Hello again
Thanks for your kind words Anita 🙂 You are right. I prefer to take my time before acting. This month’s events however, have made really difficult to stop and think.

Before the hearing I went to the Women National Service, because they deal with this kind of issues but it didn’t went exactly as I expected. I knew before hand that I was going to receive advice only, because that service offers legal help to women being abused by their partner/boyfriend/husband which of course it is not my case. There isn’t an Adult-Daughters-Who-Are-Going-To-Sue-Their-Father National Service(?) When I was telling the story I was continuosly interrupted by the person listening and the worst part is… that it was the same kind of interrogatory I went through when I filed the complaint. It went something like this:
Me: He usually yells and that scares us-
Person: Oh BUT does he insult you?
Me: No, he doesn’t. He usually yells and hit things-
Person: I see BUT does he hit you?
Me: No, he hasn’t hit me. He did hurt my mom once-
Person: Oh BUT ONLY ONCE?
Me: At least that I know of…
Person: Did he threaten you?
Me: He often says that he will stop paying for my studies if I don’t do as he says-
Person: Oh BUT not that he is going to hurt you?

Every BUT felt like a “But it is not that bad” and I hated it. Few times in my life I have felt so humiliated. Because that was the feeling. I know my father is supposed to be “innocent until proven otherwise” but that kind of interrogatory made me feel like I was “guilty of making up everything until proven otherwise”. Later that week I received a call from my sister’s school. After much thought (that’s what they said) and after knowing that I had filed a complaint, they decided to file a complaint too. The teacher asked me to tell the story again and as it was a bad joke… she interrupted me with the same BUTs and the same questions!

I couldn’t believe it. I felt so angry, defeated and humiliated. Everything seems to point out that: if there are not insults “it is not that bad”, if he had not hit me “it is not that bad”, if he had not threatened me to hurt me “it is not that bad”, if he physically hurt my mom only once “it is not that bad”. I went to the point of thinking that maybe it wasn’t that bad. But in the exact second I thought that I remembered my sister and any doubt dissipated.

So I went to the hearing anyways, completely defeated and expecting nothing. At least I could say “I tried” I told myself. I have never been so happy, glad and relieved for being wrong!

Apparently, everything that could have gone wrong went great. First, when my statement was read by the judge (something really similar to what I wrote in my first post) everyone said it was true, including my father (I guess he firmly believed he was right and thought the judge would agree with him) so it wasn’t necessary to give evidence. Then, when the judge asked him if he wanted a lawyer he said no, that he wouldn’t need it. That made the whole process shorter. After answering the judge’s questions for an hour or so she took her decision: my father had to leave home for at least a year, he has to receive treatment in a specialized center for a year too and if he refuses to go he’ll end in jail. The judge also gave us a restriction order, he can’t come near us for the next 3 months.

My sister is going to receive specialized treatment too, which is something I’m really happy about. I’ll go with her this wednesday for her first appointment. My mom was told to go to the Women National Service to receive treatment too. I couldn’t have ask for more.

These 20 days have been weird and sometimes a bit difficult to adjust to. Being in an toxic environment your whole life and then suddenly being out of it is bewildering to say the least. But a good kind of bewildering(?).

There is something else that deeply concerned me though, and it is what I’m facing up now. At the hearing, the judge told my mom she has to calculate our monthly expenses because my father has to pay half of it. I asked my mom several times about it and she said she already did it. I suspected something so this week, instead of asking if she did it I asked her how much had to pay my father. She seemed to doubt and replied “I’m not sure, I have to talk to him about it”. I thought it was weird so I asked her “Why do you have to talk to him? the judge said he has to pay half of it, there’s nothing to talk about”. Her answer left me baffled “He has so many debts, I’m worried he won’t be able to pay for them if we add this”

As my beloved aunt would say: I wanted to rip my eyes out and squeeze my brain! After everything we have been going through, after all I did recently, she’s still more worried for him than for us! However, I let it pass for the moment. I thought that it had to be hard for her to adjust to this new environment without him. That maybe she needs time.

