For context, I just turned 24m, he’s 55. We have a good relationship but I have very complicated feelings about him under the surface that I try to avoid. I wasn’t abused, but there are some weird habits or quirks he has that I think affected me more than I thought.
Some background info on my dad: He likes to argue and debate a lot (so do I though). He is very knowledgeable on a lot of things so he always wants to take the role of the teacher.
But anyways, I was just having a conversation with him tonight and was wondering why I always felt so uncomfortable when he explained things to me. It brought up old feelings and memories of being a kid and listening to him teach me about vaccines and their dangers. He was extremely anti-vaccine and I’ve still never been vaccinated.
My childhood logic would try to prove him wrong because I felt like he was wrong but I couldn’t prove it. So we would have hour long “conversations” that were mostly just him trying to “teach me” about the dangers of vaccines with the occasional 3–4 word argument by me. Then afterwards I would go to Google and spend all night searching the internet reading so many people saying he was wrong and crazy.
I became insanely focused on vaccines. I was probably only like 11 but I knew so much about vaccines. And I feel like the more I learned the worse it made me feel about myself. I would read stories about measles outbreaks and how anti-vax kids caused them. I think this made me hate myself and hate my parents and created a disconnect between the loving people I saw them as and how I thought the world might see them. I dedicated myself to trying to be normal.
And now that I’m older I can understand more where he was coming from. But as a kid, it terrified me. Being unvaccinated became my biggest insecurity and any time vaccines were brought up it made my heart stop. I know this is silly, but being unvaccinated made me feel less than others. I feel like I was dealing with stuff way above my age level and trying to make sense of it all.
I felt like I didn’t understand my dad at all. I would tell him I loved him but I think I might have actually hated him. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I don’t feel any sort of love when he hugs me and I honestly think I have hated him a lot of my life without knowing and just pretended to love him, which I don’t even know how to feel about now.
I pretended to love him because I wanted to be normal sooo bad and normal people love their parents. I wish I could just forgive him and love him, but it’s hard when everything he does bothers me. You’re supposed to learn from your parents, but I had such a distrust in him that I chose to learn from others on the internet instead. And I don’t even know why.
But I know that I argued with everything he said. We got in so many fights. Because in my head, I wanted him to be wrong every time. I wanted to feel like my way of seeing things was right. And it’s so hard now learning to accept other people’s perspectives, think about them, and then decide whether I agree or disagree.
I don’t know if this counts as emotional neglect or what this even is. But I’ve been alone for so many years emotionally. And I didn’t even realize it, but I closed myself off from everyone emotionally and faked things to appear “normal.” Now I wish someone could open me back up, but I can’t blame them because I feel like I’m the one that closed myself up so tight.
TL;DR: My dad raised me unvaccinated and constantly lectured me about the “dangers” of vaccines. As a kid I obsessed over proving him wrong, which made me insecure, disconnected, and secretly resent him. Now at 24, I struggle to feel love toward him and feel like I’ve shut myself off emotionally.