When I was little things were pretty rough. I was the youngest of three, and based on the timing, not planned. Things were always tense, money was tight, and tempers got hot. My mom was rough on me and my sisters. Sometimes it was physical, like slapping us around or shoving us, but it was mainly verbal and emotional. She would tear us down pretty good.
My dad spent most of his time working, partly because money was tight and partly because he was avoiding mom. He was absent to the point that he was genuinely surprised when he heard about some of the abuse. A little weak since he knew how mom was, anyway I have been telling more things about back then and I’m up to a big one.
I’ve had anxiety and a mortal fear of rejection my whole life and I know why. My mom threatened to abandon me a couple of times. We lived not far from a children’s hospital and she used to threaten to leave me on the porch. She used the threat to get me to do what she wanted and I think after a few years, awful as it sounds, actually forgot about it. I never did though.
Looking back, I can see now that part of the reason I reacted to harshly to criticism from my family was my deep belief that my place in the family was conditional and could be “terminated:” at any time. Every time my dad corrected me, or made me feel ashamed, he didn’t know that it came with the implicit threat of abandonment. Like he was going down a checklist ticking off mistakes and once I hit one box too many I was out on my own.
This led me to keep everyone, friends, family, everyone, at an emotional distance. Part of me believes that people can, and will, just dump me with no warning. I’m still working on it, but it’s a major issue of mine.
Anyway, I’m not sure if I should tell him all this. I figure it’s in the past and there’s nothing he can do, but on the other hand it would help him understand me a lot better.
I don’t want to hurt him needlessly and this is a pretty nasty revelation.
