Abuse?

This is currently a meditations post. I will reorganize it more logically to make sense at a later date.

I have been abused. I think. Mildly. Emotionally. Physically, only by spanking. My dad is a jerk. But is he an abuser? I think so. I mean, he always made me feel like I wasn't worth it. His time. His effort. He got mad when I couldn't do things right. He taunted me when I failed. He let me chose things only to call my choices stupid.

I used to get to pick where to eat. That was one of the common events. And every time, I managed to pick wrong. He'd tell me I could pick anywhere I wanted, then, as soon as I did "well except there! What kind of idiot would pick there to eat in the first place?!" The same was true of picking out toys when there were different types, such as electronics. I remember wanting a pink and blue handheld CD player when I was maybe 7, and he called me every name in the book, and my choice a ridiculous waste of money, because there was one that would play better quality and hold up better that was plain grey and black. I should've gotten that one.

But so many of those things, he was right about. It was a bad idea to get a CD player for aesthetics. It's more the way he went about it. The red in the face, vein popping yelling he did about these things. I was a child and I wanted pretty things. And that made him so mad. It's not that he told me mcdonalds wasn't a good meal every night, or that I should get something that works rather than something that's pretty, it's that he yelled at me, implicitly called me stupid and an idiot, and that he made me feel like I wasn't worthwhile.

I was spanked. It was pretty hard, but it wasn't common. It was usually for particularly dangerous things, like the time I crossed a road with only a 7 year old when I was 6. It made me feel pretty miserable, but I generally accepted it as a fact of life.

I don't know. I don't think these things are bad enough to count as abuse. They instilled in me a sense of helplessness, and a reluctance to make choices. They made me second guess my every decision in a relationship, and made me feel like one wrong move can change me from just being Brittany to being some total idiot who can't say anything worth listening to.

My Dad and Me

This. This is what I feel like, every time I talk to my dad.

I don't know how I feel about my dad. Sometimes, I want to kill him, because he bothers me so much. We don't get along. I'm a liberal, he's a conservative. He's republican, I'm democrat. He's some weird brand of religious, I'm a strong atheist. He likes physical labor, I don't. He likes sports, I like video games. So how the fuck do we stomach living in the same house? Well, sometimes we don't, but when we do, it's got a hell of a lot to do with laughter.


You see, we get along by never, ever talking about anything remotely political. As soon as we do, we end up fighting the night away. All we can do is laugh together, and try not to take ourselves too seriously. It doesn't always work, and I wind up wanting to kill him sometimes, but then we quit talking about that and just tell jokes. And somehow, it all sort of works out. What am I trying to say here? I guess just that it doesn't matter who you are, you're going to run into people who believe stupid things, and, after trying logic to convince them, are going to have to give up and live with it.

Little Pink Book 2

Dad

My daughter is hard to look through. I don't love her; God knows I wouldn't after what she did, but her face, her face loos like that of the daughter I used to have. Do I know I'm right in doing this? Yeah. Do I understand that my baby is gone? Yes. Do I want her back, the way she was before? of course. Is it hard to remember that she's not my little girl anymore? Hell yes. My dad, he'd have beaten me senseless if I'd done what she has. He bounced my head off counters for lesser things, but I wouldn't have hurt my little girl like that. I guess maybe my dad did it right... Look how I turned out, and look how she did. But it's too late for her now. I look at her and wonder how she could do this too me when I've been so good to her. I worked so hard, I never hurt her, and when she tole me how awful she was, I hit the wall instead. She's lucky, I guess, maybe unlucky, living her life in a quest for "acceptance". A good beating is what she needs, but at 18, away at college, it's a lot of effort and a lot of legal trouble to assault a college student. Not to mention a "hate crime". As opposed to those crimes motivated by love. 

Damn whiny liberals.

Little Pink Book 1

Prologue

Sometimes, I miss you already. Sometimes, daddy, I cry for you. I cry because you're not going to love me, because you look right through me, because I'll never hear you speak to me again, because the look on your face in the pictures when I was born said I was the greatest thing- and now it's gone, because it was that easy for you to drop your only daughter. Because I've loved you my entire life, and I don't know how not to. And, Dad, sometimes, I can't wait to be completely rid of you, you racist, sexist, and most importantly homophobic douchebag. Sometimes, I'm just pissed off. I'm 18 and I can understand that things that are wrong actually hurt people. And you can't figure that out in 38 years? 

Fuck you.

Little Pink Book Intro

Okay, so a little while back while stuff was still pretty damn bad with my parents and all of that, I started writing in a little pink notebook. I wrote how I felt and I tried to place myself in the shoes of my mom, my dad, and my brother. I don't know how well it worked, but I made short, easy little entries pretty often. It was set somewhere a little more than a year in the future, and it really helped me humanize my parents when it seemed they were nothing more than obstacles to my happiness.

 I thought it'd make a nice little series of blog posts, so, I asked My halley about it, and xe said it could be a good idea. (I'm always very indecisive, so I wasn't sure how readable it would be. So, Anyway, now and again, I'll do an entry titled "Little Pink Book" and then a number, with the same graphic pictured above, and that'll be another piece of the book that is my take on how everyone feels.