I’m 18, female. My dad’s like a really sweet dude in a helluva lotta ways. Loves old movies. Cooks some amazing food. Tells me he loves me. But I haven’t really been seeing much of him lately by my own choice, which seems to really really hurt him but on some level I guess I’m trying to protect my own mental health. Makes me feel like a bad person.
When i was 3 my mom divorced him bc he was emotionally abusive. He’s a kinda damaged man in a lotta ways. Was sexually and physically abused as a child. As a child till I was 16 I’d spend every other weekend and some weekdays with him.
So here’s just some of the weirdness that I don’t really know how to classify
The palate game: he’d stick his finger in my mouth and tickle the roof of my mouth. This was something that he did with my mother as well when they were together. But still just kind of…invasive?
Try to get out: he’d pin me down in various positions and i’d have to try to get out. Pretty self explanatory. This would happen in his bed. He’s got some depressive tendencies and would spend a lot of time in bed anyway.
Neck kisses: he’d kiss my neck. I remember lifting up my head so he could. He called them neck kisses and was irritable with me when I didn’t want him to. This was happening until i was 9? 10? 13? no fucking clue really to be honest.
We’d be watching movies in his bed and he’d wrap his legs around me, ostensibly to keep warm.
Sometimes he’d tell me “I’m in love with you.” My grandma once told me this year that he treats me more like a wife than a daughter.
“You’re treating me like shit on the ground!” when I was little and didn’t want to spend that weekend with him. And “If me and you and your cat and mom were on a desert island who would you eat first?”
He’d conflate our identities a lot and I always felt very pressured to eat a lot, he doesn’t eat much and he’d feed me these giant plates of food.
I don’t know really, there’s so much I just didn’t let myself think about until pretty recently when I had this panic attack on the bus one day on my way to school and had this feeling hit me, of just feeling used and gross and bad. Basically I’d never think about this stuff except at these super super low points and then I didn’t think about specifics at all, I had nothing to connect to the feeling of OH SHIT SOME SHIT HAPPENED TO ME, this feeling like I had maybe been sexually abused or something, that would hit me sometimes and then I’d just take some muscle relaxants and forget about it. But for some reason a few months ago I let myself keep thinking about it and came up with these specifics. So I don’t think I was like, assaulted or anything, although I wondered for a brief period. And I don’t think my father ever did anything with the intention of harming me. Maybe his experiences warped his sense of boundaries? But I still feel like total shit and simultaneously like an awful, awful child for even thinking these things. I’ve been looking for answers for months and I can’t arrive at something solid that makes sense. I’m really trying to get through my depression and borderline tendencies
but I just know I can’t move on while I’m still stuck in this stupid grey area of doubt and confusion.

Topics: relationships, psychology, depression, memory, abuse, childhood, sexuality, trauma