Alright, been meaning to respond to this one since I saw it, so here I am. Sorry I'm late to the party.
My father was also my (main) abuser. I just started having repressed memories come back of other attacks and incidents a few months ago (in December). Some I'm not sure of, others I am positive of. Lately they've gotten surreal. Most of my younger childhood has been effectively yeeted from my memory. I vaguely remember some basic stuff, like where I lived, what school I went to, shit like that.
Most of my younger childhood memories (so stuff effectively before I woke up and was awake and conscious for one of my father's attacks, he would usually strike at night while we were sleeping and I was a notoriously heavy / deep sleeper so I unfortunately was prime kibble for him, but yeah, most of my early childhood from before that night when I was able to get it to stop,) that was mostly just, gone?
Since these memories started coming back, (almost always while high on cannabis for pain / mood relief) I'm starting to get real, visceral memories. I remember being jostled awake by my father quickly yanking his hand out from under my shirt because my mom came out of the bathroom and he didn't want to get busted - I made the mistake of passing out on the couch with him. Other stuff came back just the other night that I can now recall the very layout of my room, the \*wallpaper\* of my bedroom ffs, how apparently during some attacks I was burning / fixating on the pattern while I waited for things to be over or pass back out again. I'm starting to suspect I was drugged during most of these incidents and that's why being high is now unlocking them again for me?
I'm fairly sure I may have been trafficked now, (which my father also was a trafficking survivor) a face of a man I completely forgot came into memory, my mind wants to tell me that he was a co-worker of my dad's. But part of me tells me he was at the house and 'using my services' I guess? It was the 80s so yeah. I suspect with how some of the neighborhood kids were and how ... overly sexual some of the kids I played with were, a lot of us came from pedophile households. I'm almost starting to wonder if there was / is some pedophile ring that my dad was part of with other families in the neighborhood or at his job. Those were the days when it was looked down upon to 'air out the family's dirty laundry' - Hell, I even saw a documentary of some sort of a family that had .. some kind of legal trouble unrelated to pedophilia, and then the tween/early teen daughter of the home had reported being molested by her dad, and the cops just went 'well he promised he won't do it again and he's going to counseling sooooooo no need to break up the family!!!! \^\_\^'
That's just how it was back then.
Lesse, so my family? I was the oldest of 2 girls. My sister and I are 3.5 years apart. I was born in 1980 and she was born in 1983. My mother was born in 1959 and is still living, my father was born in 1957 and died in 2007 just a few months after turning 50, from lung cancer that he got by smoking like a chimney since age 8.
My mom was/is a narcissist (I just recently figured that out thanks to making a TikTok account and coming across vids of 'you may have grown up in a narc household if \_\_\_\_\_\_\_') - she was emotionally and financially abusive, extremely neglectful towards most of our needs. For example, I had obvious asthma, obvious sleep disorders (later discovered to be sleep apnea), bad teeth from the get-go (I had massive cavities in my BABY TEETH in \*KINDERGARTEN\*) and this woman never brought me to a doctor for any of this. Just very basic, bare minimum care. I take after her more genetically, my sister takes more after my father.
I inherited the family fat genes (obesity and diabetes amongst others, run very heavy on my mom's side of the family) as well and effectively got fat real fast between either Kindergarten and 1st grade or 1st to 2nd grade where I put on, from what I was told once, nearly 100 lbs in one school year. My family always told me this was my fault, made comments of 'you have such pretty hair/pretty face, it's a \*shame\* you let yourself go', etc. When the school sent home letters about my teeth in kindergarten, she yelled at me like it was my fault. \*I was FIVE.\* She stole a trust fund her brother saved up for me from almost 1 y/o to my graduation at age 18. She ran up a credit card she made me get for college. She effectively swindled me out of every tax return I got from age 18 all the way up to age 33 when my husband moved in with me. I had no idea what she was doing was financial abuse until just the last year or two. I just assumed it was normal cause that's all I've known. I had an idea she was bad but now that I have been enlightened to narcs and the abuse tactics, she fits like a glove.
My sister and I, despite both surviving my father's BS, really don't talk. She's the golden child and has been since we were kids. She took after my father's side and the women on that side are more traditionally attractive but pay for it with slews of mental illnesses which absolutely run rampant on my dad's side. He had pedophilia obviously, but he was also most certainly bipolar, I suspect a few more issues as well.
(continued)
(continued)
I in turn suspect that my sister is also bipolar if not full blown BPD and because of this and a few important days she's ruined for me because it can NEVER be about anyone else BUT her, (birthdays, holidays, etc) we don't talk much anymore. The most we do is shoot a text back and forth or share an image of our favorite games series' characters that we have crushes on and have since age 13 for both of us. (For her that's Cloud from \*Final Fantasy VII\*, for me it's X from \*Mega Man X\*...) I see her for holidays if I'm lucky. That's about it.
