My father turned a fun day into an anxiety fest.

Last Saturday my parents and I did a mini trip. Basically my mother subscribed us for a day long tour of several local points in my city, including museums and art galleries. It was mostly fine and I liked it.,. But at the same time, I was extremely tense the whole time due to my father tormenting me constantly in his subtle ways.

I’m a very anxious person, so I don’t do well with tour guides constantly stopping the group to explain a load of historical info for 10 minutes. I just want to keep going to the next room and appreciate the relics on my own rhythm. Consequently every time we had to halt for these lengthy explanations I’d get anxious and chew on my nails. My father absolutely HATES that, though. No words can explain how badly my habit of chewing nails angers him. During the trip he’d constantly sneak up on me and harshly nudge my back to quit doing that “because it’s ugly” and “it’s embarrassing him”, even though nobody was even looking. At every damn opportunity he’d look over my shoulder menacingly, nudge/shove me, whisper threats in my ear, and so on. No matter how often I walked away to get some distance between us, he’d eventually come close very slowly until he could torment me again.

The main reason why this makes me so tense is because I know fully well that, regardless of my age(24F), he’s fully capable of slapping my mouth or face to make me stop chewing my nails. The only thing stopping him is the witnesses. He could very well do it at any second if he thought nobody was looking, which was damn terrifying and only increased my anxiety. I only felt true relief after I came back home at night.

Slapping me on the mouth has been his method to stop my chewing since I was a kid. It’s something he’d do a LOT whenever we went to church, since I get anxious and bored really fast during it. I think that since everyone’s attention is at the priest, he didn’t think anyone would notice. At the age 20 I stopped going to the church completely after he slapped me on the face during the Christmas mass. My mother was sitting between us, but that didn’t stop him from reaching past her and doing it... I’m religious and I like going to church, but thanks to my father, just being in one makes me feel extremely nervous and unsafe. I can’t take it.

Submitted August 27, 2019 at 12:28AM by Nightstar95 https://ift.tt/2L84NNq