Wow, your response could be an article on its own. I did not have a great childhood but not as bad as yours. My dad left when i was 10 months old and my mother married my stepfather. We moved to another part of the UK, taking me away from my mum’s family and my life and my school.
My mum couldn;t settle there and developed depression, cure regular screaming rows. I was also an outcast at school and never fit in for the rest of my school life. Sometimes bullied and sometimes just ignored.
After four years we moved back to my mum’s home town. Yeah, you guessed it, my stepfather hated it. He developed depression in addition to my mum’s which never went away. However he “couldn’t talk about it.” So he kept everything bottled up and then exploded every few months.
He would literally scream at us for hours at a time, sometimes inches from our face. My mother insisted that saying anything would “make it worse” so no matter what he said we had to just sit there and take it. Once it got so bad my little brother, maybe six at the time, called the police. I found him cowering upstairs sobbing that Dad would kill him.
I developed depression when I was barely in my teens although I didn;t talk about it. It was bad when I was fifteen, i barely washed, didn’t brush my hair for weeks. I just stumbled through life. I eventually went on antidepressants when i was in my early twenties. They work ish but i still don’t feel normal.
I spent the majority of the time with my mum growing up. She was wonderful and loving and told me how clever i was and that i could do anything I wanted to in life. However, she constantly ran herself down and suffered endless guilt for ruining my stepdad’s life, even though he could have chosen to return home, he’s the idiot that chose to stay.
She also didn’t attempt to shield us from any of her worries. We new they had very little money so i felt intensely guilty if i needed anything. I would literally walk round with holes in my shoes in the snow rather than admit I needed new ones.
Since I became an adult I realise they probably had enough money but they both smoked and didn’t budget or monitor transactions in their account.
My life as an adult has mostly been ok other than being blighted by depression. My sister and I developed a relationship with our biological father in later life. Things were getting much better and we all got a lot closer. He was far more like us in the way he though and the things he liked than anyone else in our lives.
Sadly he was stressed due to his job, became an alcoholic and died a few years ago. Sitting watching someone die for a month isn;t fun. Also for all I saw him drink a lot I never saw him drunk once in my life. That man could really hold his wine. I feel sad for what could have been, what should have been.
Wow, I’ve written an article too. Thank you so much for your response. There’s lots of truth in there. I hope I manage to get to where you are one day xx
