This has been on my mind/heart/soul lately. Maybe it’s the universe sending certain songs in my direction or the hard work that I’ve been putting in during therapy but the letter to my abusive parents has begun to spill out from me. This was something that I never wanted to push myself on or do it “just because.” If I did it for any other reason than for myself, why bother doing it at all?
I’m typing this all out on my phone while I wait for my son to finish his robotics Lego class at our local community center, so please skip past any typos because I’m sure this will be riddled with them. (and its not lost on me that I’m writing this while surrounded by the sounds of parents actually being parents and supporting their children.)For once, I’m not going to even focus on that.
This one is what it is.
Raw and unfiltered.
I won’t bother going into any backstory of my childhood or my abusive, narcissistic parents. I’ve made plenty of posts about them and I’m really hoping that not only does this letter give my heart closure but that it ends the time my mind spends with them as a topic at all.
If you want to read more, just scroll through and you’ll see the things I dealt with and the things I continue to learn about my fucked up childhood. I started therapy just over a year ago and finally the time is here.
For once, I’m not dreading these words, thoughts, feelings and emotions.
In fact, it feels slightly overdue.
A letter to those who pretended to raise me.
I won’t even pretend to call either of you parents. Neither of you even attempted to raise me like parents should. You sure did your best pretending that you did to those outside of our household.
This is one of the things I am learning to come to terms with and choosing forgiveness.
I’m not choosing forgiveness for you, I’m choosing it for me.
Often you’ll see how grown up children realize that their parents were just doing their best with what they had. They were growing up with you and learning along the way. For this to count towards something, you would need simple effort, accountability and actually loving your child.
My sister and I never had any of that.
It’s really easy to go down the route of “Well, you were fed, clothed and housed! It couldn’t have been that bad.” and I would promptly tell you that you don’t know shit. There are plenty of vulnerable children in this world who look cared for, loved, and fed but you could never guess what happens when that front door shuts and the ones in control are the Monsters they can’t escape. Some “parents” don’t even bother to try to hide their neglect. Some are even proud of it.
I guess in my case, at least they pretended.
At least I thought my childhood was “normal” or that I was loved. It appears that I should be grateful for those basics but to learn those were just mirages that you see clearly when you’re a grown adult with children of your own can make those deep cuts feel like the Mariana Trench. You continue to bleed out without understanding the cause.
The world tells you: “But they’re your parents!”
No. They weren’t. They never were.
You know what is true though? I was their child and that didn’t mean shit to them. That didn’t stop my dad from ruthlessly berating me for not liking a Christmas gift, punishing me military style for telling a small lie or spanking my bare bottom over his knee when I was much too old for that. Me being their child didn’t stop them from pitting my sister and I against each other as early as they could and making sure their lies festered into a 10 year wound that seemed it would never heal because it was formed from their poison. Me being their child didn’t stop my dad from using money that he made and selling drugs or hitting my sister and I so hard that CPS took us away. The best part? In retelling the CPS event, my “father” laughs and said how the babysitter lied about the bruises, that we just fell down the stairs. He also did what he did best and lied about the Polaroids that CPS took of my sister and I. He said they doctored them to make the bruises worse so that they could make a case that didn’t exist. He then used his drug money and leverage over local police officers to make sure that the judge found no fault in them.
We were loved.
We were fed.
We were housed.
In reality, the worst hadn’t even started yet. He was just beginning his dangerous track of child sexual abuse. From the early ages of six until just before their teen years, the person who claimed to love us and attend a church every week, made sure that my sister and my best friend were put in their own personal hell. He would do unspeakable things to these literal children and then play guitar and sing in Jesus name at church, with members praising him. If hell is a real place, I hope he’s first in line.
He then decided to use me against them. He put the fear into my sister that if she ever told anyone what he was doing to her, I would die. He told her that the atrocities he was committing were biblical. He told my best friend that it was my fault that he was doing these atrocities to her. This corrupted their gentle minds and left them damaged.
