Today was even worse. I was feeling better, having a chance to just decompress and get better for a day, and my father ruined it.

More than two decades of emotional abuse, extortion and blackmail, manipulation with food and other physical items finally came to a head and we had a physical altercation. It was entirely one-sided and monstrous on my part, but I was literally pushed into a corner and acted purely out of adrenalin. Of course he's no physical threat to me, but he was acting like he was by stepping into me and pushing me and demanding I do what he told me to or else he'd start destroying everything else in the house (including my mother and sister's belongings). Last night he also threatened to kill my sister's cat to her if she didn't do what he said.

It ended with my hands around his throat. He choked a lot, I watched the consciousness drain from his eyes, and I held back enough not to kill him. I dragged him outside and left him basically naked on the front porch and made him wallow in pain and shame until my mother and sister came home. He's a lot less hurt than he puts on though. He can walk. Nothing is broken or seriously bruised. His head might be sore and he might have trouble talking for a while, but he can live with that.

Now I can't help but look at my hands and see them closing around another human's throat, knowing I could have gone all the way, that I wanted to and didn't. Now I can't go back, and I know what I am and how disgusting I am ... worse: that I was birthed from something so pitiful and inconsiderate that I was forced to become such a reprehensible monster as that.

I'm never living under the same roof as him again, by choice, ever again. I'm out now and my mother and sister are supporting me, but I am fully disowning him. As far as he should be concerned, he murdered his second child years ago, and now only a monster is left. I'll go on with my life and be a person as best I know how now, but I'll always know that monster is there, wearing this face and these hands. A part of me is changed and can never go back now.

I tried. I honestly tried. I tried to accommodate him, tried to make it so that the last years of his life would be good where we could all be a family together and enjoy our time together, but he just couldn't let that happen, and now it never will. He will die never seeing me again, never touching or hugging me once again, never getting the chance (if he even deserves it) to truly and honestly apologize and make peace. And when he's gone, I will not stand at his service and tell people, like I had planned, to say that he wasn't the best father but for all his faults he at least tried. I will stand and tell them he was an obstinate, selfish liar, a bad man and a bad father up to the very end. He only pretended to try, and it hurts me that I fell for it. I wanted to believe in him, and in return, my hands are now a monster's hands.

I'm okay, I'll get better. I'm not suicidal. My sister and mother talked me down from thinking I need to be put in a psych ward or in prison, but it's going to take some time for me not to feel anything but horrified whenever I see my own hands. Typing this I want to break down and cry, but I honestly don't have any energy or tears left I've been crying so much these past few days.