Psychologist visit - my upbringing

Had rather a long talk with him yesterday. For some reason my upbringing became a subject of discussion, of which we've hardly talked at all about in all the time I've been seeing him. In fact he had to write down the names of us kids as I'd not mentioned them.

It was all a tragic case of a completely dysfunctional father pretty well fucking up all our heads. Have spent ages talking to one of my older sisters about it over the years. He wasn't violent, but he just always thought of himself first. There was no love from him that I ever felt. On the occasions we spoke it was always a put down from him. After he died my half sister (from my mums previous marriage) declared that he'd been fucking around with her, something that my sister wasn't surprised with. It was always embarrassing for us kids at school with her as Dad never got her last name changed to ours.

My older brothers and sisters all put me down too. They decided that I was being spoilt as the kid from Dads new marriage of my mum. They'd not have realised the damage they themselves were doing though, I guess it was all part of the great mind fuck that was involved in growing up in that family. It took me some time after the whole growing up experience to ascertain where all the low self esteem I had came from. They made me feel so bad about myself. Well at least that's in the past now. Couldn't give a fuck what people thought about me now.

Back in country New Zealand in those days there wasn't any gov body that you could go to to report child abuse, or at least if there was one nobody reported anything to it. I'm sure that what was going on wasn't in the interests of us kids. And sometimes things were fuckin nuts there. 

I don't remember but one of my sisters told me about a Sunday dinner episode. One of her sisters at the table didn't want to eat her meat. I dunno how it escalated but my mum went and got the jug cord (an implement commonly used as punishment for kids back then) but grabbed hold of the wrong end of it. She hit the sister across the forehead with it and it opened up a big gash there. Blood bleed down like mad, kids screaming and running out of the house in some sort of shock or something. I mean if that shit happened now the gov authorities would be rung by somebody. We were on a farm though well away from neighbours. 

Things got worse and worse for me as I got older. Mum died and dad remarried a female Dracula or some shit. The classic asshole stepmother. She was fuckin out there man. Used to be a matron in a boys boarding school, ack. The highlight of my teenage rebellion against the bitch was when I took her family ear-loom car and crashed it. Didn't mean too. I was a bit upset as she'd just threatened to hit me with the iron after I was going to do some washing in the washing machine. Not an experienced driver, skidded of the road a bit and over-corrected, ended up rolling the car about three times and writing it off. I was shit scared of what dad was going to say about it (um, luckily he was speechless at the time) but afterwards felt quite good about wrecking the bitches car. Oh yeah, nobody asked if I was OK either, it was all about her car you know.

I fucked off from home at 17. Long story. Dad said I'd be back in 2 weeks (dunno WTF planet he was on when he said that) and I never went back. Unfortunately the mind fuck for the first 17 years of my life wasn't so easy to leave behind. It wasn't like us kids were launched into the world after an empowering and resource filled upbringing. More like we limped off from home with no idea. It wasn't long before I tried suicide.

Was talking about a lot of this stuff with the psychologist yesterday. I commented at one point that there's been very few times in my life when I've actually felt happy. Can be a bit disheartening when you try and try and all that seems to happen is to lurch from one crisis to the next. 

But hey, maybe things will be better this time. David and I really love each other, and it's looking pretty good with us since we've met. A new chapter begins......