Daddy's Favourite: An Autobiographical Memoir Of Childhood Abuse

Hatred

I wasn't allowed to talk about the abuse I endured as a child. I wasn't allowed to talk about my father or how he shaped my life. I wasn't allowed to say anything.

I was his favourite, he liked me. I couldn't possibly understand how hard it was because daddy loved me.

The first time I tried to tell one of my sisters about what he had done, to open the communication with her about it, she gave me the dirtiest look. The type of look that makes you feel tiny and insignificant, as if you are worth nothing, worth less than everything that surrounds you. She gave me that look and spat out bitter and poisonous words that still hurt to this day.

"You can't say anything, he liked you."

I had grown up believing that my anger towards my father was unnatural, that my wariness and my resentment was simply abandonment issues, that my feelings I had about my childhood weren't supposed to be there. When I discovered the truth, discovered what it meant to grow up how I did, when I realized what I had experienced was abuse. I was told to shut up about it because I didn't know.

How could I when my father would pick me up, stiff as a board with fear, set me on his lap and call me his little pumpkin?

How could I understand the abuse when he would dote on me when eyes were watching?

How could I understand how they suffered when he would pat me on the head and call me a good girl?

How could I understand my own pain when he covered it up with kisses to my cheeks that I cringed from?

When you are told to be quiet because you can't possibly understand, you learn to hate yourself. And I did. I hated myself for how he had doted on me, for how he called me his little pumpkin, his favourite. I was his child and I was quiet. Not like my two eldest sisters (too rebellious), not like the sister right above me (not his), not like my little brother (useless mama's boy).

I, however, was perfect. I was never heard, rarely seen, and I allowed him to pick me up. I never complained, never asked, never requested. I was a doll with sullen and wary eyes he could show off to others. I was the creation he was proud of.

It made me hate myself, made me want to claw him out of my veins, wanted to remove the bits of me that came from him.

I sobbed when I realized we shared the same blood type.

I cried myself to sleep after I begged my mum for just a chance that I wasn't his and she told me that I was his and there was no changing it.

I wanted no connection to him, I hated myself because I was a part of him, something he was proud of. Even when he wasn't everyone knew that he had been and it made me hate myself more.

I experienced the soul crushing realization I couldn't have children because they had a high chance of ending up like him because everything that was wrong with him was carried in that 'X' he marked me with at conception. Once the knowledge was there I knew I could never risk it. Could never take a chance on birthing a monster like the one who fathered me.

I hated myself for that because how could I hate him when everyone blamed me for not taking the brunt of it where they could see? I couldn't hate him without being told I wasn't allowed, so I hated the next best thing, myself.