It was my friends' reactions to my tales of "Well, I gobbed off at my dad, so he broke a stool over his knee, then went upstairs, broke all my bedroom furniture, turned my bed upside down, dragged me upstairs by the ponytail and shut me in my bedroom with the handle taken off the door, meaning I had to jump out of the window, and wandered off to a village 6 miles away, to be found by the police3 after I placed a call to childline from a phonebox. He bought me a bar of chocolate to say sorry."
that made me start to realise that although my father was far from the horrible "A child named It" parent, he was capable of being no more mature than an 18 month old baby if he wasn't getting his own way.
I realised also that he could control his temper when he bruised my arm when I was 17, and I told him very calmly that he would only be getting away with it for another few weeks, as soon I would be 18 and would prosicute him, at which point he would lose his job, his house, and most of his police friends. He NEVER raised a hand to me again.
In a way, that made me feel worse - that he clearly could have controlled his temper for all the years before, and had decided I wasn't worth the effort.
Don't get the impression that I hated him, or that I was unloved. I had, in balance, a nice childhood. He should have worked harder at keeping his temper though.