In a time where hugs, quality time, trips outside hiking, board games, hanging out with friends or just something as simple as Saturday cartoons should have been what their days were filled with, instead it was pure dread. He used his evil against them and robbed them both of so much. Forty years later, this poison would bubble over from my best friend and she would release her fury on me. She let everything loose on me that she had been holding onto, never giving me a chance to talk with her about any of it. At the time I was incredibly hurt, frustrated and so, so mad.
Forty years gone.
This past year of working on myself in therapy has made me realize it was never forty years. He put his talons into her at such a tender age and made sure she hated me, so she would never tell. God bless her for holding onto it for so long. When she did let the cauldron spill over, it boiled me alive. A year later, I forgive her. I see she hasn’t been able to heal the necrotic holes his fangs pierced within her.
One day, I really hope that she can.
She deserves peace from him.
So to my best friend R, I’m sorry I didn’t see what was going on behind the veil, I’m sorry he weaponized me against you, and I’m sorry that you haven’t felt safe since you were five.
If I could go back, knowing what I know now, I would let her share her words, truth or not, and give her the space she never had to be heard or loved. Even if she hated me because of him, I would have loved to at least offer the space for her to let some of that pressure out, even if it ended up this exact same way, without us speaking. I will never fathom what her healing journey is or what she had to traverse to get to a better side. I just hope that one day she does, even if it’s just for the little girl version of herself who deserved to be truly loved all those years ago.
My sister on the other hand, has been through many, many years of therapy. She has survived a suicide attempt and even after 10 years of silence between us, she chose to open her heart and arms back up to me when I found out the truth.
One of the gifts R gave me for Christmas last year when she shared all of her hurts was corroborating the time frame of the abuse her and my sister suffered. They haven’t talked for forty years (on top of the many threats he made between them) so I knew right then that my sister was telling the truth all along.
She tried to tell me, in her own way, that my “dad” truly was a monster. I went to my “mother” with this information and I was told immediately that my sister was lying, as she always had, and that was that. Don’t fall for her evil snake lies. In reality, the snake was right in front of me. Within weeks, my “mother” magically had a vision while my “dad” was asleep and she described a white aura around him. After research, she told me how this meant he was pure and could never do what my sister accused him of.
I believed her.
The two of them had teamed up against my sister for so long and expertly intertwined their lies so that they appeared like the truth.
It wasn’t until R spilled her words that I could see their years of lies for what they were and truly understand the depth of their damage.
I texted my sister that same night saying “I’m sorry, I believe you.”
To my sisters credit, she accepted me where I was, opened her arms to me and said she had been patiently waiting for me to see the truth.
She always knew I would.
My sister had faith in me when I didn’t haven’t it in myself.
To see the growth and healing journey she has walked on is beyond measure. If I had to form a sentence on how proud I am of her, I couldn’t do it. There are no words I could use to properly articulate my pride in her perseverance and ability to walk out of that fire with the heart she does.
I’m proud to call her my sister.
How we came from those two evil mother fuckers and turned out any semblance of normal is beyond both of us. We’ve had conversations about this since we have reconnected. We get the gift to learn each other without their lies and hate. It’s been beautiful and I’ve really missed my sister.
I’ll forever be grateful she chose to see what I couldn’t and just patiently waited for me. I had to come around and see it for myself and I did, even if I feel like it took too long.
I have my sister and that’s what matters most.
And even though R and I are no longer friends, we really weren’t for many, many years. It’s just another thing that I needed to see in my own time.
When it comes to remembering my childhood, it feels like a massive black hole. There just isn’t anything there. Many of the memories that were in fragments were ended by my sister when we started to talk on the phone. When we talked openly, without their influence, we were able to piece together even more of our fucked up upbringing. Along with therapy, I’ve learned a lot.
I learned why I despise Christmas.
I learned why I people please.
I learned why I hate myself and default to guilt and being too much.
I learned why I feel incredibly bad doing anything for myself.
I learned why I ruminate and suffer from catastrophic thoughts.
I learned how not to value myself because I was never treated as anything with value.
I learned to mask from an early age so that people couldn’t really see what was going on.
