Ever since I was nine years old, I remember always thinking that my father was going to leave me. He always used to tell me that he was going to send me to live with my grandmother just to make me upset. He used to leave me alone in public, in the metro, in the mall, on the street.
My mother did that too. She used to leave me alone in the house for hours at a time when I was three. My neighbors had to call social services, and I was almost taken away. Sometimes I wish I was.
My father still does this to me, even now that im a senior. Where I live, you have to be eighteen to drive. I’m seventeen. He’s left me on the side of the road before, pulling over and yelling at me to get out.
One night I came home and saw that he had completely emptied my drawers and thrown my clothes across the room. I slept on the porch that night.
And people wonder why I have such low self esteem.
4 comments
My childhood was a lot like that because both my parents worked during the day. Sometimes they’d take the time to hire a babysitter (I mean, when I was 1-12 years old or so), but increasingly over time they took to simply leaving me there by myself in a huge old house. I actually started liking it because I could do all the stuff I knew I wasn’t supposed to do and nobody would be any the wiser about it – so long as I didn’t, like, disassemble the TV and then find out I had no clue how to put it back together. That sort of thing might have been really embarrassing.
It actually got more screwy when my parents started having, “marital conflict,” that eventually led them to get divorced. My dad had both my sisters shipped off to some family friend’s house way out in a different state, and my mom checked herself into rehab for drinking a glass of wine a day, claiming her alcoholism was ruining her life. When they finally divorced, she promptly married a paraplegic crack addict that she had met at rehab. Of course, being around 10-12 years old, I had no idea any of this shit was happening – to me, it just seemed like everyone in the house had been abducted by aliens and they had left the liquor cabinet unlocked! It was paradise.
Funny, looks like this is more common than i believed. Lived most of my life alone (separated parents, mom worked a lot and was more worried about her love life than home most of the time), and in the end it ended up turning into something “normal” (spending most of my time alone). It eventually takes it’s toll tho, and the feeling that everyone will eventually leave you just stucks with you and makes everything harder… and in my case everyone does end up leaving. I just wonder if they do because it’s a self furfilled prophecy, something caused by the same “used to being alone thing”, just luck/coincidence, or a mixture off all.
Not everyone will abandon you (speaking to everyone in general, here), but it’s like the old joke, how many cockroaches does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer? Nobody knows because they vanish as soon as the bulb turns on.
One thing I’ve learned in life is that you’ll meet people who will stick it out with you, so long as you’re willing to stick it out with them. And those are good people to run into – the problem is figuring out who is who before the trial and error process begins. I just say fuck it and assume everyone’s like that now. lol
i havent gone through the exact same thing but i have my own story with parents. if you wanna hear it let me know. but otherwise leave it be. i wish you the best of luck. you’ll be out of there soon.