I tend to think that my father has been a very abusive person. He was an addict and left my mother for days on end, no money or food or diapers, soon after she gave birth to my brother. She had postpartum depression and the only reason why he stopped the substance abuse was because my brother damn near died of malnutrition and my mother attempted to end herself. After I was born, he was no longer an addict to substances, but work instead. I rarely saw my dad. He wasn’t affectionate and didn’t like affection either. He became responsible, as in he payed the bills and bought us the essentials and stuff like that. But he never played with us or told us he loved us. Also, he has a very bad temper. He used to beat me a lot as a child for dumb things. If I spilled some juice, he’d beat me, if I fell after he told me to sit down he’d beat me. If i asked for something more than once or whined, he’d beat me. I have more than one memory of him beating me until I pissed myself. I’m a female so you can imagine the consequences this has had for me as I’ve become older. I loved my dad when I was younger, a lot. Regardless of how many times he beat me or called me “ret@%#ed” or useless or a waste of money or a whore.. the list goes on. I never hated him because I knew how much my mom loved him. I knew that she had to love him because he yelled so much at her too. But as I grew older, I began to resent my mom just a bit. Why didn’t she just leave him and raise us alone? She says she didn’t work and that she didn’t think she could do it alone. I think she just really loved him. Nowadays I don’t get beaten anymore… just verbally abused to the max. He’s doing well financially, and he’s lent me money to cover a few costs here and there but I feel like I’ve been gas lit my whole life. He’s an immigrant so he needs help with writing up things for work. I’ve been helping him since I was young. But if I did something wrong or didn’t understand, I was a waste of money piece of shit. This still happens and it just happened today. He isn’t mean ALL the time… just the majority of it. I don’t know how to feel because according to my mom “yes he’s been abusive but he also could have abandoned you when you were younger” I feel she’s right but … isn’t it the bare minimum to raise your children? Taking responsibility for the children that came out of your nutsack is literally just having basic morals. Tomorrow is Father’s Day and I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to tell him I’m thankful… but I’ll feel guilty if I don’t. This happens every year.