Yes, until v. Recently to be honest. I have cut contact with my dad completely a few months ago. I have asked for space until tomorrow from my mum after a recent incident (trying to undermine my parenting and putting my children at risk then dismissing me, trying again to upset contact arrangements and bad outing me in the community) I received an abusive email from my dad over it "mam is sad" about how crap I am basically and blaming me for stuff they have made up like not being able to go and visit my sister "as we do every year" except they don't, haven't for two years, told her they weren't planning to visit (she was glad) a few weeks before this, she has moved to a different city and what they were talking about was picking her up from uni when term ended in oct but no I am somehow to blame them not going to visit her in her new city as they apparently do every year.
I just finished the Susan forward book last night. I still feel very afraid that there are a lot of huge gaps in my memories of childhood and a lot of strange behaviour of my own as a preteen and teen which makes me afraid of what may have happened to me and i'm not sure i can work through it if there is stuff i've forgotten. I was sexually abused in high school by a classmate, I don't know if it was that but I think the weird behaviour (not washing, refusing to change underwear etc) predates that. That's what frightens me, I can't remember anything like that though, I have v.early memories of preschool age, I can't remember much of primary school at all.
I do remember being hit often as a child, my dad's absence and extreme volatility and the unpredictability it created as my mum tried to deflect it from her, feeling like my childhood/adolescence was all fighting back, being dragged around by my hair, having my door beaten in when I put locks on it, being told I was not depressed when i asked for help and not to be stupid because they saw people (doctors) who were really depressed, being humiliated all the time, comments about my breasts and periods openly discussed in front of me, being always told what I was interested in/good at and never asked. Running away all the time.
When I was depressed as a teenager my mum bought a bottle of vodka to "help me sleep" then made out to be bad for drinking it... Fairly typical of her as she tried desperately hard to be liberal when she wasnt. Such high expectations from them and when I failed to meet them complete abandonment in my mid teens which I responded to by drinking a lot, had periods of homelessness, was often raped and abused by men, ended up with xp and then having ds changed my life because my instinct to protect him changed everything I felt about my life. I'd already identified that it was not right. I'd told a lot of people who never helped me because of my parents' status in the community and who said things like "every teenager hates their parents, you'll grow out of it" I also told someone I had been sexually abused at home according to my parents who had been told but nothing was done about it, I don't remember saying it at all or anything about why I might have said it but it unnerves me now. In my heart I feel it wasn't true but I don't think I can trust that completely.
I had a lot of crappy boyfriends because I was desperate to get away and had learned a load of crap about relationships that still seems foggy...
I found the book hard to read, the chapter I identified most with was the one on sexual abuse but it is the type of abuse I have experienced regularly in my life from age 11 to 22 so unsurprising I suppose anyway. Feel lost ATM, it is very hard to think of confronting this stuff and inevitably losing most of my family who would side with my parents.
Have found out things about dh that have badly affected my feelings about him too and don't know where to put them because I am dealing with separating from my parents as a priority (the children are IMO in immediate risk from them). It is a bit of a mess but I have successfully asserted that we are having Christmas in our own home, seeing dh's lovely parents and my sisters and brother and I have not caved to blackmail over their "sadness" about this.
Sorry epic thread steal... (Coward to start own thread or go on stately homes thread)