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WWYD? {potentially very triggering, & very long regardless}

52 replies

lindyf · 14/01/2016 00:44

This is all going to sound very, very “A Child Called It”//dramatic because several horrible things happened to me at once. My life has been largely uneventful apart from these couple of things, though!

My mum died when I was 8. After that, my grandparents abused me. Happened when I was staying with them. It only happened a few times and I told my dad almost straightaway. Thankfully he believed me. Less thankfully, it was because…well, because it happened to him, too, when he was younger, practically all his childhood. They’d never had a good relationship in my memory – we moved away from where they lived and though they kept up sporadic contact, I hardly ever saw them. I’ve visited the Stately Homes thread and, although it didn’t happen to me, most of that sounds familiar, the mind games they used to play on him etc.

I probably would be dead or supremely messed up now if not for him. Seriously. Like if he’d made a thread here about me back when I was in my terrible teens, everyone would’ve been saying I was the most abusive Satan child who ever lived and needed to leave/be exorcised. I stole (a lot) from him, I lied to him (a lot), I once kicked him down a flight of stairs (and no I’m still not sure how I bloody did it). I used to throw stuff at the walls, trashed our house every other day, picked so many fights…Somehow I never ended up getting seriously injured – I mean, again – or hooked on drugs or anything, and I think it was probably thanks to his patience & compassion etc.
I mean obviously it was the ramifications of what had happened to me coming out but given it happened to him too…he was just a great dad.

The part I’ve left out? When I was younger, he told me not to tell anyone about the abuse. It always kind of made sense to me but now it particularly makes sense to me – he was a single dad {well he always has been since my DM died but you know what I mean}, pretty young when he had me, said he always felt paralysed with guilt, didn’t know what to do, afraid of losing custody of me, knew we could move and we did. He has a good job and he’s also financially supported me for most of my life. {I have a strong suspicion they brainwashed him to be terrified of “official channels” for pretty obvious
reasons but he never told me that.}

Fast forward to the present day. I’m pg!! YAY! I’m going to have a baby. I can’t wait, I’ve wanted to have children so badly since almost forever. Nobody knows what happened to me, nobody does except my DF & a couple of counsellors. They didn’t know the big detail about my DF, though, just told them he didn’t know.

Well – until I told my best friend. I told her everything. I don’t know, I guess I just felt like somebody else should ‘know’, pregnancy hormones & whatnot.
She freaked out & told me I couldn’t let my DF babysit my soon-to-be DS/DD. She basically said he was a danger to children. Obviously I didn’t take that well at all and we ended up having a huge row. She said a good father would never do something like that and that I’d been screwed up from what had happened, so I couldn’t function normally.

I don’t know. I don’t even know where the right place would be to post this. I know how dramatic this sounds, btw. We’re best friends and I know she wouldn’t tell anybody else. It also sounds stupidly limp to say AIBU. So…WWYD?

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SeoulSista · 14/01/2016 00:48

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lindyf · 14/01/2016 00:50

Soulsista because he knew what had happened and did 'nothing.' My argument was it'd already been done (not by him), & there was no taking it back. She said he should've done more & she was worried someone who was capable of that could be capable of harm against my DD/DS. I said obviously not, but she said of course you wouldn't think that, he's your DF, and you've been "protecting" him all these years (which I haven't been imo. But. you know. pregnancy and all...)

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