Have posted about this before, but not the recent events so will do my best to be concise. I just need a vent and a handhold please.
I have been estranged from my elderly father for 3 years now.
My childhood was awful as he was an aggressive alcoholic at night, a stonewaller in the daytime and I would beg my parents for years to get divorced (this would turn him nasty towards me although he did once put a lock on my door while he was sober, to keep himself out later when he was drunk. It was no use as he would hammer on my door in the early hours anyway, or he’d chase my mum and she would hammer on it). I saw him slap my mum, try to push her down the stairs etc.
When I was a teenager he took two intentional overdoses in front of me. First was in front of me and my mum and I blocked most of this out as I was distressed. Second was in front of just myself (age 17) and it became very traumatic and public as he ran away to a park and the ambulance had to find us there. He was sectioned for this one. My mum got a divorce and I’ve had no support from anyone with my dad’s behaviour since, aside from my lovely DH.
There was another overdose years later when I was 25 and my father had a new partner. I didn’t witness it but it was my DH called 999 etc. And we visited him in hospital with toddler DS.
I was broken by these events and blamed myself as I had tried so hard to get my father to leave the house when I was a teenager, I felt I had driven him to want to take his life. I started to get panic attacks and intrusive thoughts.
My father has back pain and although he said he gave up alcohol he slowly began to abuse his codeine, he would use suicide threats to leverage my trauma and I did stupid things like sneaking codeine into a hospital ward for him among other things. It was like mind control. He would either be really nice to me, DH and the children or he would just rage at me. There were always drug-seeking demands on me.
Anyway three years ago it came to a head, and I had something of a mental breakdown triggered by him threatening suicide in front of one of my DC over something small and then texting me some offensive texts.
I couldn’t function and had to have time off work etc. I did message him a month later to say i had become ill, I said I was in therapy and asked him to also seek some help for the way he was feeling however he replied he wanted no more contact with us as I was using him as a scapegoat as I couldn’t cope with my job and didn’t see my DH enough (not true).
First two years of estrangement were peaceful with phone numbers blocked and I had lots of therapy, EMDR for trauma. I reconnected with my fathers brother who had estranged from the family when I was 4.
He was sorry to tell me that their own father, my grandfather, had done exactly the same thing.. was very violent but would take overdoses and one day he died of an overdose traumatising the family (their mother had terminal cancer and he did it on her last birthday). I have his death cert now as I wanted to see all this with my own eyes. So it seemed my father had adopted the same behaviours. Although difficult to process, this helped me release some of the blame I had put on myself that I had ‘driven’ my father to it, however it was hard to imagine how a father could want to put their only child through the same trauma they had suffered themselves. I also obviously felt devastated that my father had gone through that experience, although we are estranged I still have sympathy for his own experiences.
This last year has been hard for me, with my father’s neighbour (a complete stranger to us) turning up on our doorstep on our wedding anniversary, stuffing printed photos of my father through our door and sticking homemade stickers on Xmas cards addressed to my kids saying ‘no one should have no one’.
When questioned the neighbour said (among other nasty things) that she wanted our children to see the stickers so they will know not to abandon old people in the future. She has now been told not to contact us again.
However my aunt has now written me a hostile letter saying asking for details of all these alleged overdoses as she knows nothing of them, insinuates I’m lying. Says that my father went into the psychiatric ward voluntarily all those years ago, as my mum wanted him to, and they said there was nothing wrong with him. She wants evidence that it was him who cut contact with us not the other way around.
I’m shocked - he hasn’t told his sisters about his overdoses, not then and not now. (presumably because their own dad did the same and he is somewhat ashamed?) He hasn’t told people he cut contact with us, and that I had a breakdown. No wonder there is what feels like a harassment campaign starting against me. I must appear to be an awful daughter who doesn’t speak to her dad for no reason!
I have printed off some screenshots of texts as evidence and answered my aunts questions in a letter. I am hoping it will nip things in the bud. But I feel overwhelmed and unsafe. I’m jumping out of my skin when the phone or doorbell goes. I’ve been living in fright from my father’s actions my whole life, even when estranged. It’s just so painful, I guess my inner child is in pain, still wanting a loving dad like others have. And my poor kids need a mum who doesn’t live in fear. Part of me still feels like my dad will take his life and it will all be my fault.