Long post. I’m writing this to vent, for acknowledgment, and to possibly ask some questions. But mainly for venting because I feel so alone regarding this. I’ll l share the things that feel the most relevant so you get some general idea of what’s up.
I’m 23. Family is from Eastern Europe, Soviet-ish culture. Immigrated to Argentina in 2000, that’s when I was born.
My life up until 7yo: I don’t remember anything basically. So, all of this is what I’ve been told. Father lied a lot and was hysterical, when arguing with mom he would sometimes tear his clothes apart or smash dishes, my mother always put me in another room so I wouldn’t witness that. When I was 1 I was playing with the remote control taking the batteries out, dad wanted me to stop, I didn’t so he left me in the dark bedroom and closed the door. At some point during this period up until 7yo he said that i should “fear him, like an animal”. He never laid a hand on me but had outbursts. When I’m 7 mom divorces him.
So after that, I’ve always lived with my mom, grandparents and uncle (all maternal) up until not long ago when my uncle got married and moved to their own place, visits weekly.
Dad left the country 4 years later, when I was 11, and before that he’d pick me up 3/4 times a year. I’m told I wasn’t really sad when he left. Btw he was paranoid and passed his conspiracy theories on to me. Musicians are evil freemasons, the number 11 everywhere, that kinda thing. Once at like 10yo, in the shower, I broke down and called my mom to talk because I couldn’t handle all the bad-mouthing that my father was talking about them (my family). I went down the conspiracy rabbit hole a few years ago when I was 20 and luckily snapped out of it.
So after they divorced my uncle became some kind of father figure. Which I guess was even more so when my actual father left the country. From this point onwards there has been quite a number of experiences which I feel have conditioned me, I’ll share a few representative examples.
We were all having dinner and for some reason when my uncle stopped talking I told him to “shut up” (in our language it had a more insulting wording but not like shut the fuck up), the response was an immediate and silent slap on the cheek/mouth from his part.
This was some months later I’m sitting on my bed reading with some water and chocolate snacks. Uncle comes in says we are eating soon so don’t eat any more chocolate. When he came back to call me to dinner he sees I ate all the chocolate, takes the water bottle and empties it on my head. It was at keast half full, because I remember even the matress soaking on the part I was sitting. He told me to stay there, so I couldn’t change and even had to sleep on that matress. Idk how this would make you feel but for me it’s a good example of the humiliation, anger, shame and whatnot that I felt with some frequency from his actions. Given that he had no problem being aggressive towards me, I always felt intimidated, afraid, so I didn’t express those emotions and swallowed them all, repressing. At most I’d cry silently for a bit, or go the bathroom and cry angrily at the mirror (silently of course) for a moment and stopped it.
So this is an example that’s easy for somebody reading this to see as humiliating, angering, etc. He would do something like that once a month, or twice a week, depending on my behavior. 9/10 times it was something “small”, unlike the example I gave which is obvious to anyone, but those small things would also fill me with tears, shame and whatever. And, like I said, there was a frequency to it. Maybe it was misbehavior at school, or half assing some chore and he’d say something, sometimes normally sometimes not so much so. Something like flicking me on the forehead or pulling my ear a bit was probably “small” for everybody but to me felt similar to the water bottle situation. This continued until I was around 14.
We’d still laugh, play fight, and those things. But it was clear the influence of his skewed methods. I was violent with my friends at school, like I’d twist their arm so they would admit I’m right or something, or making them flinch. I was never a bully, mind you, all of this was normal playing for me. I would have probably harmed myself before making somebody suffer for amusement or anything. Once I was with my uncle waiting in line for something and just decided to step with all of my strength on his foot/toed, it was a stomp and really painful bevause his shoewear was very thing on the top part. No notable reaction from his part, just disbelief as in what’s wrong with you.