I learned to pretend to be who I wanted so that no one could truly get close to me.
I learned to believe that I was dumb regardless of the situation.
I learned that I wasn’t good at anything, despite actually being talented in certain things.
I learned to believe that everyone was against me, no matter what.
I learned that I was the only one I could trust.
I learned to punish myself in horrible ways because I thought I deserved it.
I learned why I have exactly zero self worth.
I’ve learned how to continually push people away no matter how much they love me because I was always alone growing up. It’s comfortable for me.
I learned why I’ve suffered from debilitating depression and anxiety.
I’ve learned that because of our childhood, I have CPTSD.
I learned that they never taught me anything about going out into the world as an adult because he never planned on “letting me go.” Instead, he would openly brag about keeping his daughters “as young as possible”, which is extremely disturbing now that we see the entire scope of what crimes he’s committed.
On top of the things that I learned from him, any positive attributes that I showed, they were only because of him.
I was supporting myself at 15 by working but it was because of the things he instilled in me.
I sold a piece of artwork at my school art show for $500 but it was because of him that I was talented at art.
I paid my bills on time but it was because of him and all that he had taught us, despite neither of them teaching us literally anything to do with money.
When I married my husband and moved out, he would compliment my cooking and say it’s because of how he taught me, despite me not even knowing how to boil water for cooking before moving out.
When my children were growing up and they were doing well, obviously it was because of him and how well he raised us. Ugh.
No matter what I accomplished, it was solely because of him.
I learned what a childhood isn’t supposed to be.
I’m sure I could keep going on with the list of negatives but instead, I’m going to lift my head and look up towards the sky. The darkness is behind me and for once, I get to be the sunshine after the storm.
Through my childhood, I learned what NOT to do with my own kids.
I took everything they did and do the exact opposite. This has created some really amazing qualities, along with some that are a little more damaging, like over doing it in not wanting to be like them at all.
But the best part of the story is that we survived.
Before I gathered the courage to cut them off, we suffered through many visits where my “dad” would try to pit my husband against me or he would spend time favoring my oldest daughter while ignoring my youngest. He then repeated this disgusting trend when we had our second set of children. He would push his Christian ideals on me and my family, while doing everything the Bible says you shouldn’t do. He would boss my “mom” around and then when she finally had enough of his berating for that day, he would choose to cry and say how much he loved her. This disgusting behavior continued up until I cut them off and I’m sure they are still in that ridiculous loop. The biggest way to upset him was to be better at him in anything. He once berated my son, who was 9 at the time, for making a wrong move in chess. When my son proved that the move was legal, my “dad” made sure to move onto the next thing so that he was never wrong.
For an unemployed, overweight diabetic, he sure mastered everything life offered but had absolutely zero to show for it.
My husband was incredibly patient with me and allowed me the time to come to the decision of cutting them off on my own. I had been talking about it for years but honestly, I was scared. One of the things my “dad” has on never ending tap is intimidation. He will puff up and seem bigger and smarter than he actually is so that you feel like a microorganism next to him. If you dared to argue with him, he would talk you into circles until you forgot where you started. If you were proud of an accomplishment, he had already done it ten times better. My son completed a year in karate and BJJ. When my son came home during one of their visits, he was proud for lasting a year, which was his original goal. Immediately, my “dad” said that he was a black belt in 5 different types. I asked which ones and all he could say was that it was the Black Dragons. Let it be known he was a five time black belt at 400+ pounds and made sure to brag about the AR-15’s he owned.
He was also incredibly racist towards POC and I grew up hearing every slur available on the regular. He would openly degrade women around my “mom” and their friends. (His best friend was just as bad as him, without the side of molestation.) Hearing those negative words spoken out loud in public, about people that were the same gender as me, for sure did a number on my growing brain.
I cut my “Dad” off last year right after his birthday, shortly after he asked me if orgasmed when I got my nipples pierced on a video chat, with my mom sitting right by his side. At his last visit to our house, he grabbed my face and made me turn towards him and forced me to hug him. Thankfully my oldest daughter stood up to him immediately and said you don’t treat people like that, especially family. Through her act of strength, it sparked my fire to choose me.
