Missing the abusive parent

[HMSThunderChild]

I confronted and cut off my abusive father almost two years ago now. Since then, I've been struggling with a lot of irrational and counterproductive feelings. He had been basically ignoring me for a couple of years before I confronted him, and afterward he just pretended I didn't exist, with a side of rare and mild social media stalking. With his extended family, it's a mix of them cutting me off for calling him abusive, and me cutting them off for defending him. Same result re: contact.

I know I'm very fortunate that he isn't stalking, harassing, or threatening me, but part of me wants him to chase me, so that I can hurt him more, so that I can fight him, and most dysfunctionally because I may have always been an object to him, but it hurts to know that I'm not a valuable one. "Not even worth abusing," to voice the most broken thought I've had.

Recently I've been having dreams about him and my stepmother, and although those dreams feature repeats of the old patterns, sometimes with him stalking me or me flying into a rage, it makes me think about him and especially his family more. I miss them, and to a certain extent I even miss HIM.

I don't know what to do with these feelings. Anybody have any advice?

[Blueberry]

I don't have any advice but just wanted to let you know I read your post.

Could this be hitting you hard atm because of the season? or because you're coming up to the second anniversary of confronting him and cutting him off? Either scenario can be pretty difficult.

From reading on here and based on my own experience, I'd say it's not uncommon to miss abusers in some way, especially if they're FOO. What I do just to remind myself that FOO really is that bad for my health is read old posts of mine on here, especially Recovery Letters. Maybe you also have some correspondence from them still that you could look at, or even just go through in your mind things your FOO has said or done to you.

You might find some posts with useful info or experiences on https://cptsd.org/forum/index.php?board=182.0

[saylor]

I'm sorry you're going through this, HMS. I don't have any advice, but do have some thoughts, for what they may be worth.

I was NC from my father (since reaching adulthood, until his death), and in my case, I never missed him. I hated and feared him, and I felt I needed to preserve my safety and sanity, so NC was a clear-cut choice for me; but I know that a lot of folks are more ambivalent than I on this topic.

This part of your post really struck me: "because I may have always been an object to him, but it hurts to know that I'm not a valuable one"...  First of all, it's immensely painful to realize that we didn't mean much to our abusive parent(s). We're told by society that there is no greater love than that which a parent feels for their child, and yet, for some of us, most, if not everything, we've experienced under their "care" says otherwise. This is confusing and even devastating.. there's really no way to make sense of it or even sit with it. That causes tremendous pain. Maybe this is the source of your feelings of missing him. Maybe you are hoping to see evidence that you really do matter to him—and that's what you're actually missing(?) Maybe you're seeking elusive closure. Just a thought.

I know in my case, it would have been helpful for my F to acknowledge the damage that he had done to me (I might even have been able to forgive him), but he couldn't bring himself to give me that one little thing. In the end, I've decided that he was a coward so wrapped up in himself that it was much more important to him to maintain an illusion that he had done nothing wrong than it was for him to show concern about my wellbeing. I guess the upshot is that, while it's probably true that I really didn't matter to him, it's more about him being defective than me being defective. This isn't always comforting to me (something primitive inside middle-aged me still cries out for a loving, gentle parent concerned about me, who never existed and never will), but it does put things in perspective.

As I've said before on other threads, he's long dead, and to this day I don't regret my choice to go NC. Based on all available evidence, if I had continued contact with him in my adulthood, even though there would probably no longer have been beatings, I'm sure the insults, condescension, and boorish behavior on his part (including firm reassertions of who's-in-charge, and his other charming qualities like bigotry and misogyny) would have continued, and to all that, I continue to think, "Good riddance! I deserve better."

I wish you sanity and serenity as you explore where to go (or not go) in the future regarding your F

[Kizzie]

   I echo what BB and Saylor have suggested and just want to add that imo no matter what, our parents mean a lot to us, even when they are abusive or neglectful so it's understandable, human really, to miss your F and family.