I hit my father and I don’t know how to live with it. 27 (F)| Indian.

I hit my father today. I’m a mental health professional. I’ve been in therapy for years. I’ve worked very hard to build a good name for myself. He started drinking ten years back because his father’s health deteriorated and that unleashed a series of events that I cannot particularly describe in detail. He was very attached to his mother and after her spouses death, she refused to move in with the oldest brother - they were three brothers because she always felt protective forwards her younger son who brought much later to our notice, was mentally ill. He used to worry about her so much that he started drinking. I tried getting him help but he continued to mock me. His oldest brother used to belittle me even as a teenager. So I eventually had no option but to detach. Post masters, I took therapy - got a job and started working and built my life brick by brick. While we shared the same home, I live on a different floor - I detached myself and it worked well but his drinking soon evolved to financial recklessness, womanising that resulted in him gambling away the money he earned with a lot of hardwork. He was a government employee and he continued to give his money to strangers, women online and said that he has got many girlfriends across the continent. In drunken arguments, he used to even say that it’s okay if you get gangraped. I detached heavily. Tried telling my mother with whom he has always had a dysfunctional relationship to take the legal course but for her own reasons, financial - she has chosen to stick around. I guess she’s too afraid of being on her own. Whatever it is, there’s too many layers and parts missing.

Today, his was drinking when my equally mental maternal grandmother got irritated with him. She’s housed in our home, because of an injury. He came up to my mothers room and asked her mother to back off. It was escalating and he was using the choicest of the hindi gaalis for her. Idk, what snapped in me when my mother called. I went and beat him up to the pulp. I was sick and tired of the abusive language he uses so casually with women. How easily he denegrates. I couldn’t stop crying after. I felt I had worked so hard to not be like anyone of them and yet when I hit him today, I don’t know what happened. The word, randi and chinal - which he uses so casually every time he is pissed - it shook something in me and I was like, no more. Never again. As a girl in India, it weighs on you heavily. I am not seeking validation but just, community. I am committed to therapy and will discuss it with my therapist but it’s simply not enough. I just felt like giving up. I’ve worked so hard to be a different version of a person compared to each and every family member. But, when I saw the extent of my own rage - I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t even my fight.