[brokeninside]

I'm a 23 year old male living in Canada. I've read a couple of threads on this forum and decided after some reluctance to write something of my own.
I'm a native Eastern European, but have lived in the middle east up until I was 17, when I had to move to Canada for continuation of my education.
My parents became separated at my age 11 and I only saw my mother once a year. I remember my childhood was somewhat normal up until that point in time. After that, my father working sometimes up until 19:00 in the evening I would stay alone at home from when school finished up until when he came home. About a year into the separation my father became physically abusive. He would use any excuse to start a fight between himself and I, such as that I would keep my hands in my pockets, would eat to slow or too little. I always seemed to fall short of his expactations no matter how hard I would try. His physical abuse escalated to a point where they would involve fist fights. I could not defend myself for several reasons, one was because he was simply physically stronger than I at that young age, and two because I didn't want to resist my own father.
I recall again reluctantly instances of him chasing be from room to room, eventually overpowering me and in order for our neighbors not to hear my cries for help placing his hands over my mouth having me down on my back, chocking me as my nose was blocked from the crying. On one such instance I cut my hand on a chair leg, and I am reminded every time I look at the scar that is still on my hand today. On another instance I tried to make an international phone call to my mother after he dared me to do so, only to hear from her that she doesn't believe her husband would do the things I was describing through tears. My father looked at me smoking his cigarette with a look on his face that I still remember today, even thought this was nearly ten years ago. There are too many instances of his behaviour to describe here, as I could write a ten page essay but I have sevaral questions I'd like to ask and it doesn't seem relevant to list many more. Those are I think the worst and the ones that stood out in my mind. A point I should also mention was that when I was 17, just before earning my black belt I had another physical encounter with my father during which, whilst lying on my back again instead of trying to push him off me as I would usually do, I hit him with my clenched fist directly to his face breaking his jaw. After that, his physical abuse magically stopped. I was by then physically stronger than him.
During this time I managed to excel in school and in my physical education. I earned a black belt in martial arts and graduated from high school as one of the top students. I was also a lead swimmer and participated in swimming competitions on a local level, medals from which I have still on my wall today. I was considered a geek/loner, but because of my physical attributes didn't suffer from bullying. However, I was very shy around girls and didn't have any romantic contact with any up until i was 18, after I got out to Canada and started living alone. I was never congratulated on any of my achievements, almost as if they were just expected of me, because 'I was good'.
Until recently, my life seemed just fine. I always wondered why with my physical attributes (I underline this, because it's to a point where women ask me for sex rather than the opposite way around) I could never socialize easily, make easy friends or 'take charge' of my life. I preferred, and still do now to spend time alone rather than with a large group of people.
At 19, I met the girl of my dreams, or atleast thats how it seemed back then. She was very physically attractive, spoke many languages but most of all, shared the same Eastern European origin that I did, and I thought that is something we can really share. We moved in together as I was living and making my way alone, and she was living with her mother and a step father. It seemed to solve almost all my problems with being in a new country. She was someone I could spend time with, talk with, have sex with, and do everything with. I opened up, for a brief period of time. It seemed like the honey moon of my life. Her school was very close by my house, and it was convenient for her to stay at my place for most of the week. Six months into the relationship she went on a trip to Cuba on which she cheated on me. I reacted impulsively and hit her.
I didn't hit her once. I hit her on many instances. I didn't want to let go and being convinced I could let this go, went on with the relationship. Looking back now I should have ended it then and there. However, I didn't. My abuse on her continued to escalate, to a point where I chipped one of her front teeth during one of our fights. The relationship ended with her leaving me a year ago, me flunking out of school for a second time and loosing a promising career starting job as I simply couldn't cope with losing her. Before my relationship with her I seemed to be a very strong young man. After the relationship ended I was reduced to nothing. I had panic attacks on a regular basis, couldn't sleep or eat properly and had severe depression.
When my emotions cooled down, a very strange and new processes started to occur in my mind. During long sleepless nights, I would recall events from my childhood. My fathers actions towards myself were earily similar to my actions on my then girlfriend. I was so ashamed of myself during that period that I did not want to leave the house. I gained weight, started to loose interest in nearly all activities and descended into a hole that didn't seem to have a bottom. The struggle that was simply living seemed impossible for me. The once tasks that I did on a regular basis, such as cleaning, laundry studying working, excercising now seemed impossible. I was a total wreck.
During this time an event occured that made me take the actions which lead me up to the point where I am today. During a severe panic attack, with my heart racing and my head spinning I picked up the phone and made an international phone call to my mother, who was then visiting my father in the middle east. My father picked up. Upon hearing my reason for the call, my father told me his car broke down that day and he had to take a taxi from work. He told me thats a real problem, not the kind of imaginary things I am calling about. He then refused to give the phone over to my mother, who seemed disinterested in talking to me also. During this while I was still in my panic attack, and could only take shallow breaths as the pain in my chest was restricting my breathing.
After that happened I cut all contact with him, and my mother, and my sister who always blames me for all the family trouble. I spent christmas and easter alone, struggling to keep my life afloat with my new higher profile job. I would get 4 or 5 hours of sleep a day before having to come into work.
This is the point where I am at now.
I am at a loss whether cutting contact with my family is the best approach to solving my problems. I certainly do not want to see my father ever again in my life, and the wounds that my mother installed upon me are far to deep for me to have an honest and open relationship with her. She basically chose my father over me, every time, blaming me for his own insecurities. I am at a point where I feel no contact with them is less painful than hearing their accusations, about 'their troubles' and about how my sister is a better child then myself. I have chosen this path knowing that it will cut all financial benefits of staying, including a 200 K inheritance that I was due at 25. On my 40K starting salary I prefer to make it on my own than to touch any of my fathers money.
Am I making the right decision? Have I made the right decision? Has anyone else had to go through something similar? Any advice would be appreciated.

