My Dad, part 1: Confidence issues.
This will probably be the first in a long running series, my Dad being both a source of constant bad feeling and personal interest.
To give you a quick overview, my dad and I are two people who grew to dislike each other and now only speak to each other when absolutely necessary and even so, only as much as we need to. We can be in the same room doing things for long periods of time in complete (and very arquard) silence.
How this has effected me usually starts with my confidence. Having to live with someone who can make you feel worthless with a few off hand remarks and I have little power to stand up to make me unable to think I can succeed. My confidence hit all time low in the winter of 2007 and some times I just couldn’t get out of bed and saw no way of getting out.
I had left school to try and start a business but I was never confident I could do it. Whenever I planned to do something I would think of how it wouldn’t work and so I could never put my heart into anything because I thought I was going to fail, just like I do at everything else.
Even trying to live becomes hard with him around, I spend all of my time in my room as it is the only place in the house he doesn’t go apart from Helen’s room. Even eating with my family in the living room makes me feel on edge sometimes as sometimes he comes in and then I have to be on guard and not talk out of place or risk being lashed out at.
Now most of you will be thinking why don’t I stand up to him? Well I have, it was sort of the reason things ended up like this and I would probably keep standing up to each other until things turned violent. The reason I don’t is mostly for my mother’s sake because, while the family hasn’t completely fallen apart, my mother is the only one we all like all the time and her having to deal with a full blown war between me and dad would be more than she could take and she really doesn’t deserve it as she is the sole pillar of the family in terms of finance and holding us together, and while I would like to force my dad into a bend or break situation where he has to choose between changing his attitude or incur dire consequences I couldn’t do so because it I would crush my mother in the process.
And I know I could, I am soley responsible for my action but when I lack so much confidence but I’m not desperate enough to risk my mother breaking under the stress then I feel poweless. Back when things were going bad sometimes my dad would congratulate me on something out of the blue and for the rest of the day I would feel unstoppable in a small sort of way but it made all the difference. If from today onwards my dad stopped making me feel like a failiure and congratulated me on one thing I had done every day (even if he just looked at my to-do list and picked something random) then I would be studying in a Japanese university by 2010 garenteed.
But for now, same old, same old.
