I'm VERY tired of my father.

[Guest]

I am seventeen years old and reside in Kentucky. For years, I have dealt with physical and verbal abuse from my father. He is mostly verbally abusive. While he doesn't regularly physically abuse me, he has done it a couple of times and I can even remember the dates from when he did. Back in September 2010, he slapped my back really, really hard and while I was being disrespectful as we were trying to do homework together, I do not think that was the necessary reaction. In May 2013 (I think. I'm not sure what the exact date is, but I'm sure this happened) we lived with our grandmother and I accidentally broke one of her dolls and he got very upset about that and proceeded to grip me by the neck because of it. While I suffered physical abuse, so did my mother. I recall back in 2011 he got mad at us because we opened presents early on Christmas morning and he shouted at my mom upstairs and he grabbed her and tried breaking her arm, I think. I said I was calling the cops to which he ran at me and I ran back down the stairs in fear locking myself in the bathroom while he pounded on the door. He eventually calmed down and I opened the door, shaking. Then, back in October 2015 or so, I remember waking up one night hearing screaming and wondering what happened only to find out a few days later that he punched my mother in the nose and caused it to bleed over some conflict involving her mother.

I apologize for such a long read, but it just has to get out to more people. My father is mostly verbally abusive, and we dealt with that for years and years. He calls everyone explicit names such as "Dumbass" "Mother********er" or even "Cunt." He has belittled my mother and I countless times, calling us stupid and making us feel bad. For example, one time I didn't mow the grass correctly and he just set off on me calling me an idiot and such. He has an anger problem, and has threatened to do things to us if we didn't do things his way. An example of the previous sentence is when we went to this festival in our town, he didn't want to go and we did go anyways. On the ride back he was mad and screamed at us in the car for making him go out and even told my mom that he would "throw that coffee table over your head." Stuff like that. He doesn't threaten us on a daily basis or anything like that, no. It's just we do things that wouldn't seem to make the average person upset, but we seem to make him ticked off a lot for the things we do. Simple mistakes and such. All these years I had to live in fear around my father because I was so scared of him and always afraid that he would yell at us.

Now, I'm not abused like this on a daily basis. Understand that. He is abusive, but he is not abusive all the time. He will say that he isn't, but he is. He will deny anything, and one time I even called the police on him and he said something stupid that wasn't even the reason why I called the cops. I called the police in the first place because he was screaming at my mother and I was afraid that he was about to hurt her. I'm very, very tired of living in this household. It's only my father that is like this. My grandmother also lives with us so she shares the pain. We all want to get out of this house away from him, but unfortunately, we're so afraid of what to do. I'm personally afraid if he will hurt us or try and call the law on us for something. I should also mention that he grows pot upstairs. I haven't called the law because again, I'm afraid of what to do. Plus, even if we did get out of this house, we wouldn't know where to really go since we're poor.

I don't want to run away, but I just want my family safe and away from him. I do not care when people should say you should love your father, of course you should! But when a father is like mine, it's really hard to actually love him. I don't love him. That's just the truth. I keep holding on to hope and believing that we will get out of this house soon, but it's hard holding on to that hope when nothing has come and you're afraid of what to do.

Thanks for reading this.

[ccsmod10]

Hey there,

Thanks for reaching out. It sounds like you’re going through a really complicated and difficult situation with your family, and we hope to be able to provide you support.

Regardless of whether or not you experience abuse daily, it should be said that abuse is never okay under any circumstances and that it is never your fault. You deserve to feel cared for and safe within your home, and abuse does not allow for that. You should not be getting threatened with physical violence whenever something happens that upsets or inconveniences your father. You also do not deserve to be yelled at, called names, or injured by your father.

We understand that this is a really difficult situation to be going through at home, and we encourage you to seek out support. We at the National Runaway Safeline can be reached at 1-800-786-2929, and someone can talk with you about your experiences. This can give you the opportunity to process your feelings in a space where you can speak anonymously. You also may want to talk to a close friend or a trusted adult about what is going on, so you can process your feelings with someone face-to-face. You also may want to talk with your mother about these experiences because she may be able to stand in solidarity with you if she has also experienced abuse at the hands of your father.

You may also wish to speak with a counselor or school personnel about your experiences with abuse. These people are likely able to provide you with some great assistance. However, they are often what are known as “mandated reporters,” meaning that because they know you, they would have to file an abuse report for any instance of abuse they know has happened to you. You can choose to avoid talking with these individuals if you do not want to file an abuse report. However, if this is something you are interested in, you may find these professionals to be very helpful. We at the NRS are also able to file abuse reports, and we also are mandated reporters. However, because all of our calls are anonymous in nature until a youth on the phone reveals identifying information about themselves, you can feel free to call us and anonymously describe your experiences with abuse. Under these circumstances, we do not have enough information to file an abuse report. ChildHelp is another agency that can help you file an abuse report, and they also should be able to answer anonymous questions about child abuse.

Hopefully this was helpful, and we invite you to reach out to us for further assistance if you need it. In the meantime, best of luck.

-NRS