A Palindrome Dad is not the Same Thing as a Dad...

My therapist says my dad is a parasite, feeding off me. Even now. He fed off me all through my childhood... just fed and fed and fed and fed... never giving me anything good in return.

He gave me life but spent my entire childhood trying to suck it out of me... and now he doesn't have contact with me but he's still sucking.

I think people hate me and I think that I'm useless and stupid and a failure. Isn't a dad supposed to make their children feel like a human being who other people could actually like... someone who is valued for who they are and not just cast aside because they aren't the absolute best of the best of the best?

To him, I'm only worth something if it benefits him. I'm not worth anything for just being me. I don't remember a time when he was loving or kind. His 'love' was selfish. My heart and mind and body didn't matter. His 'kindness' was cruelty.

I was a non-person there to serve him and to take care of his responsibilities. What about his responsibilities?

I was was never allowed to be a child. I was never allowed to have feelings or thoughts or value.

If I cried I was punished. If I was upset I was ridiculed. If I was hurt I was humiliated. Isn't a dad supposed to comfort their child?

I tried so hard to be as good as I could possibly be. I tried to be quiet and polite and respectful and obedient and compliant. But I was only deserving of punishment, humiliation, pain and mind games. Isn't a dad supposed to make their child feel better?

I was terrified of him and tried so hard to do everything 'right'. But he enjoyed taking away my safety. Isn't a dad supposed to want their child to feel safe?


If a dad is supposed to be loving, kind, gentle, wanting to provide, wanting to keep you safe, wanting to protect you, wanting to help you be the best you can be and being proud of you and there for you no matter what...

And if my dad was cruel, cold, sadistic, self-seeking, dangerous, critical, condemning, humiliating, controlling, manipulative, mocking and constantly trying to break me...

... I guess he wasn't ever really a dad.

So why does my heart shatter every time I remember the truth of who he was/is? ...why does my everything hold onto him so tightly and not want to let go? Why do I still call him Daddy, when he's not even been a Dad? 

I don't want to disrespect him by saying these things, but they are the truth and the truth really really hurts right now... and I'm broken.

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Love is....?

When I was in my early teens, I was given an assignment at school on Valentine's Day to write an essay that answered the question "Love is...?". I remember it clearly because it totally stumped me. That was my first realisation that I actually had no clue what "love" was supposed to mean. I remember we had to spend a period of time brainstorming as many answers to that question as we could come up with. My classmates kept popping out answers every few seconds. My paper stayed blank.

That was over a decade ago. Today I am still puzzled by the concept, particularly when it is related to other people loving me. "Love" is a scary word for me. Saying the words "I love you" is incredibly uncomfortable and I struggle to say them. Showing love through actions is easier for me than expressing it verbally. I'm not sure why that is. Receiving love from someone else is near impossible and it's an issue I really need to overcome. The problem is I still don't really know what love is.

credit: www.xkcd.com

If I ask myself what it means for me to love someone else, I would say loving someone means giving up your life for theirs... it means giving as much of yourself as you can give. It means putting aside your own needs in order to put another's before your own. The University Rabbi asked me the other week "If you were on a desert island with another person and you only had one bottle of water, what would you do? Give it to the other person or keep it for yourself?" I said "give it to the other person". It wouldn't really occur to me that there was an alternative option. Love to me means giving up your own life to save another.

I guess in a way that is the ultimate demonstration of love, but perhaps my interpretation of that is a little bit screwed up. Someone once said to me "If someone doesn't know how to love themselves, how can they love someone else?" It's a good question. The question that naturally follows from this is "what does it mean to love yourself?". This is a bit scary to me because if I love myself then that might make me arrogant or selfish... there's a fine line and it's one I'm terribly afraid to risk crossing.

