This is really tearing me apart. I don’t know how to do this.
I’m a college graduate, and I’m completely independent. I have a good job, health insurance, etc, and I live far away. If I never spoke to my parents again, I would be fine, but it would probably destroy us both mentally.
I was one of six children. I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. My parents are intensely conservative in basically every way, and I was raised that way. Despite everything, I am materially grateful for them. I had to work through college and study in my hated hometown where I had a scholarship, but they did help me with much of the rest of my college expenses, and I’m extremely grateful. I feel this is the thing that has always kept me from reflecting on the past... I don’t want to be ungrateful, or bite the hand that fed me.
I think my parents really love me. They seem proud of me. But to be honest... I don’t like them, at least, not right now. I haven’t in a long time, and they don’t even know it. I think deep down, I still love them, because I very strongly don’t want to hurt them, and this is why I’ve never opened up about this.
Basically... I’m mad at how they raised me. They’re borderline evangelical cultists. They had six kids way out in the mountains and withdrew us all from modern society. I was homeschooled k-12 and I think that was a massive social handicap to me. My father physically abused me as a kid and felt justified by god in doing it. I won’t go into much detail on that, but in hindsight it was not good at all - being restrained by the hair, strikes to the face and jaw between yelling matches, etc. My science education was replaced with young earth creationism, I was told Harry Potter was a demonic work made to “normalize witchcraft...” etc. They’re insane, but they’re so far gone they don’t even think they did anything wrong.
I was never given any respect - they constantly shamed me for disagreeing with dogmas, they talked over me in every conversation and yelled after the physical abuse stopped... I wasn’t allowed to be a person, only a manifestation of their will. I had no privacy; they’d walk in on me ALL the time with no warning to check on what I was doing, they constantly criticized my hobbies, they even put the home printer right next to my bed and would print things at like 2am and wake me up and then get mad at me in the morning for being tired... they pretty much cut off all my social interaction for years and then shamed me for being lonely as a teenager, and when I hid in my room to try to enter another world, they would tell me I was being so mean for not wanting to hang out with the family. I’m not proud of this at all, but at around 16, I made a threat to myself, and my mother’s response was “HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME” and I got locked inside. Never got any treatment at all. I’m better now, by the way; don’t worry about me.
Now, they’re MAGA cult types, spouting wild conspiracy theories. They don’t know adult me at all. They act so friendly now over the phone, as if my childhood memories must be peachy. They ask when I’m coming home... but I don’t want to!! It’s full of bad memories!!
My oldest sister has had a similar coming-to experience, and she rocked the boat. She’s always been a bit more of an assertive personality type than me. I got to see what happens when a sibling publicly breaks the mould, and... my mother is spreading false rumors about her being mentally ill instead of introspecting about whether maybe she should try to make amends.
TL;DR: my parents seem to love adult me, but I hated my childhood and it has never been confronted, and it makes me not even like them, and I feel a bit like a jerk for feeling that way
Submitted February 14, 2021 at 04:05PM by estrangeddev https://ift.tt/3peKIqQ
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