[LostANDUnfound]

My home was never peaceful. As far back as I can remember my father's obsessive drinking caused hostility and even violence in our home. My mother has always been in a wheelchair and he would hit her anyway. I was a fat baby, a fat kid, a fat teen, and I am a fat adult. My weight was one of my fathers favorite subjects to insult me with. I didn't have to deal as much with being hit like my mom did but the verbal abuse started early and only ended because I stopped speaking to him as an adult.
One of my sisters is emotional, the other one became a drunk and drug addict (though she has been clean for a few years now), and then there is me. A woman that seems to be completely devoid of emotion other than anger. I am numb most of the time simply going through the motions of living and earning a living. I'm an introvert and being an executive chef forces me to deal with people more than I would like which causes me to feel drained at the end of the day.
After day after day, year after year of being called everything but a child of God by my father, and then having to also deal with my sister's raging addiction years it becomes hard not to believe your parent when they tell you how worthless you are.
I excelled in school getting the best grades, getting awards, even graduating a year early all because I thought maybe if I worked hard enough to make my father proud, it would be an incentive to make him stop drinking. It of course did not work.
I know things were hard for my mom. She was handicapped and dealing with a mean drunk husband who was either locked up for DWIS or home too drunk to help support our family. She also had to deal with my sister who also became an addict and was not anymore pleasant than my father.
In all that, because I was the quiet kid that did not get into trouble, I fell through the cracks. I don't even remember getting many hugs when I was a kid which is probably why I don't like a to be hugged very often now. On the other hand sometimes all I want is a hug. I even remember getting my report card full of A's and my mother was looking at my sisters report card full of F's and she of course got attention because of it. My mom glanced at mine and said "thats great" and then went back to dealing with my sister.
To this day I avoid relationships with people because if my father could not stand me, if I cannot love myself, how could I possibly ask anyone else to love me? I have been burned enough people that I am careful about who I trust and I tend to have an inability to forgive people that deliberately do something dishonorable to me. I have had relationships but have yet to fall in love. I have no idea what it is supposed to feel like but I dont recall feeling anything that could be mistaken for it. I get over a break up very quickly because generally I am not emotionally invested. Maybe my fall in love gene is broken. That is what I tend to tell people. So the gist is I feel nothing. I have an inability to relate to an emotional person because of this. I can however feel anger, and since I tend to squash it, but it will boil over if I feel someone is critisizing me to much. To contradict myself even further, I am more comfortable with being insulted than I am with receiving a compliment. Pretty screwed up huh?
A big part of me feels ashamed to let any of this get to me because there are people that suffered physical or sexual abuse while the majority of mine was the verbal variety. But there is no doubt in my mind that my anger towards my father is affecting my life and I'm tired of it.
I am sorry for rambling but I guess I needed to just get my thoughts out and I will end with that for now.

[Gr3tta]

Verbal and emotional abuse can be every bit as bad as physical or sexual abuse. You don't need to compare your story to others. I am very sorry you were hurt so badly. It makes perfect sense that you learned to "squash" your emotions.
I hope you will be able to work on surrounding yourself with healthier relationships now, and work on being able to feel your own emotions more.
Thank you for sharing this.

[carrie_ann]

hey there

you've been thru a lot, plz don't dismiss it as not as important as the abuse anyone else has suffered?

welcome to pc and i hope the support you get here can help?

[athena.agathon]

I've been reading a zine called 'support' and it struck me that this line from it applies to you (applies to all of us, I think!):

'Never compare it. Everyone I've ever met tries to invalidate what happened to them by saying it was worse for someone else. What happened to you was real. What happened to you was terrible. What happened to you counts. Don't belittle it."

Also, witnessing your dad abuse your mom and constant alcoholic chaos are scary, traumatic experiences for a child on their own...aside from him constantly telling you how ugly, fat, worthless, unlovable you are (which is bad enough).

[MyFathersGirl]

Any type of abuse is devastating. Verbal and emotional abuse aren't less, they are just different types. You have been through a lot and it's no wonder you wouldn't want to feel.