Growing Up Ruined My Life

I'm to blame for it all... Right?

Growing up under my fathers roof felt like a constant battle. Day in and day out, from about the time I was seven years old I had learned how to thoroughly walk around on eggshells. I didn't like to believe my father was a bad man. What child does?

However, life had a way of proving me wrong. My father rarely treated me with respect growing up, and as the years passed and I slowly got older, his attitude towards me seemed to get more and more rotten. it's as if I had stopped being able to do anything right.

Now... maybe it was because of the heartache he felt and the lack of a significant other, however his mysoginistic view certainly didnt help.

Between the ages of about three or four to roughly ten or eleven, I watched my father go through a couple of work relationships. The first had her own son and seemed friendly enough. She made him very happy I thought and I rather enjoyed spending the time in her home. I didn't really like her kid, but maybe that was more because of the age gap.

The relationship fell apart because of that boy and my brother. The two of them had chosen to experiment sexually, and because there was a three year age gap between them, when it was found out; my brother took the fall. You could say that was the beginning of a very confusing life for him. These actions had him serving juvi time and eventually growing a knack for lewd and inappropriate behavior.

My brother lived his life with many different struggles, however to this day I can truly say the biggest was his autism. Specifically his autism and the anger our father seemed to hold towards his "broken child". Although I myself was a victim of my brother, seeing how he was treated by our father made me grow up and take on the elder sister role rather early in life. Only... I was seven years younger than him.

My fathers second girlfriend wasnt someone I exactly liked. She was very manipulative and not exactly friendly to us kids. She used my father and threw him away the moment she deemed him inconvenient. Their relationshiap lasted a decent amount of time, however once it was over... My father sunk further and further into depression, eventually giving up on women entirely. In its own way, that included me.

During middle school, I often found myself the victim of bullying. Instead of fighting, I constantly just wanted to escape it to the point that I would refuse to even attend school. Rather than finding out the reasons why this was, my father felt it best to just send me me away to live with my grandparents. After all, it was inconvenient for him to try and change my habit. He had social worker breathing down his neck and legally, he was being held at fault for my ill attendance.

There, I was told I would be staying with them until I graduated highschool. I felt betrayed and abandoned by my father. Everyone swore up and down that he still loved me; however his actions told me otherwise. He rarely talked to me for the year and a half I lived there. I was only allowed to go home for some holidays (not all) and eventually, the only reason I returned home was because him and my grandparents threw themselves into a bad enough fight that threatened the very home I had grown up in.

Knowing I wasn't brought home because I was missed, I began feeling worse as time passed. I didn't feel wanted or loved. I simply felt like a burden on my family. I was angry and frustrated with so many emotions bubbling at the surface. My anxiety was higher that it had ever been; my depression controlled my every thought and action, and I had no real happiness inside of me other than when I spent time with the childhood friend I had grown to love.

Even after I came home, things didn't change for very long. The first couple of months was spent with my father having high hopes and house hunting. For that short period of time, I genuinely believed in everything getting better. I was fed the idea of having my own bedroom in a spacious house still close enough that I could attend the same schools and continue to visit my best friend. In a weird way; although the family as a bigger picture was damaged, I was happy.

But as soon as it was happening; it all came to a hault. My father and grandmother reconciled. The move was canceled and our life continued in this rundown and crowded house. My father dropped back down to the bitterness he originally was and life continued again on the shitty and damaging trail.

When I began highschool, I believed life couldn't get any worse. My father was always angry and never exactly seemed happy to have me home anymore. I began finding reasons for why I couldn't be home. I spent my time doing one of two things. I was either always with my childhood friend, avoiding home and preferring the happy, warm and loving embrace he gave me; or I was at school. I would stay after school practically daily; solely focusing on my classes and studies, trying to keep my grades up and finding little things I could do to help the teachers as well as my studies. I had no interest in boys still; which always deemed me unusual to my family. I didn't care. I never cared; however my father apparently did.

Throughout highschool, he began comparing me to my mother a whole lot more that he used to. My mother: the woman he had claimed to hate all my life. My mother: someone he didn't want me involving myself with. Slowly I began to believe that it was his way of telling me that he hated me as well.

My father compared me to my brother; and although I cared for him, it isnt exactly easy being compared to the "broken child" of the family and ESPECIALLY not easy being compared to the inflictor of my sexual assault.

You would think that's as far as that would go. That things couldn't possibly take an uglier turn.

If only that were true...

Remember when I said I would stay behind for my studies? I would stay after school to try and fix my grades? Yeah... My father didn't think that's what I was doing. Despite me telling him I was Gay and despite the public shaming he inflicted on me when he dragged me from one friends home to the next; he truly believed that I was staying after school to hook up with boys. On many occasions, he accused me of whoring myself out. Ignore the fact that I couldn't stand anyone touching me or even invading my bubble-- this man thought I was out screwing all of my classmates. To make matters worse, this brought up a whole nother thing for him to compare me to.

Suddenly, I was being compared to his ex girlfriends. The same ones I had grown up seeing him with. Somehow, I... His daughter, was on the same level of sluttiness as however he viewed his past girlfriends to be.

It wasn't until I was eighteen that he finally had done away with me and kicked me out. he believed I would come back begging to live with him again (much like my brother had on many occasions) but I had bren done with his bullshit. I barely had any self esteem and really no self respect, but my partner and his family took me in and changed my world just enough to help me begin raising my self awareness. I didn't want to go back. On many occasions after that, my father reached out. He would tell me how he tried his best and try to apologize, but I dont rreally believe he knew what it was he was apologizing for. It took me three years to finally diconnect from him in my youth. I truly hated him and didn't want him effecting my life anymore. Even as life seemed to crumble around me; he wasn't someone I was willing to turn to again. many people have tried to express to me that my father loved and atill loves me. They've said that he cares and is broken without me in his life, but I don't really seem to care. After all of the pain and trauma he has caused me; I was still deemed as the little girl who broke HIS heart. The person who didn't have MY priorities straight and who neglects to reach out to HIM. I am made to be the bad guy in the situation. The disappointment of the family. But honestly, how can you be a disappointment to a family that you dont associate with? I never felt like family under their care. They never treated me like I was more than just an object for them to control and possess.