The time I wasn't allowed to mourn my friend's death because I was caught reading a book I wasn't supposed to be.

I originally posed in justnofamily, and was encouraged to post here.

When I was 16 and about to be a senior in high school, we had just moved across the country to a place I knew no one. That in and of itself is a huge, horrible situation for another time, and not the point of this but important to it. I was settled in my room and starting on books from the reading list for the Oxford gap year program I wanted to get into, not all of which were explicitly father-approved.

One evening, my parents came into my room and gave me the news that one of my friends from my old school had been killed by her father in a murder suicide. I was heartbroken and scared, and ended up having a panic attack later in the middle of the night. It was my first true panic attack, and I thought I was dying. I called my dad for help because I didn't know what else to do.

The next day, my mother took me out to run an errand. While I was gone, my dad searched my room - a somewhat regular occurrence. When I got home, he was waiting for me, furious because he had found a copy of "Madame Bovary" under my mattress. He said that I had "invited the devil into my bedroom" and that is what had caused my panic attack. I was grounded, further cut off from my friends, and it was made very clear I wouldn't be going back for the funeral. My mom said that she didn't think the girl and I were "very close" anyways.

It was hell. I wanted to die every single day I was in that house. I thought about killing myself constantly. At 13 my dad found out that I was making myself throw up, and he threatened to spank me, cancel my voice lessons, and told me I was an embarrassment. I asked to talk to a therapist because I had been struggling with it for 3 years, and he told me no, because I would talk about him and my mother. From the time I could write, he read diary entries aloud to me and forced me to explain every little detail. When I stopped writing in diaries, he sat me down regularly and drilled me about minutiae and the facial expressions I made in response until I cried or blew up at him, and then was punished. I was 19 when he spent two days at work reading through every single Facebook message I had ever sent, and then made fun of me for things I had said to friends for weeks. He tracked me and my moms phones. He accused her of cheating on him almost daily for over a decade, and had to leave jobs and move because of it. He dragged me into it from years 12-20, asking whether I had seen things or would watch certain people for him. When I was 17-19 he questioned me to tears about my physical relationship with my boyfriend, constantly paranoid we were having sex, and at one point told me to break up with him because he had searched his iPod and found Metallica. He spent two years drunk after losing his job after personality conflicts with others, culminating in him getting wasted and beating out the windows and front windshield of the car while I was driving. These instances are just a handful, and not even the worst.

He was my dad, my pastor. He was the superintendent of the private Christian schools I went to. I could never escape it. And I loved him. He was normal and kind 20% of the time and I and everyone else in my family lived in that 20%. And now I'm grown and have two beautiful children, and he loves them and wants to be super active in their lives. Everyone acts like it was all fine, and normal, and that we were a happy family. No one would believe me if I told them. I have tried. Mom and dad preemptively told everyone I was a liar and manipulator so they wouldn't believe me when I spoke out.

They poisoned my relationships with everyone I loved, and with myself. I was told since I could talk that it was my responsibility to "protect my family" and never share anything outside of it. I "had no right" to confide in other people about my struggles, my parents, my life. I'm tired. I'm tired of the gaslighting and dishonesty and hypocrisy. I don't know if he even remembers the things that are inconvenient for him to acknowledge. I've been out of the house for several years now and rarely thought about it, but in the last few months it's all come back to the surface and I'm struggling to wade through it. I'm holding on to these negative memories, because I feel like I might disappear if I don't.

Even as I write this, I feel guilty. I feel selfish for possibly exposing him and changing the way people view him. I've been hard wired to protect his image at all costs, and so maybe this is exactly what I need. To be a whole person, and share my truth. To release some of it and know that someone else believes me and understands, even if they don't know who I am.