I have a narcissist for a father. I have said it out loud. This is the first time I have technically said it out loud in the almost year since I was first willing to admit it. By saying it out loud I mean not in the safety of my home, not in the safety or the prescence of my sister, or mother, or girlfriend, or other friends. I have admitted to the world that my father is not an easy man to love. A man that some days I question if loving him is worth it.

It took me 24 years to admit his is a narcissist and a selfish man. I always used to brush it off as he is just a blunt man, he doesn't beat around the bush. But events last holiday season forced me to open my eyes and admit that i have been lying to myself about what my father is.

I hurt so much because of this I have so many little tiny cuts inside myself and I feel like if you looked up the phrase "Death by a thousand paper cuts" you could find a picture to me. My father is a bully. His sense of humor is to disparage others but I have had to deal with it for 25 years.

I have no sense of self confidence, I barely have any ability to talk about how I feel to people I know. Hell I'm airing my mind out to reddit instead of the love of my life, or my mother or sister who had to live this alongside me. I don't know how to feel like anything other than a burden. I can't properly express my sadness because of this. It took me 6 months of being fucked up and not being happy when I graduated college for me to decide maybe its time to go to therapy. Which i have been going to almost weekly for over a year now.

One stark memory in my head that hurts me to this day, it had to be around 7 or 8 years ago. My father and I are working on our new den in the house. I come up with the brilliant idea on how to solve a problem we are having running some wires. My father did acknowledge my intelligence by saying and I quote "There's Svihelen's one good idea for the year." or one of his common things was "I feed you, I clothe you, I shelter."

Now just a little side tangent, only like two weeks ago did I realize how fucked up that is to hold that over a childs held. I literally did not ask to be born. Hell I wasn't supposed to be born, I was an accidental miracle of the highest degree. My father got testicular cancer in junior year of highschool, had chemo and all that jazz and was told he couldn't have kids. Well my sister and I are his.

But back to him he can just be so terrible and he doesn't realize it, yes a narcissist. Like he cheated on my mother and blamed her for it. And I'm sure if he knew that I knew he cheated on her he would find some way to blame me for finding out even though he started a fight with her about it at the top of the stairs to our basement where he knew I was at the time.

But I'm just so messed up right now. I am struggling to find a job for myself because my confidence is so non-existant that it is inner turmoil just to apply for something and I don't know how to build myself up. Because it's hard to be confident when 99% of what you have applied to you don't even get a phone interview from.

I am so messed up because I don't know how to interact with him because I have decided for the moment to remain in contact even though he dropped me like a hot potato the moment my mother announced the divorce because I chose her side in his mind.

I don't know how to let go of my pain. I don't know how to tell when he's being a playful father or being subtly mean. Like just a few weeks ago we were discussing my issues finding a job at my grandmothers over dinner with him, my grandma, step-grandpa, and sister. Where he suggests I work with him which I currently can't imagine. He suggests a day and I make a playful joke about how I have plans with my girlfriend that day and how I would have to consult with the management. He turns around and makes the astute observation that my mother is technically the management and on the way home from grandmas we'd call mom and if she didn't have anything for me to do I was going to work with him. I felt so infantalized, that here he is ordering me his 25 year old son around. And than tonight after we went out he told me he is working all week and expects a phone. Aside from the obvious issues of I am physically disabled and he isn't the best about keeping my limits in mind. With him being a contractor I can barely imagine being with him for an entire day with no real buffers. I barely survived being with him tonight.

Now before I go further I do want to say he is by no means a terrible father as a hole. He has had moments where I wouldn't have any other than him. Like he coached my baseball team and when he retired he said if you don't want to play anymore you dont have to. He was very helpful when it came to doctors and the school when we were diagnosing my disability to get me help and stuff.

It's just I wish he could have been better. I wish his sense of humor didn't rely on mercilessly teasing others. Sometimes as children to the point of making my sister or I run to our rooms crying, often followed by other actions (I.e slammign doors) that led to us getting punished or yelled at for doing even though he's the one that pushed us. Or his other big trait was being unflexible when it came to things. Like if you weren't immediately able to explain why you didn't want to do something with a good reason a yelling match started. Much of my childhood with him involved things escalating to yelling from 0 to 60. He was a fan of what I thought and to a degree my mother thought were unreasonable punishments, like one time I refused to help him in the backyard, mostly it was because I didn't want to do the things he wanted me to with gloves but he so quickly started attacking me that I didn't have time to suggest to him that if I had gloves I wouldnt mind helping him, because I said no to helping and he immediately got all intimdating and stuff which made me defensive and unwilling to cooperate. So his punishment, for a fight he didn't even give me a chance to avoid was no tv for two weeks. All of my videogames gone for two weeks, no internet unless it was for school and only under supervision. I was not to leave my room except for food (meals and snacks), to get drinks, use the bathroom, or to ask him or my mother something. Like my mother had to get into a fight with him just to get him to drop the don't leave my room and tv parts of the punishment because once she had both of our sides she was like what is wrong with my husband.

At the moment I think I am done. I apologize for the messy and unorganized nature of my rant or vent, whatever you want to call it. I just needed to get this out of me, I am feeling overwhelmed, I am angry, I am depressed, and I just don't know what to do right now to handle how I am feeling and I just kind of thought just vomiting (sorry for the phrasing) it onto a page might help at all. I may come back and repost something and be a little more organzied but I really just needed to empty my head. Also sorry for how long it is but I have a year of not really being sure how to talk about this and kind of holding it in to undo.