Ah right, sorry Anita. I guess it’s just me finding the words to say I guess, thank you for sharing. And despite the fact that I know that I don’t feel close to my parents at all, I still seem to have an issue with getting close to people. In both my relationships,  It made me uncomfortable when my partner said they loved me, it unsettles me when friends tell me I’m “like family” to them, and I can’t put my finger on why.

I’ll try my best Anita, thank you for checking out my post 🙂

I understand where you’re coming from. My parents also have this habit of never taking responsibility for their actions, and the only time they do that is when they are asked to. They constantly say that Nigel and Naomi have no-one to blame but themselves for the state of their relationship with their parents, and say that whenever they were hit, they “got what they deserved, and are lucky they didn’t get worse.”

No, it’s not, but I don’t think my Dad has ever taken kindly to us saying something to the effect of “What if I wanted to do something other than university” or “I don’t want to go to University.” Even my Mum would guilt trip us into doing things, or they’d bring up the fact that they put food on the table, clothes on our backs etc. So we “owe” them. She would also be passive aggressive and resort to attention seeking behaviour on occasions to get a rise out of someone, and in the message Naomi sent Mum and Dad in which she cut them off, she bought up the pity parties my Mum throws for herself, and also uses the same “I had it worse than you”  line, and to be honest, she has. (She has told us she was sexually abused by her father as a child, found out she was adopted during her teenage years, got into fights at school and was permanently excluded at one point, she always had at least 2 people telling her off at any given time, among various other things that no-one should be going through.) I said all that to say I don’t think my parents are bad people, and I sympathise with the both of them, but I just don’t feel as if I want a relationship with them anymore.

Well, he grew up in Nigeria, so whenever we would complain about his mistreatment, he would tell us stories about how his father was far more stricter than he is and that he was grateful for it because it “made him who he is.” One story involved him having to stand in a corner all day (he was 23) because he didn’t say good morning to his Dad. He would tell us how he and his other siblings were hit with hoover pipes, how his Dad had 2-3 wives living in the same house, etc.  80% of the time, my parents have a point, but they go one step further, and that’s where the emotional abuse I was talking about comes in. My Dad often spoke to me in a condescending manner, he would call me an idiot, stupid etc. There was a time I told him I was tired of him talking to me like a piece of dirt, he kicked me behind my legs, chased me outside, and slapped me across the face twice. This is one of a few instances this has happened, and there have been times where he has said to my Rhys (Rhys is quite big for his age) “Look at how big you are”, among other remarks about his weight. I haven’t had a good relationship with my Dad since I was 7-8, and even then he was just as strict. In short, by the time I was 14, I hated him. That incident was just the straw that broke the camel’s back I think.

Hey Anita, the two brothers I currently live with are both low functioning, one of them cannot speak, and actually lives in a residential at the moment as his behaviour got to a point that my parents could no longer handle (my Mum has a heart condition that drastically affects her ability to wake up from sleeping) and my Dad eventually found it too much. He gets angry very easily and it almost always ends in him physically lashing out and doing so for however long he wants to, but it tends to be when you are in the way of what he wants. My other brother is far more placid, and can just about speak, but mostly points to what he wants. I used to treat my more placid brother horribly as a child, and what scared me out of it is the way my eldest brother (who also has autism but is very high functioning) used to treat Rhys (the placid brother.) He would intimidate him whenever Rhys would come into the kitchen, there was a time where he deliberately made sure he sat on the opposite side of the bus from Rhys etc. But I still feel this irrational resentment for my brothers, as if I wish they weren’t there. I know they are just doing the best they know how and that I need to care for them, but I feel as if I will be forcing myself to have a relationship with them if and when I cut off my parents (I seem to have an issue with people getting “too close” to me.) When my eldest sister cut off my parents, she mentioned the fact that she felt as if Rhys and Callum (my brother currently in a residential) got more attention than everyone else and that she sometimes felt invisible. I don’t feel this way specifically, but I can’t think of where the resentment is coming from.

Thank you Mark, I was trying my best not to come across as a victim when I was telling this, I was just trying to tell the truth, some of the things I wrote here I’ve never told anyone. I also forgot a few things as I was writing, because like you aid, a lot has happened. The hardest thing for me a lot of the times is letting go, falling into a victim mentality happens very easily sometimes, without me even knowing it at first.