It was time to stand up.
At the time, I couldn’t see that my “mom” was just as bad (if not worse) than him. I now know that she covered for him, lied for him, accepted his cheating on her multiple times and made sure that he was always seen in the best light. In most abusive relationships the women can’t leave because the men make all of the money. In their case, it’s the exact opposite. He has been unemployed since 2020 and she brings in a lot of money and pays all of the bills. Yet he treats her like she isn’t worth anything and making sure she never leaves. I used to feel bad for her because she had a traumatic childhood and I thought maybe she doesn’t understand her choices. Even if part of that is true, the fact that she knows he molested his own daughter and their neighbors CHILD and continued to stay and protect him, she’s just as guilty. Honestly, I haven’t come to terms with my anger with her just yet. I spent 43 years believing she loved me and wanted the best for me. I know it’s a lie now but my mind hasn’t been able to grasp forgiveness for her yet. I’m not sure when it will come but I hope it will one day.
The day I drove four hours to see her, privately and away from him on purpose, to let her know I was cutting him off, I was proud. I was extremely nervous but proud. This was a decision that should have been made many years ago, but instead of focusing on how long it took, I’m just glad I finally made it.
During our talk in the car, only 15 minutes because she had told him a lie of where she was, I shared with her how I no longer wanted any contact with him. I explained the litany of reasons why and told her that I would love to still have her in our lives. My issue was with him, not her. She kept her cool for a little bit and I think that in my nervousness, I was unable to see the anger brewing underneath her words. She couldn’t hold them back and eventually let them out hoping to hurt me.
She succeeded.
She managed to tell me that if I decide to cut him off, I’m ruining Christmas and every holiday.
If I cut him off, the grandkids won’t know their grandparents and it’s wrong of me to withhold my children from them.
I was told that he has done more for me than any other person in my life and by cutting him off, I’m being disrespectful to him for everything he’s done for me. Not once did I felt heard or hear any words of comfort. Here I was, her flesh and blood, coming to her with valid concerns and instead of doing something as easy as listening, she turned the tables on me and magically, it was all my fault. No doubt she learned that directly from his playbook.
As we went our separate ways, I gave her a hug and told her I loved her. I knew in my heart that I would never see her again and I was so broken up about it. One of the last things I told her was that I was going to seek therapy because I know I’ll need it after this. She yelled at me how she hopes I do find a therapist and they will no doubt show me how big of a mistake I was making.
Spoiler: I didn’t make a mistake. Finding a therapist has been one of the most important choices I’ve made in my 40s, right next to cutting off contact with them.
I set a boundary that I would only talk to her while she was at work or through text. He always had this knack for being next to her or even on the phone so she was never alone. I texted her photos of my youngest daughter’s birthday and shared how I missed her.
Three days later, she didn’t even bother to call, only text that she was cutting off contact with me and the family because she was tired of the drama.
I can’t fathom one of my children coming to me with deep, personal hurts and the ln texting them three days before their birthday to tell them I’m tired of their drama.
Literally.Insane.
That was just over a year ago and it remains the best decision with zero regrets.
So to my “parents”, the ones who pretended to raise me and make sure everyone saw only the best of them:
I don’t forgive you.
I never will.
The damage you have caused will always scar me now, it won’t keep me chained down.
The lies you had me believe, I now release their hold on me.
The way you turned me against my sister no longer matters because have each other again, our way. You lost.
I’ll never forgive the way you made me believe that what we endured was normal. That is truly unforgivable.
The way that you both pretended to be loving, Christian parents while in the pews at church and absolute demons at home is unforgivable.
The way that you affected me and changed my life’s path forever is unforgivable. I may always be in a level of healing from these wounds but at least I’m trying. I may wonder who I could have been if I was raised in a loving home with actual parents who gave a fuck but in the end, it doesn’t matter.
I’m doing my best and making sure I’ll NEVER be like them.
