Fucking thank you. I don't have a relationship with my dad and barely one with my mom, and I feel like a lot of it has to do with this. I got severely punished for my mistakes, so I got scared of not being perfect. There was even a time when I was about 12 I remember my dad would scream at me for the tiniest little things. I even called him out, and he said "yeah, because you need to be whipped up into shape and this is what I have to do" or words to that effect. Making mistakes was very scary. So i would start lying, then I would get in huge trouble for that, and then I would start telling the truth again, and, even though I was told telling the truth would be better, it was worse. So I started coming up with better lies.

There were even points where I would try to talk to my dad just in a friendly way about a mistake I made with a friend, or an exam... And then he'd fucking turn it into a scream fest at me, and I was like "what the fuck!?! I'm coming to talk to you because I recognize what I did!! I need your support you mother fucker." This happened every time. So I didn't really get the chance to have a normal relationship with my dad. And then he'd come home and bitch about his dead end job and all of his redneck "friends", but my problems weren't important to him.

My dad failed as a parent, to me. But I'm sure he loved me. However, he also abused me on different levels and it never seemed to get better. I stopped loving him when I was about 18 because nothing felt right between me and him, and he never apologized for any of the abuse and it just inherently didn't sit right with me. Finally, on my 20th birthday shit went down and I got kicked out. Best fucking birthday present in disguise. It was funny to see how much more he tried talking to me, and I just didn't give a flying fuck, because I didn't have to pretend anymore that I cared, because he never made the effort to care about what I had in mind.

I'm so much happier now.