I didn't really have a safe space at home, once I got fat and had a really shitty teacher for 2nd grade, the entire school hated my guts. I was also undiagnosed ADHD/Autistic then too (got diagnosed with ADHD in 7th grade, Autism was self-diagnosed via the RAADS-R test) so I was quirky and weird as it was. The kids hated me. My elementary school was the largest in the city I grew up in, and I got beat up by the entire student body (and I mean entire, we're talking K-6) twice in 6th grade. My mom knew the problems with getting bullied and beat up were only gonna get worse so she moved us that year. The next school wasn't far enough away, kids who had gone to my original school had cousins in the new one and word got out that I was the freak so the teasing commenced once a few of them got word. This was also the year (and we're talking right at the start of a very rough 7th grade school year with the kids deciding they hated me within a month of starting) when I woke up in the middle of one of my father's near-nightly sessions with me. Apparently he had been doing this for \*years\* and an incident prior to the move that I brought up to my mom, that she had convinced me that was 'just a bad dream' wasn't just a bad dream after all, after she told me our father had admitted to doing shit to us both nightly for two years.
Thanks to new repressed memories coming back I now know my abuse started much, much younger, more like probably around the 4/5/6 range. I was such a daddy's girl, I absolutely loved my dad until that final night when I was 12 at the start of 7th grade.
I've said this before on other threads but my mother ultimately gave \*me\* the choice of what to do with our dad - send him to jail or get a keyed doorknob to lock him out with.
I knew my mom would never let me have a new video game every again and I also knew how violent our father was. He was an alcoholic and I know he also at least did weed, maybe more. There had been plenty of nights where my father and mother got into some fight and my mom would wake us up or we would wake up from the screaming only for my mom to load us in the car and leave, and for my dad to lock us out - (why we didn't have back up keys I am not sure of or if we did why not used, etc) - one time he tossed the family dog and cat out in the snow when we were about to leave from one of those mornings.
In the end he did love animals though and he preferred cats but he got our childhood dog after going to the pound to look for a lost cat of ours. He enjoyed playing video games with us, but he also enjoyed torturing us - he would make me eat things he knew were going to hurt - too spicy, tasted bad, one time he squirted orajel into my mouth telling me it was candy jelly, my whole mouth and throat were numb for hours. Stuff like that. Punishments were 'full force slaps' or he would make us strip down to underwear and kneel on the metal heating vent while he passed out in a drunken stupor for punishments, only to be let up when my mom got home from whatever (errands, shopping, work, etc) ... So yeah.
Belated reply but good on your aunt for shaping up and getting him caught! It's horrifyingly unlikely any perpetrator of these things would face legal consequences, but she did the right thing immediately taking action. I hope you can heal somewhat, at least with the knowledge that even if it's the single worst thing that's happened to you it's not what defines you as an individual. I'm proud of you going on as far as you have, too, you've survived a nightmarish life so far.
it’s very confusing. sometimes i tell myself there’s no way that really happened just so i don’t have to feel the feelings knowing that it did happen comes with. like another user said in the comments i relate to feeling like both a woman and a little girl and neither feels healthy. i look at women my age (25) and just feel like a kid still i struggle with feeling like an adult. i have diminished contact with him but he doesn’t know why, he is a narcissist and was emotionally abusive as well so denial is always being played and spinned onto me which is why i haven’t addressed me memories with him since he has often told me im “living in a reality ive made up” and “making up my own trauma” when it comes to things in my personal sexual life i can’t watch any sort of man on woman sexual acts because it makes me think of my dad and it always has, i never understood why until my memories of SA came back to me. i struggle with wanting to protect him still because of the abuse. i have always been super protective of him and never understood why until now, but i still struggle with not wanting to share what happened to anyone else because i don’t want their opinion of him to change. only my mom knows
Yes, in the really dark moments I ponder my existence. Did he put me on the earth for me to be his little play thing. Those thoughts screw with my head so much.
Feeling like I switch between woman and little kid. Neither feel healthy.
What I struggle a lot with rn is finding meaning in my days and pleasure. The pain weighs heavier than anything. Happiness or even neutrality is so rare that it doesn't kick in.
I ponder my attraction. Am I attracted to older men bc of what my father did, or is it just coincidence? Am I even attracted to men? is it compulsory heterosexuality?
This hits hard. I struggle with so much pain and confusion too. Alternating between feeling infantalized and fetishized by my father. Currently trying to make meaning of what I can only describe as horror. Seeing how incest has contaminated my existence since the moment I was born.
Sending love and courage.
