Hi, I'm new to this group-I'm glad a stumbled on to it. My dad was an alcoholic who didn't get diagnosed bipolar until he was hospitalized for a week after a suicide attempt. This was very late in his life. He used to have terrible rages, break furniture and with his long arms (he was 6'5") sweep everything out of the refrigerator saying he couldn't find anything to eat. He peptic ulcer disease and had two partial gastrectomies. One in 1983 when he perforated his ulcer. During the time he was married to my mother there were multiple violent episodes including one when he did the refrigerator thing, grabbed my mom'a arm on an area she had a big burn and she picked up a knife to defend herself. It is still vividly in my mind.
My mom was hospitalized for a suicide attempt and my sister and I were sent to New Jersey to live with my aunt. I got chicken pox while there and developed impetigo all over my body. My paternal grandmother who lived in Brooklyn came and got me to nurse me back to health. We lived in the LA area. When my dad got a job in NYC we were going to drive across country but stopped first in at Disneyland..my dad stayed in the car saying he didn't feel well and just smoked cigarettes.
When we pulled in to the motel that afternoon, he promptly vomitted blood over the drivers side out the window-he ended up in the hospital and I think we ended up taking the train to NYC-I had terrible motion sickness during the travel. I was a self destructive child- I put a key into an electric outlet, put my thumb in the lawn mower and gashed it. I think I did these things to get some kind of attention from my warring parents.
When I was twelve my dad and mom separated after he started throwing things at her...I hid under my bed.. My aunt lived two doors down and came and got me. I think my older sister is bipolar-she used to beat on me alot and she has a certain paranoia...when she loses jobs it's always the employers issues like sex discrimination etc. She even tried to sue Bank of America once. My dad remarried a woman who was a psychiatric social worker-she used to sit me on the down and give me what I called 'couch lectures' for 2-3 hours at a time, psychoanalyzing me.
My mom remarried and my step dad once yelled at me that I was a selfish malicious brat and my mom didn't intervene.
I got very little positive reinforcement growing up so school was my 'safe haven'.
When I was a senior in high school, my mom and step dad decided to move to Astoria Queens where he owned a co-op. If I went with them I would have had to take the subway two hours each way to get to school since we lived in a part of Brooklyn near Rockaway. I was always deathly afraid of the subway.
I ended up living with my aunt and uncle,who lived five blocks from my high school, but my aunt died three months later from breast cancer and my paternal grandmother again came in to save the day. She cooked, cleaned and did my laundry so that I could focus on school an being with friends. My dad would come over and have these violent fights with my uncle (my paternal aunt and uncle had no children-he was full-on ocd and impotent).
My mom was a good cook but a lousy housecleaner.
I felt abandoned.
I read a book once called "children of the self-absorbed" by Nina Brown.
From this book I figured out that my mom was a passive narcisist and my stepmother an invasive narcisist.
I struggle every day with anxiety. I'm on disability for bipolar II/ptsd/anxiety.
I married a man in 1989 who my therapist says is OCD. We separated in 2010. He was always angry with me about money-as a bipolar II, before I got properly treated, I drank alot, had an affair, spent money like crazy.
His father is Czech from Chicago, and once told me he only married my husband's mother because she was Czech and he didn't love her.
They divoced when my husband was in college-his mother had full blown ocd and was a hoarder.
I only saw her a few times during our marriage.
The sad thing is that we used to fight about money because we thought my private disability would run out when I turned 65. Turned out I'll get it until I die (lifetime sickness rider) and when I turn 65 I also am eligible for pension from my previous employer.
So all his fears were unfounded.
I also have managed to control my spending so I can get my child through college without any big loans.
My husband had temper problems-he slapped my daughter once, tried to drag her up the stairs-he was intolerable of any messes, dirt etc.
In 2003 I told him I was taking Natalie to San Diego to visit my mom and dad and he had a hissy fit, knocked over the chair and screamed about spending the money (maybe he was just frightened about me leaving or felt abandoned because I didn't include him in the trip). I'm glad I went when I did because my memories of how my parents looked at that time are better than what they looked like when they died (according to my sisters).
My daughter is home with me for the summer, but I still struggle every day with anxiety, feelings of abandonment and feeling unlovable.
For the last maybe 5 years of my marriage I slept downstairs (supposedly because I snored-turned out I have sleep apnea). He never made a move to be intimate, and I always had the sense that he felt that intimacey of 'dirty'.
I can't remember him ever saying anything positive to me-like being attractive, artistic,smart, a good skiier, etc. I always wondered whether our marriage was purely a 'financial' marriage.
In some ways he was a good father-he would feed my daughter pumped breast milk at 11 pm so I could get at least five hours of sleep.
He's been giving her driving lessons.
He has daughter from his first marriage whom he has no contact with.
When she was twelve I encouraged him to go back to court and arrange better visiting rights. His x was pretty but lived on welfare and jumped from one man to the next. we were successful in getting her for half the summer and every other weekend but when she got older she just stopped visiting.
I think even though I did things for her-like healthcare and shopping, she didn't like me.
I don't blame her. I was bipolar alcoholic/prescription drug addict.
so-in summary between my dad's violence, my stepmother and stepfathers negativity, my mother's ignoring me, my sister beating on me, my stepdaughter rejecting me and never feeling good enough for my husband I suffer extreme ptsd/anxiety.
