Disappointment. (SI/drug addiction trigger warning)

oneofthose · 02-08-2010, 03:42 AM

When I was a kid my dad used to yell a lot. Mostly over school-related things, but also when doing a few around-the-house chores.

I don't like to talk about it because I hate feeling sorry for myself, so let me get this straight. No, I don't feel sorry for myself.. maybe anger, but not sorrow. I feel like I need to vent this out because I am not entirely sure who I blame for how I feel at this point in my life. If I do blame him, I want to recognize that.. I feel that is the first step to forgiveness, and I see that as my only way to getting through my problems.

When doing tasks and/or things for him (like helping him with a project) there was always a better way of doing things. I looked up to him as a kid very much, and I still do. He is an electrical engineer and is a very smart person.. Even now as a 20 year old girl, I still feel like he knows the answer to everything; or, if not, would figure it out very quickly.

But going back to when I was a child: yes, there was always a better way of doing things. If I was helping him set up an electronic device (or in my case, watching him do most of the work), he would allow me to do a task and I would frantically do what I was told, my nerves caught in my throat and dialated pupils when I showed him my finished work as I waited for his judgement. He would often tick impatiently if I wasn't doing the task correctly and grab the thing from me, or he would forcefully say, "don't force it" if I was trying to place something onto another, and once more take it from my grasps if I wasn't doing it right.

Ah, then the school work... he is a smart man so he would always help us (us, being my sisters and I) with all of our homework. And every. single. time. it would end up with us being in tears and him yelling impatiently. I feel like the harder I tried to please him, the more I messed up and things just went down the drain.

I remember one time when he was helping me with my math homework; I knew what fate I was going to endure when I asked for help that night.. yet I came to him with my cluelessness anyway. Of course he yelled.. yet each time I believed he would not. It took me many nights of hearing him yell, "what are you, stupid?!" "A 1st grader could get this!" "You don't even think!!" "Come back to me when you've read the book!" and the covering of his eyes with disappointment, and the rubbing of his temples, and his furious red face and angry blue eyes.

Even talking about it now makes me get teary-eyed and my heart begins to race as I feel like I need to correct something, that frantic panic to get it right, like your life depends on it.

After those nights I would go to my room and cry some more, then would sit and stare at the things that made me feel and look so stupid, the books.. and think about everything that I didn't fully understand in the world.

I am so scared of his yelling and his disappointment..
I am also terrified of making mistakes. Often, if I make a mistake on something I am working on I start to panic; I isolate whatever it is that I made a mistake on and I hide it and avoid it forever. Then, later is when I punish myself for it.. and each time I become amazed at how much hate a person can hold for themselves. At this point, even hate seems too generous of a word to describe how I honestly feel about myself.. loathing is a lot more fitting.

I get mental pleasure from envisioning bad things happening to me.. envisioning myself hanging, being burned, or writhing in pain. In my high school years, after one rather strenuous bout of yelling from my dad, I began to self injure. At first it was a few small cuts here and there, but then I got really carried away with it for a few years. The thought of secretly punishing myself but in a physical way was thrilling to me.. I loved the abused look of my arm, the useless blood that slid out and formed puddles on the floor, then the scarring and the satisfaction of running over those scars with more cuts.

The cutting gradually partnered with self abuse by burning myself and with food deprivation. I always was unhappy with my body and myself, so this seemed like my answer. And so I would neglect to feed myself and relish in the thought of me starving and my stomach and muscles eating themselves away.

When this became familiar to me, the pills came. Prescription pain narcotics, over the counter cold and flu medications, anything I could get my hands on. I liked the sedation and calm it gave me, but also the fact that I knew I was silently still punishing myself and getting what I deserve as my insides attempted to deal with the foreign medications, making me writhe in pain.

As you can probably see, these things did progress. They all piled on top of one another until it reached the point in my life where my constant suicidal thoughts I had always had became physical suicidal thoughts and attempts.

I say all this like I am completely over it all... but I know that I am not. Now that I have been to 'that point' I am finding it all too easy to slip right back into those nights and those unbelievably painful feelings, without having to take all those progressive steps that I had before.

Now my feelings are still of hatred, but now I have a more and more constant apathy. The kind where you are so calm and unemotional that you can look into the mirror and say with every, tingling ounce of your being that you wish that person looking back at you were dead, and not feel a single bit of remorse for the thought, no sorrow.. just complete honesty and clarity, and detachment.

I don't blame my dad for getting mad and impatient with me. He is a parent like any other, doing what he thinks is the right way to raise a child. More than anything, I know I shouldn't have been so sensitive about it because, deep down, I knew he was right.. and that's what had hurt the most.

