Thank you for your help Anita,

It should be noted that I still live at home, as does my brother. Moving out ceryainlu is expensive here (Western-Europe) especially if you don’t have a job.

But it’s also true that I somehow feel enchained to this place out of fear that things go wrong again. But my therapist helped me in decreasing those feelings. Now, as soon as I gof a job again, I’m moving out.

Financially our parents have  always provided, as is evident from the above. But I do not know of any signs of affection between them, they even sleep apart.

My father is knowledgeable but clumsy in anything regarding household chores, doing laundry etc. Also picking up social signs, like people who are bored listening to his stories,  he is bad at.

I’m not. I’m very good at seeing people’s feelings and signals. You know how women  aay that men cannot interpret their subtle details? Not me, I will  notice quickly.  But not act upon it, as I feel like a fraud. Like an ex-con in nice clothes.

My mother on the other hand is socially apt, but has often downplayed my father. Not that this happens daily, but it happens. It qas only since age 22 though, that I realised that she’s been good at playing victim all of her life.

Now, I’m closer to my father than to my mother. Because my  father, as clumsy as he is, is honest, where my mother’s world is centred around her feelings. Though she means well at her core.

We never eat together, save special occasions and then the ‘warmth’ feels forced. We used to, though, but it wasn’t really cozy.

In short, my father’s never been a role-model and my mother is a bit self-centred.

But we’ve never been beaten, never been abused, save perhaps the times our mother would come home in our early teens and find that  we hadn’t cleaned up and would call us a word in Dutch that means ‘worth nothings’ but sounds harder in English.

As time goes by, my father gets more OCD (checking lights, counting, etc.) and I’m sure he is depressed as he spends more and more time in his couch sleeping (he works less because his pension is around the corner).

And my mother has some side-effects still from her chemotherapy (she’s cured), that bring on discomfort. She’s not what she used to be. The chemo therapy has effectively made her dumber and I wonder if she even knows what I told her 15 years ago (incident).