They would continue fighting and not notice I was crying. There were plenty of times when their fighting caused me to start crying in front of them. There were plenty of times that my parents were using the silent treatment on each other and, as a consequence, no one would be speaking to me either. On most days of my childhood, there was a point when all happy feelings were instantly cut off and replaced with sad feelings due to a fight in front of me. It never seemed to matter in their heads one bit that their screaming at each other was incurring right in front of me, all the time. They would both be angry and hurtful to each other. He verbally abused my mother incessantly for my entire childhood.
He was authoritarian, aggressive, controlling, and miserable. When I was alone with her it was the best time ever, she was kind and nurturing.īut if my dad showed up, we all changed. She did completely give up her life for our family.
If I expressed my feelings and they weren’t good, mom might get offended that we were not grateful for her, she might cry. Things were not always nice at our house, but it was extremely important that we always pretended they were.
