Yes. They tried to do well for me, and I was always taken care of in terms of material things. That's really important.

But they hated each other from before I was born. They got married so that my mother could stay in the country, and then they both had too many emotional problems to make it work. My dad didn't want to have kids with her, and she had two abortions, but decided to keep me. She would reserve her rages for my dad at first. He worked a lot. When I got to be 7 or so, more of an individual, her rages started really coming at me as well. There was also the flip side - the silent treatment. She would fly into a rage - sometimes anything would set her off - and then she wouldn't look at me or talk to me for a few days.

They separated when I was 11 and divorced when I was 13, which was a relief. Unfortunately, the rages/silent treatment also peaked around that time. During the year when I was 13, three days was the longest stretch of time where my mother wasn't angry at me.

Also unfortunately, she chose to completely turn me against my dad. To this day I don't fully trust him because I didn't connect with him early on and I still have no idea how much of what she said is true.

My dad got it together more and is really trying with his second family, which is great. My mother downward spiraled. She's now one of those people who hates everything and everyone, completely friendless and alone.

In adult life, she borrowed $40,000 from me over about 5 years (from when I was about 21-26) and would get furious at me if I refused to lend her everything she wanted. As with most people in that age range, I really didn't have the money for her most of the time, but she didn't understand that. Finally, she sold her house and did actually pay me $25,000 back a couple of months ago, which was surprising but wonderful. I still have no interest in developing a relationship with her. We're not officially no contact, but it's close to that, because she's not particularly interested in having a relationship with me either - once she stopped needing money, she stopped calling me.

Not as bad as for some others, but yes, my childhood was a bit screwed up.