But that doesn’t explain what happened this saturday and I’m deeply worried.

My mom, my sister and I were having breakfast. Out of the blue, my mom said she wanted that our cats start living in the backyard because she hated the smell of their sandbox (my 2 cats live inside our house, the sandbox is usually in the backyard and they go when they need it. A few days ago my cat went into heat so we can’t let her out, she could get pregnant. Because of that we had to put the sandbox inside the house for now). I clean their sandbox often because, of course, I dislike the smell too and I told my mom it was just until my cat was back to normal but she didn’t want to hear any of it. My sister and I were upset. We love our cats, it is so true that pets can help to heal. Our first cat came in 2014, two weeks after my sister’s attempt and I’m 100% sure it helped her go through those hard times.

The thing is I, again, decided to let it pass. My sister is other story. She was really upset so she got up and went to her room. My mom was angry, she snapped at me saying “why didn’t you say something?!” I told her it was because I didn’t agree with her but thought it wouldn’t be ok to say so in front of my sister. She also got up and went to her room like I had offended her or something. At that moment my sister came out of her room and told me she wanted to go to my grandma’s house.

For experience, I know that when she wants to go there it is because she’s trying to avoid an upcoming panic attack. Sadly, my mom doesn’t know this and felt like my sister was insulting her. She came back from her room yelling “I’m worth less than a cat!” and started slamming doors “I can’t believe a cat is more important than me!” She was totally out of control. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My sister started crying and I could see it was taking everything on her to not freak out. I told her to go to her room and we were at her door when my mom came back with the sandbox in her hands. She looked at me and yelled “if you like that smell so much, let’s get the whole house to smell that way! Let’s live in this smell!” and she threw all the content of the sandbox around the house.

I was in shock. I really thought she was going to hit me with the sandbox. My stomach turns just by thinking about it. I was genuinely scared. But I had to snap out of it when I saw my sister on the floor with a panic attack. I ran to her, gave her her pills, hugged her and tried to help her to breath, all of this with my mom still yelling in the background. As I said, pets can help, and they are smarter than we think. My two cats came running to my sister’s side, jumped on her lap and my sister stopped moving frantically inmediately. Then she started breathing again and my cats never left her side until she felt better.

At some point my mom entered the room and crying tried to apologize but my sister was too tired to care. My mom called my grandparents for help and when they came, they asked what happened. My mom said crying “I told them I wanted the cats to start living outside. They got angry and I also got angry”. I had to tell them the whole story and they calmed they things a bit. These days my mom has been taking her sleeping pills so she’s not exactly present at the moment.

That day seemed to come from one of my worst nightmares. How did this happen? I thought I could finally have this safe and peaceful environment to live in, but now I’m living the fear again.

The saddest part is that my heart/head is trying to tell me something and I’m afraid it will turn out to be true. After all those years of abuse, my mom did nothing. I thought it was because she was afraid. When my sister attempted suicide and when she cut herself, my mom did nothing. I thought it was because she was in shock. When she changed her mind about the divorce I thought it was because she wanted to try to save the family one more time. When the only thing she said at the court was a yes when the judge asked her if my statement was true, I thought it was because it was hard for her. When she told me she was worried about my father’s debts, I thought it was because she still cares for him.

But what I’m seeing now is that she failed to protect my sister and me. If after all these years she has not stood up for us, and now she has these random episodes of rage that scared the hell out of me… she isn’t in the position to be a parent. She is too hurt for that, just like my father. And this is scary for me because, if it turns out to be true, it means that I’m virtually a person without parents! That thought makes me feel half empty and lonely. This is what I’m reflecting on lately. I thought writing it down would help.

As always, thanks so much t those who take their time to read this and to people who reply. You are awesome 🙂