I may never find forgiveness for them but I do release them. I let go of the “what if’s” and “maybe if I had..” scenarios. With the time I free myself of thinking about them, I’m choosing to use it on myself.
For the first time in …. maybe ever, I am choosing myself. Instead of me viewing this as a selfish choice and beating myself down before others even have the chance to, I am choosing to take care of me.
My initial thought process puts this self work process in the “it’s okay to do” pile because I know that if I’m my best self, I can be my best for those around me who I love the most . The logical, healing part of me understands that I’m doing this because I deserve it and always have. I may have to repeat that over and over again until my brain translates it correctly but I won’t stop making sure to speak it into myself so that I can receive it, guilt free.
To the two people who claimed to be burned by both of their children, who make sure to share stories that only make themselves look good and to always take but never give, I release you.
I release the unnamed hurts I haven’t discovered yet.
I release the thought of what it would be like to have loving parents. Instead, I’ll show my own children everyday the love I wish I had received.
I release the very few memories that I do have from my childhood and the thoughts of what the others may have been. Instead, I’m choosing to be thankful that my brain has protected me from whatever it deemed necessary to block out. I’m not curious of what those memories are.
Instead, I release the unknown.
With my anxiety and fear, the unknown is incredibly scary. That fear keeps me at home instead of being out, enjoying the beautiful world around me with the man who loves me regardless and the children who see me.
These unknowns should stay right where they are. They no longer have any space devoted to them.
To the two people who chose to have children, I pity who you have become. Instead of sitting around the table on the holidays laughing and enjoying your grandchildren, you are sitting in the “home” that you’ve built, all alone. You two have each other, surrounded by misery and lies because that’s the world that you’ve built together.
I release the anger that I once held for you “dad” and choose to revert that anger into love for myself.
You chose not to love me and that means you are the one missing out. You had two really amazing chances at bringing up two girls who could have changed the world for the better. Instead, you suffocated us and made sure we never saw value or love. Your goal was the be selfish and use us for as long as you could, because that’s all you were good at. How pathetic that was all you had for yourself and even that, you failed at.
We’re free.
You no longer have your poisoned talons grasping us so tight that we can’t breathe.
I’m free.
By choosing to cut you out of my life, I broke the chains that you hoped would weigh me down.
By choosing to cut you out of my life, I chose my family.
By choosing to cut you out of my life, I chose love.
All you have is yourself. I hope you melt into the world that you created. You have finally received as much as you’ve given.
Enjoy.
———
“A Letter To Everyone Who’s Hurt Me” by Chandler Leighton
“ I thought it was normal to watch your parents fight
It taught me dysfunction was just part of life
That love's just a word that we use to excuse our mistakes
Now I can't tell if I'm afraid or just jaded
I guess I'm just scared to end up the way they did
How do I unlearn the ways I deal with pain when that was all they taught me?
To everyone I've loved who's let me down
Let this letter hold what I can't say out loud
What do I owe you for who I became?
Should I say “thank you” or curse your name?
Do I give you credit or all of the blame?
'Cause growth and pain always feel the same
Feel the same
I try to avoid it when I meet somebody new
I fall for the same shit that I did with you
'Cause there's comfort in chaos and that's why I kept you around, uh-huh
It's insane to me that this could be the medicine and the disease
A cigarette that's killin' me, yet I still wanna breathe in
I keep tryin' to wash off the smell, but it's stuck on my skin
What do I owe you for who I became?
Should I say “thank you” or curse your name?
Do I give you credit or all of the blame?
'Cause growth and pain always feel the same
I wanted to fix this, I thought we could change
But when will I learn that's a damn mistake?
And I'll keep on givin' 'til my body breaks
'Cause growth and pain always feel the same
Feel the same, feel the same, feel the same, oh
I know it's not your fault
But I don't know who to blame, oh-oh (oh-oh)
Growth and pain, growth and pain (oh-oh), growth and pain
They feel the same (oh-oh), feel the same, feel the same
Still don't know the difference, I hope that can change
'Cause love and hate, they still feel the same
Feel the same”
Listen to it here:
https://youtu.be/FEvtQCSQ3sw