I’m having a day of transference; angry at all those people that have said, with their words or their actions that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t deserve their protection, their respect, their concern. But as angry and sad as I am with all those people that rejected me, sent me away, used me up, I know it is (mostly) transference that brings them all to mind. That’s not to say those people didn’t hurt me, didn’t cause damage with their actions. But the reason I hold onto those hurts all really boils down to my Dad.

Friends who decide their new relationship is more important than our friendship, people who accepted me as long as I provided them with the services they required, professionals whose behaviour left me lost, defenceless and traumatised. There’s a long list of people that I hold a grudge against, that I can hold up as examples of how I’m just not worth the same as a ‘regular’ person, that I’m less, that I’m disposable, that I’m there only to offer service. And again, these are real things, real memories, the hurt happened. But in doing so each event maintained a reinforced a very early message.

Your mother’s in her room, go see if she needs anything

Maybe if it was just the denial, just the looking the other way, it wouldn’t hurt as much. So many people have that non-abusive parent. Yes, for most it is their mother, just in this case it’s my Dad. Maybe I could understand it when he kept silent, when he sided with my mother’s attempts to make me better, when he ignored the bruises and pains. Maybe it would be easier to make excuses for all that, the same way so many do for mothers. They are still excuses, they don’t validate the behaviour, but there is some making sense of it. But who am I kidding, it really doesn’t help.

But those times, when my mother’s rage dug in, when nothing would budge it. She wasn’t going to expel it herself, then things that usually made her explode just built the pressure. At those times when we all knew it was bad, my dad would send me off, would go make me deal with it. He made an active choice, and it wasn’t to choose me. Whatever price I had to pay was worth it to him as long as it helped his wife, as long as it calmed her and brought back the normality, the truce. I don’t know I was going to call it calmness, but it wasn’t really, it was those periods between explosions, when she wasn’t about to explode, when Dad could just live without the worry.

So as I was doing my 20 minutes of exercise my mind kept flashing to events in the past 20 years. Friends, teachers, nurses, doctors, collegues, therapists, lovers, points when I wasn’t worth it, when I was blamed for others behaviour, when I was abandoned. I caught in the midst of this at the moment, traumatic memories, tormenting myself, and fighting as best I can the belief that it was all deserved.

I love my dad and I know he loved me. In those moments when I question that, I remember, when cancer had eaten away the parts of his brain that allowed him to talk, the expression that lit up his face on seeing me. So I know, I know he loved me, I just know how little that actually means at times.

His love for his wife was stronger than his love for me. And that I get, and actually have no problem with. Keeping her happy was more important than keeping me safe. And this is where things start to fall apart for me. My Dad loved me but he turned a blind eye, he sacrificed my body, my sanity, my life in many ways, just to keep everything happy, to keep her happy and his life stable. I wasn’t enough for him to act, his love of me wasn’t enough for him to say no, to try to protect me. And there were times when he said ‘go see your Mum’ knowing it would mean calm and normalcy would return to the household, but also knowing a horror would await me. So yeah, knowing he loved me, sometimes that’s just not enough.

When I first started disclosing the abuse, someone, if memory serves a trained professional someone, once asked, well you had female cousins, why weren’t they abused? Putting aside all those issues of not being believed and supported. The answer I always came up with was my cousin was blind and spent her school terms away, and my youngest cousin, by the time she was old enough my grandfather already has cancer and was dying. But now with more awareness and understanding I don’t think that was the main reason. Yes I think those things contributed to their safety, but the main factor was their mum.

My Aunt was a strong woman. I was always a little bit scared of her growing up. Not in the way I was scared of my mother or grandmother, but in that adults are scary if you misbehave kind of way. And I know, that she would never have let anyone hurt her kids, she would never have pretended not to see it, and just accepted it. She would have called the police in in a heartbeat and rained merry hell on the family. She fought to mainstream her kid 30 years ago when that sort of thing was new and resisted. She would fight for her kids, she did fight for her kids. Not the perfect mother, I’m sure, because no one is. But not someone who would allow their kids to be abused and damaged.

Growing up I knew no one liked my aunt. My mother and grandparents were not fond of her. My mother never has a nice thing to say about her, and I think that is more than my mother’s normal BPD reaction where she rips apart everyone’s failings. I think they knew how dangerous she was, I think they knew she had to power to destroy them, and feared and hated her because of that. My father was a sheep, overpowered by his love for his wife, that when his daughter cried from the vaginal suppository meant to treat yet another STD preferred to wander down in his garden than hold her hand. He’d never ask the questions, he’d never protect or comfort her. The first time my cousin got thrush with no apparent cause my Aunt would have been demanding answers from the doctor so it wouldn’t happen again, the next time it came back again without reason she would have gone into battle. That’s the difference.