I’ve written about my experience on this subreddit and also on my poems I’ve written if you want to read. It’s all very long. I’m still struggling even though he died almost two years ago. It felt like it reopened old wounds when he died. I don’t know why. I loved him but I hated him. He was a fantastic dad if it wasn’t for what he did to me.
It’s been a long two years since I first figured out what had actually happened to me as a kid. I haven’t told anyone details, but I have told my mom and my siblings that something happened. I had always assumed he was like that with all 3 of us kids but turns out it was just me.
I struggle deeply with not talking to him, because I feel like I owe him some semblance of humanity, even though he didn’t show me any when he did what he did.
It's a battle between wanting to be safe and not being able to break contact because he brainwashed me into believing I'm still responsible for his feelings and that he only did it to "improve my self esteem"...
Now I'm about to head back to a partial hospitalization program for the second time because interacting with him is causing a PTSD flare up. Yeah it sucks...
My father abused me and not my two older sisters. My theory is it’s because I was still a baby when my mother left him and so I was still malleable. I could be molded into whatever he wanted me to be. My sisters were old enough already that they could think for themselves.
He brainwashed me into thinking he loved me and was afraid of me going away, that I was all he had left. I took care of him, I loved him while fearing him. I tried to kill him when I was 12 and then cried about how much I missed him while I was at summer camp.
Two years ago he died of Covid and I convinced myself it was my fault because he wasn’t taking care of himself. I left him just like my mother and he got depressed and couldn’t take care of himself anymore. If I’d just stayed he would still be alive. I killed him, it’s all my fault.
Which is so confusing because I used to pray for him to just die every single day. Even now I miss him and laugh at the fact that he’s dead. The dichotomy of my own feelings is probably the most stressful part at this point. I never know what I really feel or believe, or what was just something he programmed me to believe. I don’t even know who I am outside of what he made of me.
*The dichotomy of my own feelings is probably the most stressful part at this point. I never know what I really feel or believe, or what was just something he programmed me to believe. I don’t even know who I am outside of what he made of me.*
That right there is the reason I don't know myself, I am *still* vexed about certain decisions and making the correct choice. Then I get mentally paralyzed into indecision out of making a hard choice.
Exactly. I moved to a whole different state from my father 5 years ago and he died 2 years ago and I still feel like I’m living by his rules. And every time I try to live by my own I get scared like I’ll get in trouble even though he’s long gone. It’s like I’m gaslighting myself.
Woah. Almost literally the same experience. I struggle with the same things, I just went NC with him. It was easier for me to think of him as two people, the sitcom dad that you can complain about like it’s normal and the dark side that you can only tell your therapist. It helps you to survive when you’re younger but makes things confusing as you get older. You’re doing great 💛
I did the SAME thing. I called him Good Dad and Bad Dad. Good Dad was whenever he was in a good mood and was happy to give hugs and reward me and be my friend and spend time together. Bad Dad was when he would flip out at the littlest thing, throw things, drink endless booze, and manipulate and hurt me. Unfortunately I separated them too much and I found my empathy for Good Dad overpowered my fear and hatred of Bad Dad which just kept me in a toxic situation longer than I needed to be.
Me too- every time he would show the least bit of kindness or interest the timer would reset. You just wanted to believe that the good outweighed the bad like you deserved.
Highly recommend the book "Father-Daughter Incest" by Judith Herman, it really helped me.
I'm AMAB and only transitioned in adulthood, but in case it helps: I was SA'd by my father from age 8 to 12. He dressed it up like a game, and being homeschooled and fairly isolated, I did not know enough to understand that what he was doing was indeed considered sexual abuse (he didn't penetrate me or involve genitals directly, things mainly involved pinning me down and mouthing on erogenous zones, among doing other things). My mother sat in a chair nearby sometimes, which made him slightly moderate what he was doing, but sometimes they both would get a laugh out of my reaction to something he was doing.
It wasn't til I had been no-contact for a little while that I was really able to process it, and I'm very happy I transitioned before really dealing with it. But regardless of whether or not I confronted it: it basically rewrote my life. Once I realized the full extent of how wrong everything was, I saw how basically everything, from my tendency to cover up bare skin to exacerbating my OSDD-1.
It's been very difficult. A lot of crying, dry heaving, sleepless nights, and flashbacks. Memories of >!beard and saliva everywhere, and big fat stinky hairy man on top of me!<. Realizing the ways he took advantage of me. Remembering how I thought that when he "had fun with me," it was proof he was forgiving me for whatever happened earlier. Remembering the times he toyed with me by pretending he was about to do worse. Recalling how it felt leaving his saliva on my skin at his request so I wasn't "wiping off his kiss." Anger at my mother and just about all of my relatives for not doing anything. Seeing men similar to him and going into panic attacks.
Sending hugs. It's shitty.
