Hello fellow members,
Writing here today as I feel I'm unable to forgive what's been done to me in the past. This may get rambly, I apologize in advance.
Firstly, a little background. While growing up I was abused by both of my parents, mainly through verbal abuse and emotional manipulation. My siblings also began to exhibit the same behaviour, I was heading the same way, until I realised it wasn't normal. I'm sure I still exhibit some poor behaviours. About seven years ago I cut all contact with them. I now have no contact with any biological family members. My family on one parents side were cut out of my life when I was a child. The other side of the family was cut out of my life as a teen, after two deaths in that side of the family.
While it shocks some people when I tell them about it, I feel having no contact with my family is best for my mental health. As a side note, I don't feel trying to contact extended family is a good idea, as any correspondence will get back to my parents. After my parents separated, they went back to their siblings and parents, bridging that gap that was put in place. At that point I was already starting to cut out my parents, leading me to ignore their attempts to connect me with extended family.
After everything that's happened to me, I don't feel like I can forgive my immediate family for their actions. I can still clearly remember some of the things that were said to me, and how they treated me. For example, I was left alone in the house all day on my sixth birthday. I don't have any memories earlier than that point, which scares me. At around eight, I was told that I was viewed as the family slave. My mother even said "why else do you think we had you?" when I got upset about it. After that I was outright treated as the family slave, with my siblings hurling expletive's at me if I didn't do the dishes when they wanted me to.
There's a lot of other things that happened that I won't cover here, as it'll take me over the character limit for starters. Additionally, I wanted to provide some background to help give anyone reading this a better idea of my situation. I would feel more inclined to forgive them if they proved they'd changed, which hasn't happened.
People are frequently told to forgive others, but in this case I don't think I can do it. Am I trying to force this too early, or are there just some things can't can't be forgiven?
Thank you to anyone who read through this post.
Regards,
DisplayName5742
