Velvet,
Many thanks for the thoughtful postings. You have given me a lot to think about. I especially appreciate “Trying to make sense of the senselessness of it does not help”.
If I could have 1 thing, it would be acknowledgement and validation from a respected source that my parents behavior, as parents, was unacceptable.
My sisters and I all escaped the day we went away to college. I did not maintain contact with my parents. My sisters and their partners had limited contact for a while before they also broke contact.
Aside from my father’s physical violence and his wife’s explosive anger, the thing that bothers me most was that my sisters and I were never good enough for my parents. Not surprisingly, the rules and standards for our judgement constantly changed. 5 A’s and 1 B: where is the 6th A? Bring home 6 A’s, and they say “you call that an A? Skin of your teeth”?
This kind of constant “you’re just no good as a person” approach, combined with the fact that we had no other adults in our lives who could see and maybe stop my parents was a 20 year pattern.
The hypocrisy of my parents is overwhelming. It made me want to run away or just give up, but I knew that I would be judged ‘a problem child’ and my parents would never say there were any problems at home.
So, I fell 100% better after reading that there are people who understand what can go on inside houses. I am not alone. And, I am not an “inherently defective” person, with a “defective personality”, that I have been trying to fix for years. Knowing that these are not true is liberating.
I really appreciate you taking time to write on this Forum. I do appreciate, in the abstract, the pain of gamblers. As many people do, I put some of my thoughts about my parents situation into short stories. I focused on my father as the hub, rather than his loud and in-your-face wife. The stories don’t have a title, but the sub-title is “the story of a tragic man whose life was ruined when he married the wrong woman”. I used short stories to explore what I lived with.
Thank you again for responding. I think I have my GMT off set set up properly: there is a NewMembers meeting later today.
Thank you again.