Where your parents abusive to you? What's their excuse?

Post Reply New Topic

...

My mother is bi-polar. In the 1970s she was not getting any kind of treatment. Dad worked insane hours so he usually didn't see just how bad she was. With Mom you never knew which one you were going to get. She could be normal sometimes but usually she was either depressed to the point of catatonia, or up in the middle of the night scrubbing at grout with a toothbrush.

Either she was waking you up at midnight to scrub the bathroom because she was on a cleaning rampage, or she would lock you outside, turn on the TV and stay catatonic for hours. If you aggravated her when she was manic she would whack you with a wooden spoon until it broke, or yank you across a room by the hair. If she was depressed you could do anything and she wouldn't care. My sister could beat the hell out of me right in front of her and if she was depressed she would do nothing about it. In Mom's case, yes, there was both abuse and neglect, but only because of her mental illness.

I have two NT older sisters, (one, three years older, the other a year and a half older) the older of which had a very deep sadistic streak as a child. Since I was sickly, have gross motor deficits and was terrified of virtually everything, I was beaten and tormented with impunity. If she wasn't pounding on me, throwing live stinging insects in my hair or stealing anything that was mine, the neighborhood kids and kids at school were. My grandmother- who lived across the field- literally saved my life many times. If not for her I very likely would have died from rheumatic fever (that was a close one as it was)- or from other kids' beatings.

I was the third (unwanted) female of three girls- in a family with very limited resources. I was born sickly and very obviously "not normal," so I was nothing more to my parents than a drain on their finances. So I think in some ways I was sort of intentionally ignored and neglected- not necessarily actively abused, (at least intentionally) but my grandmother was the only one who actively tried to protect me to a degree. She made sure I had things like (occasionally) new clothes and glasses when I needed them. She tried to shield me from my oldest sister.

Perhaps if I'd been normal maybe they would have cared a bit more, or if I'd been male. But I really think that I was unwanted from day one, and a major disappointment, especially when they learned of my physical deficits and extreme fear and anxiety issues (I was not diagnosed with Aspergers/ HFA until I was 35.) Mom's issues with bi-polar certainly didn't help.

Yeah, PTSD sucks. So do panic attacks. It's taken a lot of counseling and help to deal with all that stuff. But I don't think my childhood from hell "gave me an ASD." I think that I was born that way and all the other crap just made me more independent and forced me to cope.

I never had a close or great relationship with my parents. My mom worked hard all her life & resents that she didn't instill it in me. It's not that I'm lazy but I have disabilities that really limit me. My mom criticized me alot but I threw lots of tantrums & told her very hateful thing when I was overloaded. I don't think it was abuse thou. My parents did not understand my issues & we had LOTs of misunderstandings.

I was physically and sexually abused by my step father. Everyone gets hung up on the sexual abuse (which is bad, of course, but at least in my case it was non-violent), but I'd say the physical abuse had a much worse affect on me, even though it was usually (not always) legal.

My father did not want children. He bullied me verbally day in and day out. He would say "why don't you go play in the middle of the street?". I remember thinking, "I thought we weren't supposed to play in the street."

His excuse was "hey, I never wanted children."

Nothing bad has ever happened to me that I didn't cause.

It doesn't matter, because my head is screwed up anyway.