Having an abusive parent fucked me up badly, even though I would like to think otherwise. I love my dad. Truly, I do. But I wish I didn't, because then it would be so much easier to cut him out of my life and face my daddy issues straight on. I am haunted by the times he physically and verbally abused my mom, my siblings, and me. I remember back when he and my mom still shared a bed, he would wake her up at night and ask her, "Why are you snoring so loudly? Is it because you are tired from fucking all the men in the neighborhood?" I shared a room with them until I was 10 (small house, poor family), and I heard this every single night. Every night, the sound of my father calling my mother a whore. It tears me up inside, thinking about how afraid my mother was and how much of a coward I was for not standing up to him. I remember, on a particularly bad day, he dragged my mother across the room by the hair and tore out a chunk of it in the process. I remember holding on to that chunk, wrapping it up in a peice of tissue paper and hiding it in my Hello Kitty pillow. I swore that I woukd not forget it and that I would not forgive him for it. But I did forget it. And I did forgive him. And I keep on forgiving him, no matter how much I don't want to. I still love him, and that kills me. I remember, when I was 6 or 7, I did something to pass my dad off, and without hesitation, he took the heavy hardcover book in his hands and flung it at my face. My face was swollen for several days and I had a nosebleed that was so bad that my mom worried that it was broken. My dad did that to me, and my family all agrees that I an his favorite child. So how much abuse, then, did my siblings suffer before they became too big for him to hit? These events, even though they happened so long ago, stay with me. But the times when he was sweet and loving stay with me too. And I think that is why it is so hard for me to cut him out. I keep yearning for that sweetness, even though I know I don't want it from a horrible human being like him. Although I don't want to admit it, my father fuckedo me up badly. I can see his imprints on the way I am overeager in relationships, trying too hard to please and expecting too little for myself. I can see him in the way I am terrified that I will love a man so much that I will be blinded to his faults. I ask every close friend I have to please please please rescue me from an abusive relationship should they find me in one, even if I love him, even if I have had children with him, even if I have nothing but him. My biggest fear, however, is not the fear that I will become the abused, but that I will become like him. That the abusee will become the abuser, that one day I will look down and find my child with a swollen face and bloody nose, that my husband will be nearby angry and defeated and ashamed, and that I would have been the cause of their pain.