Realisation that things would never change...

I had a very lonely childhood.  Even though I had an older sister, I always preferred my own company.  I remember often playing games by myself and at one stage, I collected and played with 7 dolls, each named after a Von Trapp child!  'The Sound of Music' was another film Nanny and I watched together over and over, we learned the words to all the songs and would sit and sing our way through the film!


I don't think I will ever really understand why my 'family' were how they were.  I never felt truly loved, just an inconvenience.  At a young age, I began to believe I had been adopted, I couldn't understand why my own  family would treat me like they did.  My father was the main problem.  In hind sight, I believe he had some psychiatric problems stemming from an unhappy relationship with his own father...I assume he had felt unloved and became obsessed with demanding my love rather than waiting for a normal 'dad daughter relationship' to happen?  But I guess I will never know the truth.


As I was growing up, I started to realise he was more controlling and protective than my friends' dads....as I approached teenage I knew my growing up and beginning my adult life would be tricky.  I managed to hide my secret from my school friends who never really knew what things were like at home.  I used to sit and dream about very simple things like making friends and inviting them to the house, having a normal social life, having my own house, getting married, having children....but as I grew up and grew aware, I started to realise these things were just dreams and there would have to be a dramatic change for them to happen.


At 16, my sister moved out, I was 14.  She saw his controlling nature and got away..young!  She made it clear she would never be back to live with mum and dad....she was much stronger than me.  Well, my father took this as rejection and turned all his attention to me.  Things got a lot harder for me.


I always knew I was scared of my father, he had quite a temper on him and I was very anxious...I always tried my best not to make him angry.  I know now he controlled me in more ways than I ever realised, I was too scared to do anything he wouldn't approve of.


When I qualified as a Nurse, I buried myself in my work and I loved it, doing emergency surgery, I often worked long hours, frequently putting myself down for overtime so I wouldn't have to be home.  Years began to pass..work, home, work, home and nothing in between...outside of the 'family' anyway.  Having a social life was too much aggravation and sparked my fathers controlling nature and angry temper so it was easiest to go without....my colleagues stopped inviting me on nights out as they knew I would always say no.


I came to realise things would never change.  My father would always be the same, if not worse, I knew one day I would have to take drastic action to get away...but the time had to be right, I had to work on my own anxieties and strength first.  I knew if I didn't decide to make a change, I would be one of the old spinsters I had read about who had never had a boyfriend, never kept friendships going and never moved out of their parents' house.  I was determined not to be.....but I didn't know how to change it.