My parent rejected me. I feel it is a deep trauma to go through. And that maybe if people who have been through similiar, chat about it here, we can help each other.
My dad wasnt in my life much as a child. He lived in a different country.
I decided to go and see him as an adult. He didn't answer my letters. I should have got the message from that. But from a place of deep yearning I decided to go and turn up at his door.
Like a lot of people in these circumstances, I naively thought that he would be delighted to see me. I was just reading a book about marilyn monroe actually. She also had a father like this. He wasn't in her life. She went to visit him, thinking that he would be happy to see her. He told her he didn't want to see her again.
When I went to see my dad, he was polite but very cold. While I was there he told me that he did want to see me again.
When I returned home he sent me a letter saying that he had changed his mind and he didn't want to see me again.
It devastated me at the time and I had a nervous breakdown after it. I was only in my twenties at the time. I remember after my visit to him I couldn't sleep, I began feeling very anxious. And I began crying at work and I couldn't focus. And my work signed me off for stress leave. I feel sad that I went through that at only age 26. I didn't try to see him again.
Still now , age 40, I feel the trauma of it. I have nightmares about seeing him and him rejecting me.
The trauma I feel is:
The unfairness of it all. I work with two younger women, and they both have dad's. Their dads are great to them and drive them places and care about them. Why couldn't I have had that. It's not fair.
The trauma of life without a dad. Him abandoning me made my life so much harder in every way.
The deep rejection of it. Your parents are supposed to love you. My dad didn't love me so it makes me feel totally worthless.
Thinking about the unfairness of it all upsets me all the time .
You could say I could be over it all by now. But I was just reading a book by a man called Wayne dyer.
He said he had a similiar dad. His dad abandoned him, it made the family go into total poverty, and Wayne went into foster care.
Wayne wrote that he was eaten up with anger and bitterness at his father for his whole life. And that it was destroying waynes life. Until he eventually went to visit his dad's grave, and somehow managed to forgive him.
I can't seem to forgive my dad. But my anger and bitterness at my dad , is destroying me..
I was wondering how other people who were abandoned by a parent feel?