[jmargel]

Sorry to hear the life you have experienced so far, and I feel for your ex-gf. The actions you bestowed on your ex-gf were from things you learned from your father. It's how you dealt with anger and frustration. Although I did not experience the relationship like you have with your family, I saw my ex-fiancee's emotions on how her mom beat her years before, and also dealing with my wife in how her dad has abused her.

Both women show attributes of their abuser, because it's how they were brought up. When we are born into this world, we have what they call 'free will'. However, the minute that our parents start to shape us, we learn by their techniques, their guidance. Unfortunetly you learned by your father's anger and your mom's abandoment. This is why you hit your ex-gf, and this is also why you closed yourself to society. It's going to be very hard for you to open up to someone since the fear of hurt is so prevelent.

Have you been seeing a counselor? I think this is something you should really look into. Most insurances cover it, and it is confidental. No one will know. I believe you need to work on yourself and come to terms to the fact that you are not the reason why your parents abused you. The abuse came because of their own internal/emotional problems. You also have to learn during times of stress that you can't act a certain way like you did with your ex.

As for contact with your family, whatever you decide would be right. However, I think with your family you need to take the confidence you gained in getting your black-belt and put it towards this situation. When your parents talk to you and try to blame you for their actions, that's when it is time to stand up and tell them what they did to you was wrong and that you will not tolerate that again.

I'm sure your father has used the same abuse / scare tactics on your mom as he did you. You stood upto your father before, and it's ok to do that again. Good chance what he did to you, it was done to him by his father as well. Abuse is a chain and I hope with the help you get, this chain will be broken.

You have a great life ahead of you, while dealing with your past don't be afraid to keep pushing forward with your future.

[OWoman]

Originally Posted by brokeninside

I didn't hit her once. I hit her on many instances. I didn't want to let go and being convinced I could let this go, went on with the relationship. Looking back now I should have ended it then and there. However, I didn't. My abuse on her continued to escalate, to a point where I chipped one of her front teeth during one of our fights. The relationship ended with her leaving me a year ago, me flunking out of school for a second time and loosing a promising career starting job as I simply couldn't cope with losing her. Before my relationship with her I seemed to be a very strong young man. After the relationship ended I was reduced to nothing. I had panic attacks on a regular basis, couldn't sleep or eat properly and had severe depression.

There is never any excuse for abuse. What you did was wrong and shameful and I'm glad you now acknowledge that. However, until you take responsibility for your choices - and they are choices - and stop blaming others and your past, you will never feel that you have control over your life and will forever be cursed by your past. You need to acknowledge that despite your own abuse at the hands of your father, despite knowing how that damaged you and hurt you, you CHOSE to hurt the person you claimed to love and to drive her away the same way your father drove you away. You chose to repeat the pattern your father displayed despite knowing how wrong and damaging that was, and you need to learn why and to develop better ways of dealing with your problems so that you don't fall back on toxic patterns again.

