It seems that it's really hard to tell when you're being abused during the abuse. I'd like to vent here, so please be careful reading this as it may be triggering.

Growing up, my dad was very harsh. My family thought it was normal. He would yell and make threatening gestures or break things, or throw things towards my mom. I never once knew this a control mechanism, but I just thought he angered easy, and that's how dads are. He also hated my mothers entire family and said they were scheming to break them up, and that we needed to stay away from them. He would get very angry when they decided to visit. Sure, my mom's family weren't great family, but I doubt they were scheming anything. He blamed my mom's running to her family once and awhile as her family's fault, although that wasn't true. My mom wasn't raised very well, and on top of that, was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder and depression. I truly thought as a kid that my mom's parents were bad people, and that my dad was a great hero. Even more than other kids thought of their dads as heroes. He liked how I spied on mom for him, and any word said that was derogatory against him, ANYTHING, would result in him screaming at the top of his lungs how bad we were. My family thought he was being honest, and I certainly did.

My dad's excuse to return to my mom every fight was "for us kids." Sure, so he could make us cry while he yelled and yelled. At the time, I thought he was honest, again. Especially since he said that any bad thought about him was extremely disloyal and trashy.

When my parents broke up, he became so much more abusive to me. I started to realize at this time that what he was doing was abuse, but I thought since no one loved me that it didn't matter if I was abused at all. He started touching me too, which I was surprisingly blank about. After spending hours after hours every night yelling at me and throwing things at me, I didn't think the touching was so bad. He was always asking me if I loved mom, and if I did, I should be thrown out. But, to cover himself, he said it was completely fine for me to love my mom. So, I knew that if I admitted I loved her to him, he would yell at me and throw me out. Unless friends were around. I just had to be careful I didn't show loyalty towards her. He kept accusing me of saying bad things about him to other people as well...

He made me be mean to my mom, telling me I had to or else I wasn't "loyal" and would be "thrown out," and that any good daughter would stick to one parent's side... So I was made to call my mom and say mean things to her. She was no angel, and truly was mean to him. She didn't care about me, and I felt let down by her. She and my siblings just called him very often to tell him what a horrible person and father he was. And who did he take out his anger over these calls on? Me! I realized he was replacing my mom with me, but he had much less respect for me, so he was even harsher with me than with her. He had a serious drinking problem as well. In order to deal with it, I had to come up with a variety of "manipulative" behaviors and actions, like mentioning something he liked at the right moment, or not doing or doing a lot of things, in order to keep safe.

The next day after fights, he only acted like I had been lightly angry with him the night before or something. He was sour towards me. Whenever I tried bringing up these fights, he blamed it on me, saying I deserved it. He didn't care. He knew he would get away with it. Not like my mom was going to check on me...

Well, I never realized he was abusive until I was older and it was getting worse. My mom is attending therapy now, and I'm surprised that she is. That's a really good decision of hers. I'm not sure if the rest of my family realizes he was abusive from the start.

Thanks for listening. I feel better letting that out.