One thing that was super healing to realize was that my ndad has always been an N, long before I was even born or even existed.

My ndad is an immigrant. He immigrated several years before I was born. HE was the one who wanted to immigrate and the rest of his family were not down to move. His parents (my grandparents) especially, who were in their 60s by then, wanted to spend their old age at home, in their own country with their friends and family. My grandpa especially made it VERY CLEAR he had zero interest in moving halfway across the world and wanted to stay home. But that didn’t matter to my ndad - he basically did their immigration papers and forced them to come with him. They were none too pleased to spend the last 30 or so years of their lives in poverty (they were pretty well off back home and had pensions), in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language, isolated from their friends.

Two years after he immigrated, my ndad also made my Emom immigrate. Her family was NOT down with her leaving, and she herself didn’t seem to really want to leave either (he said he married her because he was getting old and she was the only one left that was still single, so that should tell you something about him). But she couldn’t say no to him so she immigrated with him to a new country, leaving her ENTIRE FAMILY BEHIND (most of them still live over there). My maternal grandparents really resent my ndad for taking their daughter away from them. My ndad also constantly talks shit about my maternal grandparents, saying they’re uncultured, backwards, dirty people.

That’s the way it’s always been with my dad. No one can ever say no to him. He doesn’t give a fuck about what other people want or other people’s feelings, as long as he gets his way. He will step and hurt whoever he wants to get his way, leaving destruction and trauma in his wake. This is also the abusive way he raised me - if I didn’t act and be EXACTLY the way he wanted, I would get beaten and abused and assaulted. I was the first person ever in my family to tell my ndad NO, I WILL NOT DO WHATEVER YOU WANT ME TO DO. I WILL NOT BEND TO YOUR WILL. Everyone else - my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, sibling, mom, any relatives - were so scared of his violent angry rage fits that they would always give him whatever he wanted and never told him NO or stood up to him.

I’m NC with my family now and on my healing journey. I used to blame myself and think I was a bad person to make my ndad be so cruel to me, but then when I learned my family history & saw him treat other family members like shit with my own eyes, I realized that actually this wasn’t my fault at all and that this had nothing to do with me, because it started way before I even stepped foot on the planet.