Scarleteen

Hey so this may be kind of long.

I need validation that this sort of intuition of a hypothetical situation is both reasonable and believable.

I had a project recently where I told my coming out story. There were a lot of traumatic things that happened particularly with my father but during the process I joked about it a lot and finished it yesterday.

I was proud of myself and felt like "Huh, that didn't go as badly as I thought it would."

I was quickly wrong. So as usual I went to bed really late (2am) but I woke up at 5am after a nightmare involving my father.

I basically had a dream where he was about to physically assualt me. When I woke up I came to the conclusion that if he hadn't gotten sick throughout my late childhood/teen years and was around for when I became "more visibly" queer and "defiant" that he would've beat me.

When I brought this up to my mom and my sister it was excruciatingly invalidating especially when they only know a fraction of the things my father said to me growing up.

He's made islamophobic comments while comparing being gay to murder
Has made comments about how it's as bad as incest or pedophilia and sexual assualt. He used an example basically asking how would I feel of he sexually assaulted me in my sleep.
Lastly, he outright told me that I was lucky he didn't "take me out back" to beat me for being queer.

The thing that trigger this is when my parents found out about my first girlfriend, my father yelled at me so much and beat a washer with his bare fist and looked at me saying something along the lines of "this is how angry this makes me".

He downplayed it asking why I didn't "get over it because it happened 3 years ago" (I was 17 at the time).

I absolutely got a shocking reminder as to why I hate my father so much. And for my mother who said even SHE would hit me if I even said something disrespectful to her, the "better" of my two parents, doesn't believe me when I say the outright emotionally abusive parent probably would've assaulted me if he hadn't been so sick.

Update: I talked it over with my sister and she understands what I meant and does agree about my hypothesis.

Just please someone reassure me I'm not "crazy" or "oversensitive" for having this gut feeling my father would do this.

Hey BuddyBoi,

I really don't think you're crazy or oversensitive. It's deeply awful that someone in your life who was meant to care about and protect you showed you time and again that he was not a safe person to be yourself around.

Verbal and emotional abuse are abuse. The things your father said were abusive. Abuse often escalates - starting with the verbal, then lashing out violently at objects before lashing out violently at people. It's impossible to say for certain what actions someone might have taken in different circumstances, but yes I would be suggesting you make a safety plan if you were back there again.

I'm glad that your sister now understands where you were coming from. It sounds like this has stirred up a whole bunch of feelings - and that's okay, sometimes we need to stir them up to untangle and move through them. How are you doing as you process all this?

Hey Siân,

I'm definitely going to discuss this in mt next therapy appointment. My therapist is aware of how awful my situation with my father was leading up to hin finally being removed from our home with how sick he was getting. We're all literally waiting for him to die at this point.

I cut him off entirely because I knew the situation would never improve on top of the horrid feeling of watching my father die despite how much I don't like him.

Aside from trying to work through it in therapy from time to time, I reach out to friends or my sister and I decided to reach out here too. Lastly I've been making music as an outlet for how I feel. It's been helping a lot to process my feelings of sadness and unpack any anger associated with not being understood.

I wanna thank you for taking the time to reassure me that this isn't far fetched. I didn't even think much about how emotional/verbal abuse could escalate to physical. I always thought of them as separate or something that escalated much more quickly.

I don't know if I would have much of a safety plan aside from making sure I'm not isolated so someone can warn me if something seems off.

I think that is a good start as far as a safety plan, and it's super important having people who know us well enough to know when something is off. It can be hard to realize it ourselves in the moment, but an outside perspective is often what we need in situations where our mental health isn't doing well.
I also just wanted to say I think that's great you plan to discuss this in therapy and that you have support from your sister and friends, as well as an artistic outlet for these feelings. I can relate to that and I'm glad you have that too. I hope your therapist is able to help you construct more of a plan based on how well they know you. We're always here to talk or listen so don't hesitate to update us or reach back out.<3

Hey BuddyBoi,

I don't have a lot to add unless you'd like to talk through this some more, but just wanted to echo Sofi and say that it sounds like you have a really solid plan for dealing with this, and I'm glad you have music as a more creative form of expression!

It's good to hear that you found my response helpful and I'm also glad you're away from him, and in a much safer space overall now.

Hey you two!

I just wanted to let y'all know that both of your words have been greatly appreciated.

Just to update, my therapy appointment went well and I'm currently trying to delve more into my relationships with my parents, their actions and boundaries. I'll put more in another post I made talking more about my relationship with my mom.

Also an oddly nice event in regards to my feelings circulating around my father. I had a dream a few days after reaching out to a few folks that I told him off. I continue every day as needed to remind myself that it is an act of kindness not only to myself but to him that I no longer speak to him.

I know in my heart that aside he's mot deserving of my time that I don't have anything nice to say to him especially since he has said horrid things to me and does a 180 when it's convenient for him. It's hard but I'm still healing.

Thank you both so much <3

That is a good dream!

My pleasure - glad that you've found this helpful