My dad died at the end of August after quite a long illness. We had a very turbulent relationship and at times I'm ashamed to admit that I doubted whether I loved him at all, although since he died I realise that I actually loved him more than I knew.
To cut a long story short he was an alcoholic and when I was a child he was very abusive and he left my Mum when i was 17(I'm 36 now). Since then he tried to make up for his behaviour and at times we got on quite well, but never stopped drinking. The last year of his life he got quite heavily into drugs and started mixing with some horrible junkies/alcoholics and so I cut myself off from him and didn't see him at all, which I now feel terribly guilty about.
Not only this, but the day before he died I had an accident and broke both arms, so my df has had to look after me and 2 ds's, and help arrange the funeral while trying to cope with recently losing his best friend. He's lovely and he's been brilliant but he's one of these people that when the pressure gets to him he goes out and gets drunk. Although he's not an alcoholic by any means I've been flying off the handle at him and accusing him of all sorts of things - I think his drinking is triggering my pent up anger towards my dad.
It all came to a head last weekend and df suggested I go to anger management to control my temper, but I don't think that's the problem. Dad dying has opened up a whole can of worms for me but I'm scared that this is just the tip of the iceberg and if I go to a counsellor a whole lot more problems will surface. I've spoken to my Mum and her opinion is that counselling can sometimes do more harm than good, but I don't want my relationship with df to suffer any more as I love him to bits.
Sorry this is a bit of a long ramble but I don't know which way to turn...