I love my parents but our relationship hasn't always been good, sometimes I wonder how it is I still love my parents after enduring my childhood, sometimes I feel guilty for wondering it.

I come from a large 'patchwork' family. I have three younger siblings from my mum and dad, three elder siblings from my dad and his previous two partners and an elder sibling from my mum and her previous relationship. Over the course of eight kids collectively my parents style of parenting has changed dramatically, I respect how they are raising and disciplining my youngest two brothers who are the last ones still living at home, I respect how they help me out in life now, but I can never condone the way that they raised all of us elder siblings.

When I was a kid, if I swore I would be force fed a bar of soap, if I was "acting out of line" I would be dragged by the ear or hair and beaten, sometimes by bare knuckles, otherwise a belt or stick. If I didn't take the beating "like a man" I'd be beaten more for making a fuss and lectured about how lucky I have it, how soft they are on us compared to how their parents were on them and that I'll thank them for it later. The thing is "acting out of line" was never anything horrible, mostly just for arguing with a sibling and in a family of 8, this was a very common occurrence. Both my parents had a tendency to lash out over pretty much nothing and often I would find my one of my elder brothers standing between one of my parents and I, trying to shield me from the incoming beating, sometimes I would be the one standing between my parents and my younger brother. My parents didn't just lash out at us kids, often they would lash out at each other (verbally) and on a fairly regular basis, one of my parents would leave with my siblings to a friends place to escape for a few days. Being the family peace keeper, I would be left with the parent at home, in this time I would be told a plethora of horrible things, mostly stuff like "your mum's a rampant whore that will suck a strangers cock for a bong hit" or "you know your dad's fucking your school teacher, you probably have a handful of illegitimate siblings you'll never meet" etc, this was when I was around 10 - 14 years old, I honestly think none of the shit they would say is true, regardless I couldn't care less, all I know is NO child should hear these things about their parents from anyone, especially from their parents. To top things off, I was hardly allowed a social life, the only important thing in my life as far as they were concerned was my grades at school, if I got a B I would be interrogated and blasted as to what the hell is wrong with me, anything less than a B I'd get a beating and told that I'm going to end up sucking dick on the streets for crack money and taking it up the ass on a daily basis when I inevitably end up in prison. At the age of 14, nearly 15, I was ready to kill myself. I was getting in fights at school at least a couple of times a week (always the victim never the initiator), and would drink really heavily, normally to the point of blacking out whenever I got the chance.

Here is where things changed with my parents. I was out one weekend fishing off the jetty with a couple of friends, we got our hands on a several bottles of spirits and drank and drank and drank. By the time I stood up I could barely count the fingers on my hand, skip to the end of the night, one of my elder brothers finds me slouched against the wall at a house party, covered in my own vomit, countless dicks drawn ALL over my body (I later found someone had even colored my penis in...), I was completely fucked yet people were still feeding me drinks because apparently that's funny. My brother called my parents to pick me up, I don't remember much of the night, only that as soon as I was in the car I vomited EVERYWHERE. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed that I'd also managed to cover in vomit, I was covered in cuts and bruises and two of my knuckles were worn down to the bone (apparently on the way to the house party my "friends" convinced me to attempt a bike jump at the local bmx track, it ended badly). I prepared myself for the biggest lecture and beating of my life, it never came. Instead my parents cooked me up a feast of greasy goodness for breakfast and gave me some pain killers. They then drove me around town to collect my things and we went out just the three of us to talk. Instead of berating me, we discussed what had happened and why, what went so wrong for me to end up in such a state. Without my input my parents put the blame entirely on themselves. They said they were just trying to make sure I would grow up to be a respectful and successful adult, that they went off the rail a long time ago and failed to see what they were actually doing to us kids and didn't realize how much they spoke ill of one another. The following week was filled with discussions about what I want, how can they help make my life OK again. Eventually we decided together that I would move to the city and live with a family friend so I could get away from all the trouble and build a social life at a new school. They arranged everything, including helping me become emancipated so I could obtain welfare and they supported me with what cash they could whenever they could. After I'd moved, mum would come with my brothers to visit me whenever she could (I was living about 7 hours drive away). In my last year of high school my dad would drive down almost every weekend (unless I didn't want) to help me with study and deliver some home cooked meals. I could say much more but this post is already getting painfully long to read. In essence what I'm saying is that I had a lot of reasons to despise my parents and for a long time I did. After they finally saw the error of their ways however things changed dramatically, they completely revised their parenting strategy and really put in effort to effect it. They stopped putting as much pressure on me to do well and instead provided support when and where it was needed. I'm not saying that they become perfect overnight, they still made mistakes, but what I can truly respect is how once they realized everything went wrong they took a few really big steps back to reinvent themselves and do a better job from then on. I'm 26 now so a lot of time has passed, my parents and I have since discussed everything multiple times. They still apologize, their relationship has improved (yes they're still together) and their parenting style has done a complete 180. I love my parents not for who they were but for being able to step up, face responsibility for their actions and make a change for the better. They still have issues between themselves and sometimes they still make mistakes but people are rarely perfect, sometimes making a change is a much bigger thing.

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TLDR: Family relationships are complicated. I love my parents despite having plenty of reasons I could hate them.

P.S. Anyone that managed to get through all that deserves a trophy!