regards,
Submitted August 07, 2015 at 03:26PM by BreakingMad90 http://ift.tt/1IMEmlU raisedbynarcissists
No comments:
Post a Comment