While I was at River Oaks, one thing we worked on is me expressing my anger and I was encouraged to write anger letters. I will be posting them here.
Dear mom and dad,
I'm writing this letter to express how I feel about the way you have treated me over the years.
First off, I'm angry that you physically abused me and Zach. I'm angry that you used a paint stick to bead us into submission. I'm angry that you used it as an object to make us fearful of you. You beat me on my 12th birthday simply because my friend and I were having a middle school argument. You thought you were so clever when you changed the Home Depot slogan from "Home of the finest paint" to "Home of the finest pain", crossing out the T. You have made me so scared of going into a hardware store or near the paint section in Walmart that if I need something from one of the stores, my friend has to go get it. You have made me scared when people turn on music that I may not know because I'm afraid of the music you listened to. You have made me scared to walk in front of men because I was/am always afraid I was going to get grabbed or beat as I tried to run away or go up the stairs. I am terrified that you are going to show up when I don't expect it because of all the threats you have made. I have flashbacks and nightmares because of how you physically abused me and made so many threats to do more.
Secondly, I'm angry at you for all the emotional/verbal abuse that I got. You made me feel like nothing I ever did was good enough. You almost gave up Zach and I all because we didn't clean the house. You had unrealistic expectations and expected me to meet them. You made me fully responsible for all the cleaning of our three-story house at age 10 and by the time I was in middle school, you made me fully responsible for the laundry for the entire family and for all the cooking. You made me feel like I was Cinderella or a slave, expected to serve any want or need. You made me run up and down the stairs waiting on you hand and foot. You expected me to get your medicine and expected that I knew the brand names for them and got irritated when I had to ask you what the generic names were.
Even when I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, you still expected me to clean, cook, and do all the laundry despite being in intense pain with no relief because you went to work in pain. I must do everything you expected while I was in pain. I was 13! 13! You had adult expectations for a child! How is that right or fair?
You taught me that my emotions didn't matter. That crying meant I was a baby or being a drama queen. And I would get in trouble for being angry. Emotions were unacceptable and now, because of you I have trouble expressing my emotions.
You ignored my pain multiple times and it took years before you paid attention to the fact that I might have something wrong with me. You made me walk around with a break in my foot for a month before deciding to go get it looked at and by then it was too late for them to do anything about it. I lived in pain for years and it was your fault.
You ignored my mental illness for year. I had signs that something was wrong as young as age 6, when I started threatening to kill myself. Suicide was a word learned early on. You were called multiple times from school counselors, telling you I was having suicidal thoughts and you did nothing! You were surprised when the cops showed up one evening because I was suicidal. You ignored my first major depressive episode and panic attack at the age of 14. Even after the cops told you I needed to be in counseling, you took me once and used it as a session to tear me down further and then never took me back. I had to get counseling behinds your back when I was 15 cause you wouldn't take me. And even when I ended up in the hospital, your first question was not why I was there or what had happened, it was how I got there and who was there to blame. You cared little about my well-being and more about who was taking care of me because you weren't! I was trying desperately to find adults in my life that I could trust because you were never there. I connected and relied on other adults to do what you weren't and you took all of them away from me because you wanted complete control over me. You couldn't stand that anyone else wanted to help me because you wanted to make me miserable! You made me feel alone in the world. You alienated people from my world and then threw it in my face as you did it!
You tried constantly to tear me down. You compared me to Zach and I never measured up. I wasn't what you wanted and he was. I wasn't good at sports and even when I tried and tried again to please you by doing so many different sports, it was never good enough. I was never good enough. You made fun of my weight constantly and every time I got bigger there were more comments. You always said Zach did everything better than I did, whether that was chores or other things even though I tried constantly to improve myself. You gave me hell for my weight and constantly tried to put me on different diet plans to lose weight. You made me eat disgusting protein bars for breakfast and tried to make me count calories or points on these different diet plans, as a middle schooler. You have made me hate who I am and made me not being able to stand how I look. I have terrible self-esteem and that starts from you. You made me feel worthless. No matter what I did, it was never good enough. I had straight A's in school and it still never measure up. Something I did was always wrong.
