Daddy, why did you fall out of love with me?

I spent my whole childhood with my father, since my mother worked all the time and didn’t have time for me. My father worked only in the summer and spent the rest of his time with me.

I remember loud arguments after drunken get-togethers, I remember objects flying around in a fit of anger. As a little girl I did not understand anything, and even now I do not know the reasons for such behavior. I remember one winter when my parents had such a big fight that my mother broke a bottle over my father’s head, and then he kicked us out of the house. It was scary, incomprehensible. I didn’t get along with my mother, I was often punished for my bad grades, my crooked handwriting, my long walks. And when my mother scolded me, I ran to my father in the hope that he would pity me and calm me down. He did. Every time my mother took her anger out on me, I would run to my father in his arms and listen to him how much he loved me, that I was his favorite and smallest daughter.

I was growing up, my relationship with my mother was beginning to get better, and my father at some point began to drift away. I would come home from school happy, wanting to tell my dad about my day, but my dad would turn away from me and say, “leave me alone. Gradually he stopped saying hello and started drinking a lot. And now during arguments with my mother, when I ran to my father hoping for help, I found no support, I only made him angry.

Gradually I started coming home late too, trying alcohol and cigarettes. And I didn’t start this because of bad company, or because it was fashionable or cool. At some point, when I woke up in the morning, I could hear my parents sitting around discussing me. My dad was speaking very unflattering, impossibly rude words about me, I was the worst person in his eyes and I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong and how I deserved to be treated that way. And it was like this every morning before school, my parents didn’t know that I could hear everything.

I would just get up and go to school and cry. Because of this I had suicidal thoughts, self-loathing and a complete lack of interest in life. I had no one to talk to at that time about my problems, because I was scared, ashamed to tell anyone in my family, and the people around me at that time did not care about my problems. I saw no way out of this situation, it was impossible to talk to my parents, just from one word I said against them, they answered me with shouting, anger, and blows. I was afraid of my father, he became very cruel to me. I aggravated the situation by coming home drunk, and I did it often. I fell even lower in the eyes of my parents. And later my mother said that my father had turned her against me.

My father drank and beat my mother, and I stood up for him. And this went on for two years. One day my mother told me that my father was depressed. I don’t know how they arrived at that diagnosis. I had no relationship with my father, because of the constant arguments and the fact that he beat my mother, I hated him. He knew this and I think he felt guilty about it. He wanted to make peace with me, and he made all kinds of steps toward me, but I kept pushing everything away. My hatred was beyond all limits. But deep down in my heart, I felt that I cared for him very much, whatever he was. But, of course, I didn’t show it. It got to the point where I wanted to get rid of him, just to have him gone. I started sticking up for my mother and kicking my father out of the house during another binge.

And one day I insulted my father, pushed him out of the apartment, threw my shoes in his face, and locked the door in his face. He left. To my sister’s. A couple of days later I had to go in to see her, and there he was, standing with his back to me and not saying a word. That was the last time we saw each other. The next day I woke up at 8:30, my mom was on shift, but she was supposed to be home by then. The bell rang. Mom. Says my dad committed suicide. I’m in shock.

I won’t describe how awful it was, or what happened afterwards. It was 1.5 years later, I was blamed for my father’s death, I denied it and understood that it was his personal decision. But now, I blame myself and think it could have been avoided.

I have anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks and tantrums. And I can’t talk to anyone about it.

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Daddy, why did you fall out of love with me?