ABUSIVE PARENTING
Growing up with an Emotionally Abusive Parent
Fear not, I’m not writing to make you feel sorry for me. This piece of my story might help you recognise a version of emotional abuse. And if you feel like you might be experiencing something similar, just know that today might not be ok, it might even feel terrible, but you can build a better tomorrow for yourself.
My parents separated when I was ten years old, they had a catering business together which made the divorce that much harder, lasting to this day, more than fourteen years later.
I ended up living with my father, who kept the house and lived close to my school, on weekdays, and seeing my mother every weekend until I was seventeen.
My father had a harder time with the separation, maybe due to staying in the family house, or maybe because he wasn’t the instigator of it. The divorce soon became the sole topic of conversations, having guests over or not.
He medicated with antidepressant pills to help himself feel better, and took sleeping pills, every day, earlier and earlier during the day, to try and find restful sleep.
Do you know the feeling when you just had an argument with someone and you’re not certain if they’re mad at you or not? I was feeling that constantly. Everything felt heavy, like a dark cloud changing the atmosphere, my father was carrying negativity with him like his shadow.
It was almost as if I was supposed to feel as terrible as him, so he could feel better.
It wasn’t always gloomy.
When he was feeling hopeful, it felt like those first few days of spring, clearing up the winter grey.
But the weather changed quickly, I was invariably walking on egg shelves around him.
Some noteworthy stunts over the years were his hunger strike to pressure my mother into signing some divorce papers, calling my brother with Down syndrome God’s punishment for my mom, and taking a considerable amount of sleeping pills so that I wouldn’t leave him to visit my family on the weekend.
That one was the last straw, I couldn’t accept the manipulation and his habit of choosing the negative over the positive.
Thankfully I didn’t have to, I decided to go live with my mother. It was a selfish choice, and I realised afterwards that I stayed with him until then to avoid leaving him alone.
However, I understood I couldn’t be the one making him feel better, he had to stop the boat from sinking deeper, instead of pushing it further down, and I knew if I stayed on board I would just drown with him.
So I didn’t. Instead, I swam back to the shore and started building a new path.
I don’t believe we shouldn’t support our parents, nobody is perfect, and parents are allowed to make mistakes. I think we just shouldn’t help them to the detriment of our own health, as any flight attendant would say “secure yourself before helping others”.
