I don’t think I ever heard my father directly tell me he loved me. Indirectly, sure. Using the cat as an excuse, saying someone else told him to tell me he loves me…that’s his way of doing it because he is unable to do it directly, verbally. Instead, he teases. The thing is, he takes it too far.
Do you know how everyone says that little boys tease little girls when they like them? That’s my father. Only, he’s a grown adult. His way of showing he likes someone is by making fun of them. The sad part is, that he genuinely thinks that is how one shows affection. If you ask me to tell you a compliment I have received from my father, I will have a hard time finding one, if I even manage to. But ask me what he made fun of, and I can write you a novel… And sure, some things were just teasing, but most of them weren’t and a lot was simply humiliating.
He would make fun of my body, saying I had a big “potato” nose or that my double-chin was engulfing my face. Heck, I even remember taking a picture of me sitting with my legs crossed, dressed in only a robe, and making fun of my cellulite. Going as far as saying he was going to send the said picture to my aunt. I was twelve years old and, rest assured, I always made sure to have my legs covered after that. He teased my taste in fashion, right in those years when one is supposed to experiment and have fun. The sad part is, I can remember him saying those things, but cannot remember them happening. What I do remember is disassociating, imagining there was a wall in front of me and his words couldn’t penetrate, but they always ended up finding a crack where they could get through.
Asking him to stop would only make things worse, it was as if I was giving him more wood to light the fire, the opposite of what I wanted. One of the most hurtful things he used to do was mock me when I was crying. He would imitate me, and turn it into a caricature show. He would not only take pictures of me crying but even went as far as gifting one to each of my aunts and uncles for Christmas, framed and everything! I don’t think I can put into words how hurtful that was, and still is to this day. But that…that wasn’t even the worst thing.
No, it was way worse when he would humiliate me, sometimes in front of others. He would call me a slut and a whore, simply for the way clothes fit me, for having a large chest and therefore a large cleavage. He told me men would never take me seriously and other things, that pretty much ruined not only my self-esteem but for a long time even my trust in men when they told me I was beautiful.
Today, as a grown adult, I know that saying those things was my father’s way to show his love for me, in some twisted and horrible way. But knowing that does not make the pain go away, nor does it miraculously heal my trauma. It does, however, make the healing journey a bit easier to walk.
What was my mother’s role in all this? – I hear you ask. Well…my mother is a very particular person. She never really defended me, not even when I tried telling her – on multiple occasions – that his behavior was hurtful. My mother would, instead, make excuses for why my father did it and that I shouldn’t take everything so seriously. She would, however, always laugh along. But she also did something else that was just as hurtful – she would talk bad about me to others when I could hear her. It wasn’t huge things, but always things that would make her look like the victim and me like the villain – that I was rude, that I didn’t clean my room or help around the house, meaningless things that would make people go “aw, poor you, it must be so hard”. It was infuriating and as a kid, I did not understand why she did it, I did not understand her feeling of always being in some competition with me – one I had never agreed to enter! She enabled my father in his teasing, instead of trying to tame things down, she would sometimes even entice him.
Growing up with this twisted notion of what affection looks like, definitely affected my choices later in life. I ended up choosing partners who would humiliate and make fun of me in ways that I wasn’t ok with but accepted nonetheless because I was taught to believe that was what people do when they love someone. One of the first signs I had that my relationship with the father of my son was not going to work, was when I specifically asked him not to make fun of me in the way he did – or using certain topics – and instead of stopping, he simply told me I hadn’t understood the joke. He didn’t mean it that way, no, I was the one at fault.
So if you take even just one thing from these lines of text, take this: if someone makes fun of you and you don’t like the way it makes you feel, tell them! If they don’t stop, they’re not worthy of a space in your life. It is not your fault for being “too sensitive” or “not understanding the joke”, it is the other person’s duty to stop a behavior if they have been told it isn’t desired. And you have every right to remove said person from your life or distance yourself from them. Your mental and emotional health is important!
If you were made fun of by your parents, please know it was never you, it was them. And, having gone through the same and knowing what it feels like, I’m sorry you had to go through that.