When I was 13 I lied big time for the first time ever (I skipped class and didn’t give my parents the school’s note inviting them to a meeting lol to notify them lol) and when found out, I was grounded like this: I could only do boring tasks like transcription practicing calligraphy or reading an encyclopedia, and also nobody talked to me for two weeks until my birthday, where I was so happy for them to finally smile at me. For this family lying is a big thing, in case you haven’t noticed (it’s a joking comment but also serious, they were very big on me telling the truth)
I fail high school like three or four times. I just wanted to be on my phone all day jerking off eating junk food, drinking coca cola etc. When I was 16 I guess, studying for a subject I had to pass to pass the year, my parents (mon and uncle) wanted to make sure I studied so he controlled the process. I went to my room to study and just grabbed the phone. After 3/4 hours uncle comes in and starts testing what I should have studied. I don’t answer, I’m getting very anxious (like I am now just typing this out) in my belly (which always happened when I knew he would get angry after finding out about something I did wrong) and he understood what I had been doing so he takes my phone, puts it on the floor, grabs a thermos I had laying around and holds it above my phone, looking at me and asking me what was I really doing, he was barely containing his temper, his nostrils were flaring. I swore I just couldn’t study or concentrate so he’d spare the phone. Something similar happened at some point where he did the same but holding it outside the window like he’d drop it.
Some years later I’d be, again, failing the year so I had to pass on the subjects I owed. To make it simple there was an option where I could choose between a hard exam and an easy one. He said I should do the hard one, of course I agreed, but later I took the easy one. We were in my room when he found out. He went silent and kicked me really hard on the side of the leg, where it hits a nerve or smt. He came up to my face and I instinctively covered my belly… He saw this and told me I shouldn’t protect myself from him, that this was all due to my decisions or whatever.
Not long after that I guess I failed again or lied about school or smt and he hit me on the face because I was “driving my mom crazy” which is true btw, I was really stressing her out.
At some point he was “done with me” after I once more showed no cooperation with his “help”. Literally, he said he’d be there for what’s needed like he’s not pretending I don’t exist, but like our friendly relationship was over, basically for lying. Eventually I apologized and we had a long conversation, what he said boiled down to “I’ll really try but it’ll be hard to rebuild trust, you can’t mess up you understand? This time There will be no coming back from that one”. Mind you, this was a very serene, “reasonable” conversation! We were very calm and “mature”. Btw, this happened one or two more times 😂. Like the falling out and me apologizing after my mom would pressure me because there was tension when he and I were in the same room (cuz we’d barely talk and if I asked smt indirectly to him he’d be short, disinterested or didn’t say anything)
Anyway, I’m 23 now, he hasn’t put a hand on me since that last time I mentioned. Of course still an intimidating man. Strong control issues. Constantly needs to prove to you that he is right. Very irritable.
Now, a disclaimer: while on the emotional level there’s tons of fear, resentment and anger towards him, cognitively I KNOW where he was coming from I’m not saying it was RIGHT, I’m saying that we all carry around a psychological shadow, the subconscious, repressed emotions or whatever term. It’s not that they don’t know the importance of working on this and letting these things out, they don’t even think there’s anything “wrong”. I’ve brought this up to my mom a few times and once to my uncle. He just said he did what he had to do and that my reactions to that were my problem, to put it succinctly. No apology. My mom wasn’t very fond of him slapping or hitting me but also didn’t see the emotional damage. He thinks he had to do it, but I Know that in reality he was, and is, carrying around a lot of anger and some other bullshit and justifying their expression through rationalization “you were driving your mom mad” “you did things contrary to our agreement for the tenth time” etc. I’m actually glad that his logical mind is apparently above average because otherwise he would have rationalized hitting me for every fucking thing. Lol. I was also told to basically stop victimizing myself.
He is like this but since he doesn’t go around flipping out on everybody, nor did he do anything to me “unjustified”, he was never stopped. I believe much of the repressed resentment and anger towards the rest of my family is because this all happened in front of their noses but was deemed normal or appropriate.
So as I said, on the mental aspect I know there’s no point in looking for guilty ones, but emotionally I want to hit him and tell him to go fuck himself.
When I don’t distract myself with the phone or any activity, some emotions come to attention, I may even cry for a second. This makes me happy since it makes me confident in their natural release mechanism which I only have to let work by unclenching muscles, releasing mental tension, just relaxing and letting myself feel everything I’ve supressed for so long.
I feel no ill emotion towards my actual father but maybe that’s buried even deeper.
Also I’m anxious about the moment I let go of something and cry my heart out and my mom or grandma being concerned for me. Like I can’t make something up and yet the truth would be impossible to accept or incomprehensible, or they’d just assume I was projecting my biological father’s trauma on my uncle. Lol. Sad.
That’s it I suppose