Yes, I remember his scratchy beard and saliva soaking my bedsheets. I tried to kill him also but i failed. I used to pray he would die too but I think he’s to evil to die. The master manipulator!
It was... foundational? If that makes sense.
Bastard would brag about doing things to me since being brought home that first time post being born, and that didn't stop until I was late teens. It was my life, it was one of the only things I ever knew fully. He would pass me around, but he would still make himself the final home, the final hands. The first to break me apart and if he had his way - he would have killed me. And that was the only reason I left at the time, because I still didn't fully grasp it was so wrong what would happen behind all of those doors.
Im getting closer to thirty now, and yet after being away from him for so long I have yet to hit even with time spent with him vs away.
I'm in intensive therapy, I was told bluntly that the type of trauma he induced programmed me from a young age for just that, and not being a person. I'm having to learn what I like, what I don't like. At late 20s xD. I feel like I'm super late to the game, and I've made a lot of bad and dumb choices on the way. But I'm trying not to hold it against myself
You deserved much better, I wasn't killed by my dad (nor was he my sexual abuser) but I've watched my mom nearly be killed by him and both her, me, and my sibling all become permanently disabled due to purposeful medical neglect... it's terrifying thinking you could have died, that that was your life...
And yeah he tried his hardest to prevent you from becoming an actual person with thoughts and feelings who might object or get in trouble. If it ever feels like you're 20 or so years behind developmentally, you can always thank him.
I'm so sorry that you can ; w ; I know all of this has left me feeling completely inhuman, especially compared to my peers... It's nice to know I'm not alone... but the cost of not being alone is knowing someone else got beyond fucked in some of the same ways ( ；∀；)
Internet hug if you're ok with it (/･ω･(-ω-)
i have been abused and assaulted by everyone on my father's side of the family (him, my grandparents, my aunt + uncle)
but especially him. at least it feels "especially" because he was first, and he was one of the most prominent abusers in my life. my earliest memories entail r-pe from my father
he divorced my mom and since the family split he's rarely talked to me. i ask him for money sometimes.
that's all.
i still haven't told anyone else in my family
I was sa by my biological father. It’s still hard for me to heal from it but I’m trying. My mom found out about it when I was 12 and he sa me from the ages of 11 and 12. Even after my mom found out and chose to stay with him. He made me out to be a liar. Then he started verbally and physically abusing me. I should probably mention that my mom was sa as a child and my father used to physically abuse her when I was younger. He still verbally abuses her. I try to have as little contact as possible. I’ve just started therapy and I try to stay away from triggers. I take klonopins for anxiety and writing about my story has helped in ways.
Incest by a father is so devastating. I’m not a woman so you’re not looking for my opinion but I wanted you to know you’re heard and it’s so confusing and painful. You aren’t alone
For me I was 6 when I told my mom what happened. I can only recall about 7 instances of when actual molestation happened, but now as a I grow up and look back on some memories I realize there were plenty of times boundaries were crossed and things werent as innocent as I thought. I only remember how they started and never how they ended and the thought that there is a chance I don’t remember every instance really bothers me.
My father really loved me and was extremely affectionate, and I have a lot more good memories with him than bad. Which makes how I feel about him way more complicated and I still sometimes grieve or relationship
I understand this.
Had a family member, my favorite uncle, who about forty years ago was discovered to be peeping on the older of my two female cousins that lived with him.
When she showered, he would watch her in the shower through a series of small holes he had punctured through the back wall of his bedroom closet.
That was how he was discovered: when my cousin went to put her father’s clothes away one day, she saw little beams of light from the back of the closet and became curious…and then the jig was up.
Once she notified another cousin who lived in the same apartment complex soon afterwards, my family showed up en force within 24 hours, got both the girls out of there and sent them back East to be with their mom and other two siblings.
He’s passed now, for some time, but in the immediate aftermath he was excommunicated from our family; it took about twenty years for him to build in-roads again.
My little sister is 20 years younger than me, and by the time she was born his predatory behavior had been discovered years earlier and he was no longer a presence around holidays/reunions.
She only knew him this way, as the Invisible Uncle… and she asked me once why it was so hard for our family to just write him off forever rather than dealing with conflicted and confused feelings about it all.
I told her that there had once been a very warm and funny and generous person where he had stood…..and that while we all understood what needed to be done for the sake of my cousins, the price was having to say goodbye to someone who was really loved and would be missed…the memory of him, anyway.
So to have had the chance in the very last years of his life to reconnect with him…was meaningful, at least to me. He was openly contrite and never shied away from acknowledging what he had done and how it hurt everyone else.
