Trauma sucks.

[edgy yacht]

For a good part of my life, my father was horrible. He would “jokingly” call me names such as slut, whore, fag, etc. He would also frequently get into arguments with my brothers, and sometimes things would get thrown and it would get kind of physical.

There’s one big memory I have where he acted a similar way towards me. My mother wasn’t home and my father was setting up x-mas decorations. I was 11/12 and was tired and didn’t want to help. He asked for help and I refused in a slightly annoyed tone. My fathers response was to push our 2 or 3 foot tall, 50 pound Santa Claus decoration on the floor, and say “I guess we won’t be having Christmas then,”. I was standing up at the time and was about 6-8 feet away. After that happened, I ran away to my room and called my mom. My mom’s response when I told her what had happened was “maybe you should’ve helped with setting up the decorations.”

I now know he did this because he didn’t have the right dose of medicine, and now that he’s finally on the right dose he’s better. My problem is the fact that the memories won’t leave me alone. Everytime I hear him yell I get brought back to the arguing and I don’t want to tell him because he’s got a bad enough life as is. I also don’t want to get him in any legal trouble because he doesn’t deserve it anymore. I just don’t know what to do when I can barely look at him without thinking about what has happened.

[drifting idol]

I’ve experienced something very similar. An erratic, ill father who’s unpredictable anger led to abuse.

There’s no way to make the memories go away. They’re stuck with you. Some may fade away, but something completely unrelated will trigger them one day and take you back to it. It’s futile to try to run away from it. How I dealt with it is to talk about it to people close to me. They won’t always have had the same experiences as you, and won’t always understand how deeply it affects you, but if they simply listen respectfully then it will help you. Accepting that those things were done to us and vowing to never do that ourselves I found is a great way to acknowledge the trauma without it actively hurting you. There’s no use dwelling on how parts of your childhood feel stolen because of the environment you grew up in. Just promising yourself and your loved ones that you will never do the same, and acting on that promise, is about the best you can do. Learn from the mistakes of others.