I have just finished reading a message from a lovely person, who made me realise what it is I am most fearful of – wasting my life. I am soooo scared of this and feel like it is a race against time to be everything and have everything all at once to achieve some kind of perfect happiness – and who's idea is this? My father's-this is his idea of happiness, the one that started paving a way for me to get the place I am in right now. The final push was how he kept saying that I had wasted my life and I was going to amount to nothing! All because I had taken an exam that he made me take, my second year medical degree exams. I didnt even want to do medicine,. but i did it as a way to try and achieve the unachievable – my fathers approval. Now after 20 years of his tyranny, his mocking, his bullying and the idea that I had wasted my life and that I was too fat, ugly and unloveable and failure to ever amount to anything, pushed me over the edge and ended with me having a major depressive episode! I have still not got back on track, and I am battling the problems and emotional scars that he has left me with daily.
Now I am only age 21 and because I had to leave my medical degree I am now a total of 4 years behind my peers. who most of whom have already graduated! And this makes me feel like utter crap! I insanely think i am old, out-of-date, behind the times, ugle, waste of space, failure who has run out of time to do anything or amount to anything and like i have missed my chance to be beautiful and young. All because of the way my father constantly told me that i was worth nothing and would never amount to anything and that i was unloveable because i was diguistingly ugly. I am still having trouble coming to terms with this, especially as I was this primary care-giver (he is disabled) and i thought that out of the family he was the only one who got me – turns out he just treated me better than the tes of my family! He would always call me names related to my size and ask questions like did an elephant get you pregnant when I was only 13! I feel like i cant blame him entirely for this, but really it is his fault!
I really need help out of this place, but dont know where to start! I have had a year of counselling and not sure if its been enough! take care all xxx
To have got in to read medicine in the first place tells me that you must be very clever indeed! When I was at Liverpool I shared a house with some medics for my third year, all of them had 4 grade As at Alevel and IQs that were through the roof!.
As for the comments that your father has made over the years, well what can I say? I hope that one day you will be able to put these negative thoughts about yourself aside; I know this isn't easy. I got into Cambridge but was too scared to go because I felt that I couldn't possibly be clever enough. I'm only now, at the age of 43, beginning to believe that I have a half decent brain.
Your issues with your self image seem to me to be largely attributable to your father. This can be a hard thing to accept as we often feel guilty or disloyal when acknowledging the failings of our parents. I ask you to try to see that these things are not your fault and to value the very obviously positive things about yourself. Dave 🙂