I spent my whole childhood denying that I had needs. I wasn't allowed needs. I didn't deserve to have any need met. I was apparently innately selfish and needed to learn to always put others before myself. I tried with everything in me to achieve that. On top of that, the kind of "love" I was shown makes the word "love" repulsive to me - it fills me with shame and disgust. The maternal love I feel towards my siblings is different - I love them so much it hurts, but any idea of love towards me makes my stomach churn. I wonder if I will ever truly understand what it means to be loved, but I'm aware I need to figure out how to allow myself to feel as though I have a right to be loved first and that's a tough one!

credit: http://loveislove.me

So my question is, what does love mean? ...What does it mean to love someone else and what does it mean to be loved?  When you've been through severe child abuse that's screwed up your understanding of love, how do you come to understand it as it should be and what makes it feel safe?

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The Worth of a Person...?

Self worth is something that most survivors of abuse have a real battle with.  Abuse causes us to believe lies about ourselves and question our validity as members of the human race.  Ok, so that might sound dramatic but I think it's an accurate statement.  When someone is treated as sub-human over and over, degraded and ignored; used and dehumanised, is it any wonder that survivors question whether they have any worth as a human being?

I know that every human on the planet has equal worth... even the ones that make really terrible choices. I know that our worth is based on who we are, not what we do.  Having that head knowledge doesn't always do  what it should though.  I struggle to believe in my heart what I know in my head is true. It's a battle... and one that I don't always know how to fight. But fight I must, because the alternative is to allow the things that happened to me to define who I believe I am and that is a grave error. I know that. So, here I am. 

I grew up believing that I wasn't wanted. I was not a person in my own right. I had no rights. I learnt quickly that the people around me wouldn't entertain the notion that I was a human being with feelings and needs and a mind of my own. I learnt that my value was in what I could do - who I was didn't matter. I grew up believing that a person had to earn their worth. And so I tried to do just that. 

It didn't work.

 

Eventually I learnt to accept that my only purpose in life was to serve the needs of others.  I actually think it was a good thing to learn the value of serving others and I'm grateful for that.  There is a line though, where serving others crosses into denying yourself an equal status as a fellow human being.  For me, it's a very easy line to cross.

When I was around seven, I became a Brownie.  I loved it and think it's an excellent thing for girls to get involved in when they're growing up.  The ethos is a good one and teaches children to care about more than just themselves.  For me, because of the circumstances of my existence, it reaffirmed what I believed in a way that I'm sure Lord Baden-Powell (the founder of the scouting movement) would have never wanted.  

When I made my Promise, I promised that I would "do my best to do my duty to God, to serve the Queen and help other people and keep the Brownie Guide Law".  I took that seriously.  The Brownie Guide Law was this: 

"A Brownie thinks of others before herself and does a good turn every day."

I think that's a good thing to teach a child. Perhaps though it would have helped me if someone had clarified that "thinking of others before myself" doesn't mean the same as "only think of others and never of yourself because you will never be worth as much as another person".

I think having worth doesn't mean never making mistakes, or never thinking of yourself. It doesn't mean giving up everything that matters to you in order to fulfill the needs of someone else.  It doesn't mean constantly trying to repay a debt of kindness that someone dared to offer you. If someone chooses to be kind to you, as one human to another, it is a gift, not a debt. 

All people are people. Every person has just as much worth as another person. Everyone needs love and kindness. Abuse took away the belief that I am just as much a person as my neighbour. It made me think so little of myself that I would consider it an honour to clean the toenails of another person because I was not even worth that honour. 

Now as an adult who has choices and new experiences of life, I have the chance to re-wire my brain to believe that actually, I'm a person too.  I have thoughts and feelings; hopes and dreams... and that's totally ok!  It's not a terrible sin to admit to those things... because actually, I'm a human being too! And even though it's hard to do that re-wiring, and those old beliefs are so deeply ingrained, it is something that I must do and something I hope every other survivor out there who battles with this too will also choose to fight with me.  

We all are human beings.  We all have worth... because we are who we are. There isn't a single person on the planet who is worthless.  It doesn't matter how much another person may treat you as though you're worthless, you still have intrinsic worth as a member of the human race.  Loving others doesn't mean you have to despise yourself.  I'm still learning that one.

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