I've been talking about some of what happened in therapy and I've been having nightmares about being back there.
I wake up feeling a sinking sense of dread, feeling trapped, powerless, helpless, and full of anger.

Just to preface this, I was the one in my family who went head to head with my father. My fight/flight/freeze/fawn was very much set to "fight" with him. This is about my own experiences, not at all intended as a condemnation or judgment of those who reacted differently. We were all just trying to survive our own unique ****** situations, and there's no wrong way to survive.

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I hate that when I look back there’s nothing I can say I ought to have done differently

There were no mistakes to learn from

I can’t rewrite my nightmares with a tweak to the story to get a happy ending

There’s no way I could have changed the outcome, nothing left that I could have done

Of all the possible responses, the way I handled it was probably the best of my ****** miserable options

Placating him would have ended the rage-filled tirade du jour, but it would have broken my spirit, my pride, my dignity

Fighting back was the only thing I could do, even though it was futile

The fire in my veins was what told me that this wasn’t right, this wasn’t okay, I had worth, I deserved better, he was wrong, he did not have the right to treat me like this

And it burned

God, it ****ing burned

White hot rage from the inside out at the injustice of it all

Like fists pounding mercilessly endlessly against a wall of stone until my knuckles were bruised and bleeding but never stopping because if I stopped then he won and I couldn’t let him have that

The one thing I had left was the satisfaction that he wasn’t getting what he wanted. He could not take that from me.

There was nothing else in this world that he could not have, by bullying or intimidation or sheer determination. The man was brilliant and relentless.

The one thing he could not have was my respect, my deference, my unquestioning obedience

Anyone who treated me like a person, with kindness and respect, had no trouble receiving the same from me in return. It was only when it was demanded from me, as something to which he was entitled, that I would not give it.

Every bit of force that he put into breaking me only fanned the flames of my defiance

Appeasing him would not have saved me. I need look no further than my sister and mother for proof of that.

I could never win a single battle in that decade-long war of attrition. I guess you could say I won the war by running out the clock—I made it out, afterall—but it was at best a pyrrhic victory, if it was even a victory at all.

I told myself it was worth fighting for because I had to believe that something mattered. I had to believe that there was something left worth fighting for.

I don't want it to have been a waste.