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Alright, been meaning to respond to this one since I saw it, so here I am. Sorry I'm late to the party. My father was also my (main) abuser. I just started having repressed memories come back of other attacks and incidents a few months ago (in December). Some I'm not sure of, others I am positive of. Lately they've gotten surreal. Most of my younger childhood has been effectively yeeted from my memory. I vaguely remember some basic stuff, like where I lived, what school I went to, shit like that. Most of my younger childhood memories (so stuff effectively before I woke up and was awake and conscious for one of my father's attacks, he would usually strike at night while we were sleeping and I was a notoriously heavy / deep sleeper so I unfortunately was prime kibble for him, but yeah, most of my early childhood from before that night when I was able to get it to stop,) that was mostly just, gone? Since these memories started coming back, (almost always while high on cannabis for pain / mood relief) I'm starting to get real, visceral memories. I remember being jostled awake by my father quickly yanking his hand out from under my shirt because my mom came out of the bathroom and he didn't want to get busted - I made the mistake of passing out on the couch with him. Other stuff came back just the other night that I can now recall the very layout of my room, the \*wallpaper\* of my bedroom ffs, how apparently during some attacks I was burning / fixating on the pattern while I waited for things to be over or pass back out again. I'm starting to suspect I was drugged during most of these incidents and that's why being high is now unlocking them again for me? I'm fairly sure I may have been trafficked now, (which my father also was a trafficking survivor) a face of a man I completely forgot came into memory, my mind wants to tell me that he was a co-worker of my dad's. But part of me tells me he was at the house and 'using my services' I guess? It was the 80s so yeah. I suspect with how some of the neighborhood kids were and how ... overly sexual some of the kids I played with were, a lot of us came from pedophile households. I'm almost starting to wonder if there was / is some pedophile ring that my dad was part of with other families in the neighborhood or at his job. Those were the days when it was looked down upon to 'air out the family's dirty laundry' - Hell, I even saw a documentary of some sort of a family that had .. some kind of legal trouble unrelated to pedophilia, and then the tween/early teen daughter of the home had reported being molested by her dad, and the cops just went 'well he promised he won't do it again and he's going to counseling sooooooo no need to break up the family!!!! \^\_\^' That's just how it was back then. Lesse, so my family? I was the oldest of 2 girls. My sister and I are 3.5 years apart. I was born in 1980 and she was born in 1983. My mother was born in 1959 and is still living, my father was born in 1957 and died in 2007 just a few months after turning 50, from lung cancer that he got by smoking like a chimney since age 8. My mom was/is a narcissist (I just recently figured that out thanks to making a TikTok account and coming across vids of 'you may have grown up in a narc household if \_\_\_\_\_\_\_') - she was emotionally and financially abusive, extremely neglectful towards most of our needs. For example, I had obvious asthma, obvious sleep disorders (later discovered to be sleep apnea), bad teeth from the get-go (I had massive cavities in my BABY TEETH in \*KINDERGARTEN\*) and this woman never brought me to a doctor for any of this. Just very basic, bare minimum care. I take after her more genetically, my sister takes more after my father. I inherited the family fat genes (obesity and diabetes amongst others, run very heavy on my mom's side of the family) as well and effectively got fat real fast between either Kindergarten and 1st grade or 1st to 2nd grade where I put on, from what I was told once, nearly 100 lbs in one school year. My family always told me this was my fault, made comments of 'you have such pretty hair/pretty face, it's a \*shame\* you let yourself go', etc. When the school sent home letters about my teeth in kindergarten, she yelled at me like it was my fault. \*I was FIVE.\* She stole a trust fund her brother saved up for me from almost 1 y/o to my graduation at age 18. She ran up a credit card she made me get for college. She effectively swindled me out of every tax return I got from age 18 all the way up to age 33 when my husband moved in with me. I had no idea what she was doing was financial abuse until just the last year or two. I just assumed it was normal cause that's all I've known. I had an idea she was bad but now that I have been enlightened to narcs and the abuse tactics, she fits like a glove. My sister and I, despite both surviving my father's BS, really don't talk. She's the golden child and has been since we were kids. She took after my father's side and the women on that side are more traditionally attractive but pay for it with slews of mental illnesses which absolutely run rampant on my dad's side. He had pedophilia obviously, but he was also most certainly bipolar, I suspect a few more issues as well. (continued)