Many children are subjected to horrendous abuse - emotional, physical and sexual - but only about a third of those go on to abuse others themselves. The rest manage to become decent human beings, treating others with respect and forging proper relationships. I hope that you will be able to join that group and leave your shameful abusing past behind you, but you will need to work hard with skilled therapists to get there. Once you have managed to forge a new life for yourself, you can try to reconnect with your family on healthy, functional terms - but until then, the patterns of abuse and dysfunction will cloud that relationship and the mutual blaming will not allow any kind of meaningful connection.

Take the responsibility, become a real man and turn your life around. Good luck.

[brokeninside]

When you point out I made a choice to hurt the person I chose to love, to my defence I have to say I was 19, and back then had what I thought still a normal family. I wasn't aware that I will have to deal with so many issues one day, and thought what I'm doing is purely within the realms of normalcy. Also this girl was a handful, there is also no excuse for cheating while on a trip when you claim to love someone. But you are right, those things do not make my actions right. I have to say with certainty that if these situations were presented to me now, knowing what I know today, my reactions would have been much more respectable.
What burdens me most is that I go on as normal, have to live my life, go to work pay my taxes and bills, pay my rent and smile to everyone as if nothing has happened, while inside I know I'm not going to see my family for a very long time perhaps never, and that I have to deal with what seem impossible issues. I feel terribly angry with my father and my mother for putting me through this, knowing that they too had a choice, and chose to hurt me their son whom they are supposed to love unconditionally. By going through this will this make me a better man than those men that didn't have to deal with them? I do not think so. It's as if everyone around me had a head start,I can see them running and I had an iron ball chained to my leg.

[jmargel]

Not necessarily a better person, but someone that has more knowledge and experience than those who have not gone through what you have. You have an insight now on how bad things can get if ignored, and how good things good be if you acknowledge and then take steps to correct certain behaviors.

None of us can predict what will happen with you and your family. Unfortunetly life doesn't come with an instruction booklet, on what to do next and what is about to come. However what we can do is take steps on things that we can control about ourselves. When you do that, you will find the inner peace you are looking for. Although parents are the main role-models in our lives, there are certain times where we have to not take their advice, and to heart the things they say or do. When they are emotional, physically and mentally abusive that's when you need to break away from them. However, even though you might not have your family, you are not alone in this world. Unfortunetly many others have gone through and are going through what you have. Remember above all else to not let this affect your own self-worth. You are not the reason they did the things they did to you.

Please look into counseling to help yourself. You've been through more than what most people are put through.

[brokeninside]

Yes, I have looked into counseling but its not an option for me at the moment as I cannot afford it right now. I actually had gone to counseling a year ago, for a brief period and it didn't help me as I wasn't at the point yet where I would realize that most of my problems with self esteem and anger control were not to do with 'something being wrong with me', but something much more sinister than that. Those sessions were actually financed by my family, asking the doctor to find out why I'm like this. Catch 22?
Sometimes when I'm doing good and feeling great about myself I have the urge to sit down and pass my mother an email. I actually had that urge yesterday on mothers day. I got about half way through when I remembered everything and pressed the X button on the window screen. I feel sorry for her that my father put her in a position where she would have to constantly choose between me and him in the fights, yet I cannot get over the fact that she would always end up blaming me for them when nearly all of the time they were not initiated by myself. When I talked about this to my mother some time ago when I still talked to her I asked her what is her opinion on what my father was doing, and she said hitting a child is a valid upbringing method, and she sees nothing wrong with me growing up to be a man like my father. I could not believe what I had just heard, to a point where I told her that if his actions where here in Canada, it would be very likely he'd be in jail by now. Smacking a small slap on the backside? Maybe, but even thats a stretch. Choking on the floor, and belting to the point where you don't want to undress on Physical Education or Karate training because you have marks on your back? For little things such as keeping your hands in your pockets on a normal daily walk? I don't think so.
To add insult to injury, my sisters wedding is coming up in Paris this summer to which I am not invited. I wasn't even told about the engagement before I cut the contact, and it happened 3 months prior. Instead of my sister rising up above everything, she lowered herself to the level of continuing to lay the blame on me. She even told me over a telephone conversation that for 'what I have done to the family, she doesn't see herself talking to me for a very long time, say ten years'.
Is this Jerry Springer material?

[quankanne]

you really need to pursue counselling to get the tools to help you through this. Contact local churches to see if they know anyone who offers it on a sliding scale payment basis. Look into anger management classes and definitely look for a group that deals with the needs of survivors of domestic abuse. A lot of those self-help groups are free of cost, because it's a way of allowing people in the same boat as you to air their feelings as a way of healing.

you have resources, you just need to look for them, you know?

hugs,
quank