It's refreshing to know I don't blame him..
Now I guess I will just have to work on forgiving myself... my only problem is I feel like I've gone too far to turn around and think differently about myself now.

billy boy · 02-08-2010, 05:53 AM

Let me ask you something, if your self-esteem issues and problems with substances and self harm aren't your dad's fault, why have you been telling us about him? I don't mean to be insensitive because I know you say it's refreshing that you don't blame your dad. However, they way he treated you is not how to teach a child! People learn through encouragement, not being belittled all the time. You didn't deserve to be treated like that and he and had no right doing so. I know it isn't healthy to bear grudges and hate others, but it isn't healthy to hate yourself either.

oneofthose · 02-08-2010, 05:13 PM

I'm sorry I wasn't really clear with my post. The whole bit was mostly just me thinking aloud and coming to my conclusion at the end of the post. Like I said, I don't like to talk about it, so I purposefully hid from this conversation until now... but after a few recent events in my life, I finally feel as though I should face it.

To be honest, I was scared to know if the hatred that I feel was towards him instead of myself. I don't like to blame others for my problems, so if I had come to the conclusion that I felt it was my dad's fault, I would have had an even harder time living with that and hiding the rage.

I know it is not healthy to hate yourself, so I'm hoping that I can begin to forgive myself for being the way I am. My only problem is I am not sure I can do this alone.. the minute I think about forgiving myself or showing myself any kindness at all I get a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach and begin to get angry and defiant. Another problem is that I don't think I deserve to talk to a professional about it... Those two combined make me feel like it's just a hopeless effort to try to change myself this late.

billy boy · 02-08-2010, 05:46 PM

Honey, you're only 20! It's never too late. I'm 24 and something my counselor keeps telling me is that I'm still a young man, I have my whole life ahead of me yada yada. And it may sound empty but there's truth there, you have your whole life to live, don't give up so young.

What makes you feel don't deserve to talk to a pro? You say you want to forgive yourself, a pro could help you do that. You don't deserve to feel this way, no one does. Although I admire that you don't want to hate your dad and blame him for everything (we can never find peace if we live with a grudge), that doesn't mean you have to shoulder that blame yourself.

oneofthose · 02-08-2010, 09:34 PM

I know I haven't said it yet, but I just want to let you know how much I appreciate your advice and opinions. To have someone to talk to that experiences issues like mine is amazing to me.

I've tried talking to the only two people I can trust with this problem and, while they try to understand, I know they have trouble seeing the extent of these feelings. Especially with my boyfriend, I am having so much trouble being in a relationship with him... not because he isn't the most perfect person I have ever met in my life, not because I don't love him with everything I have, but because I don't feel like I deserve him.. hating myself like this makes me feel like I'm betraying him, each and every time I have angry thoughts or thoughts of harming myself, which is almost constant.

I realize that I have my whole life ahead of me, but when I said I felt it was too late I wasn't necessarily talking about my age. After getting this far into my self hatred, it almost feels like a lost cause if I were to go to someone and attempt to lay my problems down on the table and say "please, help me fix this". Since I've experienced from the time I was a child, it is something that has become a part of me like any other bit of my personality - like the things someone finds amusing, making them automatically laugh.. it is almost a natural reflex to me.

Also, even though I know I would be paying them, I can't get over the guilt for feeling like I'm wasting their time. I've gone to a therapist once before and quit after only a few sessions from my fear, guilt, and shame.

However, I really do want to try. If not for myself, but for my boyfriend...... which, I just realized, would make it pointless then. I don't know if I have the strength to give myself any chance when I don't want to fight it for my own sake. Would it be wrong to still try to go if it was for the wrong reasons (like going for my boyfriend instead of myself)? I have no idea where to start.

billy boy · 02-09-2010, 11:55 AM

You're welcome, I'm happy to offer advice.

While you're right in as much as it needs to be for you rather than your boyfriend, it's not a bad start. Look at it this way - your self-hatred is your depression talking. Trust me on this, I often hate myself (though not all the time, I have weird mood swings) but I remind myself it's because I'm locked in a certain way of perceiving myself as a result of my depression. That's why I need help from a pro. In my case, I need to stop drinking first, but once I'm sober my counselor is transferring me to a psych. Modern psychiatry often works on changing how you view yourself and the way you view the world. So a pro can help you pull yourself out of your self-hatred. You most certainly wouldn't be wasting their time. Hell, it's their job, they'll be happy for the cash :p But seriously, even if you started going just for your boyfriend rather than yourself, with time you may be able to view yourself differently enough to KEEP going, for you rather than him. You need also need to understand that you've been made to feel this way because of how your dad treated you. You can't let your perception of yourself be ruled by others. Easier said than done I know, I still let myself feel self-hate because of how others have treated me. But it can be done, I've spoken to others who were giving me advice and have been through the system, and they said that therapy has helped them because they learned how to view themselves in a different, positive light rather than the overwhelming negative one that you're looking in when you're depressed.