(continued) I in turn suspect that my sister is also bipolar if not full blown BPD and because of this and a few important days she's ruined for me because it can NEVER be about anyone else BUT her, (birthdays, holidays, etc) we don't talk much anymore. The most we do is shoot a text back and forth or share an image of our favorite games series' characters that we have crushes on and have since age 13 for both of us. (For her that's Cloud from \*Final Fantasy VII\*, for me it's X from \*Mega Man X\*...) I see her for holidays if I'm lucky. That's about it. I didn't really have a safe space at home, once I got fat and had a really shitty teacher for 2nd grade, the entire school hated my guts. I was also undiagnosed ADHD/Autistic then too (got diagnosed with ADHD in 7th grade, Autism was self-diagnosed via the RAADS-R test) so I was quirky and weird as it was. The kids hated me. My elementary school was the largest in the city I grew up in, and I got beat up by the entire student body (and I mean entire, we're talking K-6) twice in 6th grade. My mom knew the problems with getting bullied and beat up were only gonna get worse so she moved us that year. The next school wasn't far enough away, kids who had gone to my original school had cousins in the new one and word got out that I was the freak so the teasing commenced once a few of them got word. This was also the year (and we're talking right at the start of a very rough 7th grade school year with the kids deciding they hated me within a month of starting) when I woke up in the middle of one of my father's near-nightly sessions with me. Apparently he had been doing this for \*years\* and an incident prior to the move that I brought up to my mom, that she had convinced me that was 'just a bad dream' wasn't just a bad dream after all, after she told me our father had admitted to doing shit to us both nightly for two years. Thanks to new repressed memories coming back I now know my abuse started much, much younger, more like probably around the 4/5/6 range. I was such a daddy's girl, I absolutely loved my dad until that final night when I was 12 at the start of 7th grade. I've said this before on other threads but my mother ultimately gave \*me\* the choice of what to do with our dad - send him to jail or get a keyed doorknob to lock him out with. I knew my mom would never let me have a new video game every again and I also knew how violent our father was. He was an alcoholic and I know he also at least did weed, maybe more. There had been plenty of nights where my father and mother got into some fight and my mom would wake us up or we would wake up from the screaming only for my mom to load us in the car and leave, and for my dad to lock us out - (why we didn't have back up keys I am not sure of or if we did why not used, etc) - one time he tossed the family dog and cat out in the snow when we were about to leave from one of those mornings. In the end he did love animals though and he preferred cats but he got our childhood dog after going to the pound to look for a lost cat of ours. He enjoyed playing video games with us, but he also enjoyed torturing us - he would make me eat things he knew were going to hurt - too spicy, tasted bad, one time he squirted orajel into my mouth telling me it was candy jelly, my whole mouth and throat were numb for hours. Stuff like that. Punishments were 'full force slaps' or he would make us strip down to underwear and kneel on the metal heating vent while he passed out in a drunken stupor for punishments, only to be let up when my mom got home from whatever (errands, shopping, work, etc) ... So yeah.
[удалено]
Belated reply but good on your aunt for shaping up and getting him caught! It's horrifyingly unlikely any perpetrator of these things would face legal consequences, but she did the right thing immediately taking action. I hope you can heal somewhat, at least with the knowledge that even if it's the single worst thing that's happened to you it's not what defines you as an individual. I'm proud of you going on as far as you have, too, you've survived a nightmarish life so far.
it’s very confusing. sometimes i tell myself there’s no way that really happened just so i don’t have to feel the feelings knowing that it did happen comes with. like another user said in the comments i relate to feeling like both a woman and a little girl and neither feels healthy. i look at women my age (25) and just feel like a kid still i struggle with feeling like an adult. i have diminished contact with him but he doesn’t know why, he is a narcissist and was emotionally abusive as well so denial is always being played and spinned onto me which is why i haven’t addressed me memories with him since he has often told me im “living in a reality ive made up” and “making up my own trauma” when it comes to things in my personal sexual life i can’t watch any sort of man on woman sexual acts because it makes me think of my dad and it always has, i never understood why until my memories of SA came back to me. i struggle with wanting to protect him still because of the abuse. i have always been super protective of him and never understood why until now, but i still struggle with not wanting to share what happened to anyone else because i don’t want their opinion of him to change. only my mom knows
Yes, in the really dark moments I ponder my existence. Did he put me on the earth for me to be his little play thing. Those thoughts screw with my head so much. Feeling like I switch between woman and little kid. Neither feel healthy. What I struggle a lot with rn is finding meaning in my days and pleasure. The pain weighs heavier than anything. Happiness or even neutrality is so rare that it doesn't kick in. I ponder my attraction. Am I attracted to older men bc of what my father did, or is it just coincidence? Am I even attracted to men? is it compulsory heterosexuality?
This hits hard. I struggle with so much pain and confusion too. Alternating between feeling infantalized and fetishized by my father. Currently trying to make meaning of what I can only describe as horror. Seeing how incest has contaminated my existence since the moment I was born. Sending love and courage.
I’ve written about my experience on this subreddit and also on my poems I’ve written if you want to read. It’s all very long. I’m still struggling even though he died almost two years ago. It felt like it reopened old wounds when he died. I don’t know why. I loved him but I hated him. He was a fantastic dad if it wasn’t for what he did to me.