You favored Zach over me so many times. You bought him a $300 bed set but couldn't even give me lunch money. And when I took it, I got screamed at for stealing and you threatened to call the cops on me. You always argued over who would go to Zach's school events and who would be stuck going to mine. You didn't attend many of my school events simply because you didn't care. I had to find rides to and from so many school events, practices and rehearsals. You never supported me in my school events and didn't come to pretty much all of my speech and debate tournaments.
You put chores before school. We were expected to clean before homework. This made school impossible sometimes because of the amount of work I had to do. I tried to do the International Baccalaureate (IB) program but had to drop out simply because your support wasn't there and there was no way I could manage the amount of school work plus all my home responsibilities. I could have done amazingly in school but you held me back. I had to drop an AP class because I couldn't do the work simply because of your lack of support. Yet I was still expected to maintain straight A's after I missed school for a month because I was in the hospital.
You made my childhood hell. Then you kicked me out over something so stupid and trivial. You gave up on me and abandoned me. Then turned around and tried to make my college life hell. You talked trash and told so many lies to BJU and turned the college against me which is the primary reason that I got kicked out. My whole life was shaken repeatedly because of you. Then you had the audacity to try to clam guardianship over me as an adult, showing once again that you just wanted control.
When the abuse finally was brought to light, you tried to use my mental illness as a reason that it was a lie, even though you knew it was true.You claimed that you never touched me physically even though you knew you had. So many people watched you verbally abuse me and if they tried to stick up for me, you tried to get them in trouble with their job or other things. Nobody was allowed to validate me, and you never did.
You were a narcissist and an alcoholic. Mom, you tried to put all the attention on you all the time. You expected me to emotionally support you as a child! You constantly shared what was going on with you to my friends, including showing them disgusting photos of your leg and expected them to just listen. It made for every awkward conversations with my friends and you made so many people uncomfortable by telling your issues. Even when I was in the hospital, you still tried to make everything about you and how horrible I was treating you. In my therapy sessions, you made it about you and not about me, the one who the appointment was for. You made me scared to share anything in therapy because I was so afraid of it getting back to you. Nothing ever was about me, it was all about you. I was expected to go to the ER with you and you always joked that I was your "nurse", taking care of you instead of you taking care of me. Everything was all about you.
Dad, you were and still are an alcoholic. You came home drunk many times and at one point shattered a mirror that you fell into because you were so drunk. Every few days you would bring home a case of beer and expected me to put it in the fridge. You expected me to fetch you beers all the time and you drank every night. You created an environment where alcohol was okay and even let mom offer us alcohol as a child and then again as a teenage. You made something illegal for children okay and created a home that was unstable.
Because of you (mom and dad), I have a hard time trusting people and letting them in, especially people in authority over me. I'm terrified to ask for help on anything major because I'm afraid of the backlash, even when that backlash doesn't exist. I have a hard time verbalizing what I'm thinking and feeling because my thoughts and feelings didn't matter and always got shut down. I struggle with eye contact because I was forced to look into your scary, angry eyes. I struggle with forming relationships because you always ruined mine. You left me powerless and helpless.
I have had to make a life in spite of you, without you. I've been on my own since I was 18 and every birthday and holiday is hard because of all the crap you put me through. You told me I ruined Christmas and every birthday is a struggle because of all the negative attention I got and because you beat me on my birthday. My whole life has been affected because of what you did to me. I have PTSD because of you. But I'm trying to overcome this, without your help. I will make it, unlike so many of your family did. I'm sure I didn't address everything in this letter but it conveys the message. You are horrible people and I'm trying to give up the hope that you will change. I will get past this. Without you.
- Kimberly
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