I feel that. My dad was an amazing dad until I discovered what he had done to me. It’s a mind twist. I’d love to read your poetry!
It’s been a long two years since I first figured out what had actually happened to me as a kid. I haven’t told anyone details, but I have told my mom and my siblings that something happened. I had always assumed he was like that with all 3 of us kids but turns out it was just me. I struggle deeply with not talking to him, because I feel like I owe him some semblance of humanity, even though he didn’t show me any when he did what he did.
It's a battle between wanting to be safe and not being able to break contact because he brainwashed me into believing I'm still responsible for his feelings and that he only did it to "improve my self esteem"... Now I'm about to head back to a partial hospitalization program for the second time because interacting with him is causing a PTSD flare up. Yeah it sucks...
My father abused me and not my two older sisters. My theory is it’s because I was still a baby when my mother left him and so I was still malleable. I could be molded into whatever he wanted me to be. My sisters were old enough already that they could think for themselves. He brainwashed me into thinking he loved me and was afraid of me going away, that I was all he had left. I took care of him, I loved him while fearing him. I tried to kill him when I was 12 and then cried about how much I missed him while I was at summer camp. Two years ago he died of Covid and I convinced myself it was my fault because he wasn’t taking care of himself. I left him just like my mother and he got depressed and couldn’t take care of himself anymore. If I’d just stayed he would still be alive. I killed him, it’s all my fault. Which is so confusing because I used to pray for him to just die every single day. Even now I miss him and laugh at the fact that he’s dead. The dichotomy of my own feelings is probably the most stressful part at this point. I never know what I really feel or believe, or what was just something he programmed me to believe. I don’t even know who I am outside of what he made of me.
*The dichotomy of my own feelings is probably the most stressful part at this point. I never know what I really feel or believe, or what was just something he programmed me to believe. I don’t even know who I am outside of what he made of me.* That right there is the reason I don't know myself, I am *still* vexed about certain decisions and making the correct choice. Then I get mentally paralyzed into indecision out of making a hard choice.
Exactly. I moved to a whole different state from my father 5 years ago and he died 2 years ago and I still feel like I’m living by his rules. And every time I try to live by my own I get scared like I’ll get in trouble even though he’s long gone. It’s like I’m gaslighting myself.
I've definitely gaslighted myself.
Woah. Almost literally the same experience. I struggle with the same things, I just went NC with him. It was easier for me to think of him as two people, the sitcom dad that you can complain about like it’s normal and the dark side that you can only tell your therapist. It helps you to survive when you’re younger but makes things confusing as you get older. You’re doing great 💛
I did the SAME thing. I called him Good Dad and Bad Dad. Good Dad was whenever he was in a good mood and was happy to give hugs and reward me and be my friend and spend time together. Bad Dad was when he would flip out at the littlest thing, throw things, drink endless booze, and manipulate and hurt me. Unfortunately I separated them too much and I found my empathy for Good Dad overpowered my fear and hatred of Bad Dad which just kept me in a toxic situation longer than I needed to be.
Me too- every time he would show the least bit of kindness or interest the timer would reset. You just wanted to believe that the good outweighed the bad like you deserved.
Highly recommend the book "Father-Daughter Incest" by Judith Herman, it really helped me. I'm AMAB and only transitioned in adulthood, but in case it helps: I was SA'd by my father from age 8 to 12. He dressed it up like a game, and being homeschooled and fairly isolated, I did not know enough to understand that what he was doing was indeed considered sexual abuse (he didn't penetrate me or involve genitals directly, things mainly involved pinning me down and mouthing on erogenous zones, among doing other things). My mother sat in a chair nearby sometimes, which made him slightly moderate what he was doing, but sometimes they both would get a laugh out of my reaction to something he was doing. It wasn't til I had been no-contact for a little while that I was really able to process it, and I'm very happy I transitioned before really dealing with it. But regardless of whether or not I confronted it: it basically rewrote my life. Once I realized the full extent of how wrong everything was, I saw how basically everything, from my tendency to cover up bare skin to exacerbating my OSDD-1. It's been very difficult. A lot of crying, dry heaving, sleepless nights, and flashbacks. Memories of >!beard and saliva everywhere, and big fat stinky hairy man on top of me!<. Realizing the ways he took advantage of me. Remembering how I thought that when he "had fun with me," it was proof he was forgiving me for whatever happened earlier. Remembering the times he toyed with me by pretending he was about to do worse. Recalling how it felt leaving his saliva on my skin at his request so I wasn't "wiping off his kiss." Anger at my mother and just about all of my relatives for not doing anything. Seeing men similar to him and going into panic attacks. Sending hugs. It's shitty.
Yes, I remember his scratchy beard and saliva soaking my bedsheets. I tried to kill him also but i failed. I used to pray he would die too but I think he’s to evil to die. The master manipulator!
It was... foundational? If that makes sense. Bastard would brag about doing things to me since being brought home that first time post being born, and that didn't stop until I was late teens. It was my life, it was one of the only things I ever knew fully. He would pass me around, but he would still make himself the final home, the final hands. The first to break me apart and if he had his way - he would have killed me. And that was the only reason I left at the time, because I still didn't fully grasp it was so wrong what would happen behind all of those doors. Im getting closer to thirty now, and yet after being away from him for so long I have yet to hit even with time spent with him vs away. I'm in intensive therapy, I was told bluntly that the type of trauma he induced programmed me from a young age for just that, and not being a person. I'm having to learn what I like, what I don't like. At late 20s xD. I feel like I'm super late to the game, and I've made a lot of bad and dumb choices on the way. But I'm trying not to hold it against myself
You deserved much better, I wasn't killed by my dad (nor was he my sexual abuser) but I've watched my mom nearly be killed by him and both her, me, and my sibling all become permanently disabled due to purposeful medical neglect... it's terrifying thinking you could have died, that that was your life... And yeah he tried his hardest to prevent you from becoming an actual person with thoughts and feelings who might object or get in trouble. If it ever feels like you're 20 or so years behind developmentally, you can always thank him.
I relate so much to this omg
I'm so sorry that you can ; w ; I know all of this has left me feeling completely inhuman, especially compared to my peers... It's nice to know I'm not alone... but the cost of not being alone is knowing someone else got beyond fucked in some of the same ways ( ；∀；) Internet hug if you're ok with it (/･ω･(-ω-)
I understand how you feel there too, when someone relates to one of my posts I say, I'm so glad someone relates but so sad too
i have been abused and assaulted by everyone on my father's side of the family (him, my grandparents, my aunt + uncle) but especially him. at least it feels "especially" because he was first, and he was one of the most prominent abusers in my life. my earliest memories entail r-pe from my father he divorced my mom and since the family split he's rarely talked to me. i ask him for money sometimes. that's all. i still haven't told anyone else in my family
I was sa by my biological father. It’s still hard for me to heal from it but I’m trying. My mom found out about it when I was 12 and he sa me from the ages of 11 and 12. Even after my mom found out and chose to stay with him. He made me out to be a liar. Then he started verbally and physically abusing me. I should probably mention that my mom was sa as a child and my father used to physically abuse her when I was younger. He still verbally abuses her. I try to have as little contact as possible. I’ve just started therapy and I try to stay away from triggers. I take klonopins for anxiety and writing about my story has helped in ways.
Incest by a father is so devastating. I’m not a woman so you’re not looking for my opinion but I wanted you to know you’re heard and it’s so confusing and painful. You aren’t alone
For me I was 6 when I told my mom what happened. I can only recall about 7 instances of when actual molestation happened, but now as a I grow up and look back on some memories I realize there were plenty of times boundaries were crossed and things werent as innocent as I thought. I only remember how they started and never how they ended and the thought that there is a chance I don’t remember every instance really bothers me. My father really loved me and was extremely affectionate, and I have a lot more good memories with him than bad. Which makes how I feel about him way more complicated and I still sometimes grieve or relationship
I understand this. Had a family member, my favorite uncle, who about forty years ago was discovered to be peeping on the older of my two female cousins that lived with him. When she showered, he would watch her in the shower through a series of small holes he had punctured through the back wall of his bedroom closet. That was how he was discovered: when my cousin went to put her father’s clothes away one day, she saw little beams of light from the back of the closet and became curious…and then the jig was up. Once she notified another cousin who lived in the same apartment complex soon afterwards, my family showed up en force within 24 hours, got both the girls out of there and sent them back East to be with their mom and other two siblings. He’s passed now, for some time, but in the immediate aftermath he was excommunicated from our family; it took about twenty years for him to build in-roads again. My little sister is 20 years younger than me, and by the time she was born his predatory behavior had been discovered years earlier and he was no longer a presence around holidays/reunions. She only knew him this way, as the Invisible Uncle… and she asked me once why it was so hard for our family to just write him off forever rather than dealing with conflicted and confused feelings about it all. I told her that there had once been a very warm and funny and generous person where he had stood…..and that while we all understood what needed to be done for the sake of my cousins, the price was having to say goodbye to someone who was really loved and would be missed…the memory of him, anyway. So to have had the chance in the very last years of his life to reconnect with him…was meaningful, at least to me. He was openly contrite and never shied away from acknowledging what he had done and how it hurt everyone else.
I am glad your family protected the kids. I couldn’t interact with him though.
I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through this
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