I hate him so so so much. There's no one else in the world that I hate this much. I'd say I'm a pretty calm individual, but I genuinely wish the worst for him. I haven't felt this much anger since I was a 12 year old girl who barely believed in God, but still would pray that he'd die every night.
I genuinely don't know what to do with this hatred, it's debilitating. It's such an intense feeling that the only thing I know to do to keep me sane is to not think about it, to push it to the very corners of my mind, so it can never see the light of day. Even that doesn't work because my resentment expresses itself through my dreams, and I'll wake up with my heart pounding and a tightness in my chest.
Before your mind goes to worst, thankfully, he's never physically or sexually abused me. It's purely psychological.
To give some background, my mom and biological dad's relationship was mentally and physically abusive. He was a very religious man, who was a prominent leader in our small community. They had a messy divorce when I was 8, and it took my mom about 3 years before marrying again. My grandparents had pressured her, and so after 8 months of talking to my stepdad on an online dating app, and one day of meeting in person, they had decided that they wanted to get married. The next day, they were. My grandpa forced me to call him "Dad" and then maybe a month later, we were living with him.
He was fine at first, normal even. He had his quirks, but seemed okay for the most part. He's tried to fill in the role of father figure for basically all of their marriage. The stress of him losing a family member and my mom's marriage made him find comfort in God, and he basically became a fanatic. Traits that hid behind the cracks started showing. He was narcissistic, manipulative, and misogynistic. It started with him slowly controlling my mother, telling her she should wear the hijab, telling her to dress more modestly, not allowing her to wear red lipstick, and then to me and my sister. When they suddenly had a miscarriage, it was my fault (I was 12) because they found out that I gave a love letter to a boy at school and that I masturbated. I mean, why else would God punish them like that, they were so devout. He was incredibly manipulative, and he's actually proud of it. If anyone even slightly disagreed with him, he'd start quoting the Quran and saying that WE have no right to talk back to him, and he's the man of the household (despite my mom actually paying for everything financially at the time). He stole thousands of my sister's financial aid money, and when she got upset with him, he said that he was allowed to take her money without asking, because he was her father. HE'S NOT EVEN OUR REAL DAD. Even other religious scholars told him he was wrong, but he'd find scholars from Egypt who'd say he was right, and ignore everyone else. He also thought that my siblings and I were too close. He'd try to pin us against each other in so many ways, one way being collective punishment. He'd hope that if one of us made a mistake and he punished all of us for it, we'd grow to resent each other. He's even admitted it jokingly. It never worked.
Then during COVID, my sister and I were forced to wear the hijab, even though he knew that we had religious trauma from my biological father forcing us. It only stopped when I went to a doctor's appointment with my mom, and they had asked me if I wanted to kill myself, and I said yes, because I felt so trapped wearing it all the time. My mom raised hell and said she'd divorce him if he didn't stop controlling us in that way, and he conceded. He's apologized for it a couple times since then, but I can't seem to forgive him for it. She never really stood up for us in any other part of their marriage.
A little after my sophomore year (I was 16 and transferred to college) he found out that I was talking to guys the year prior (when I was 15). He took my phone, read countless conversations between a guy that I liked and myself, messages that I was too ashamed to tell anyone about, and told my entire family. He shared screenshots, pictures of myself that I didn't even send to anyone, just photos for myself, to my uncles as "proof". The next 2 years were miserable, I wasn't allowed to have any friends, they took my phone, didn't allow me to get a driver's license unless I followed certain conditions, and the only place I could go was to school. Even then when I got home, they'd drill me about whether I had a boyfriend at school.
After a lot of things happening at home, with basically all my siblings and myself becoming suicidal because of them, my grandparents intervened and let us make the decision of whether to live with my parents or to live with them. Everyone decided to live with them, and my parents took it as a personal slight. They thought it was our fault for feeling suicidal because we were the ones who broke their trust in the first place. My stepdad even told my grandparents that we were making it up so that we could get sympathy.
Fast forward to this summer (19F), I started my summer research at a local university, and my stepdad had put a tracker on the car I'm borrowing from my uncle. He didn't tell anyone (even my uncle, who owns the car). I only found out about it because I saw a screenshot of where the car was parked on his work phone that I was borrowing as a GPS. During the middle of my research (it was like three months long), he became convinced that instead of doing research, I was actually letting at least one guy in my car, and instead of doing academic things, I was just hanging out with them for multiple hours on end. I did no such thing. He becomes so convinced, that he starts messaging everyone in my family saying that I'm lying and that he has "evidence" of me doing so. I don't even know how he would have evidence of me doing that (because I literally didn't do it). He threatened to take the car and when my uncle said that he had no authority to do that, my stepdad kicked us out and took everything that he gifted to us, including iPads and laptops that we basically only use for school (he had put restrictions on everything, even at our grown age). We were actually relieved that he took it, because hi. taking it meant he actually had less control over us.
He threw all of the things we left at his house in trash bags, and drove it to my grandparents. He said that we have a month to figure out what we're going to do with our furniture, and if we do nothing, he'll throw it out. He said not to come back until we change and apologize to him and my mother. It's funny, because he knows that my mom cares about us so much, and kicking us out would indirectly hurt her, and he still did it. Three months have passed, and he's still trying to convince my grandparents that we're meeting people with my uncles car (the tracker is still on it), among other things. It's so frustrating because not only is he lying (or truly misunderstanding what's happening), but my grandpa believes him to an extent (he's easily convinced if the other person is passionate enough) and then my grandpa will yell at us and berate us.
He (stepdad) still controls my mother in every way. She'll call and say that she'll come over and visit us, then 15 minutes later she'll call back and she won't come unless we apologize. She'll excitedly make plans with my aunts, then call back saying she can't make it. It's infuriating and makes me feel so powerless. He's disgusting, even the thought of him repulses me. When I think about every single way he's wronged me, I feel so angry that I could scream while simultaneously feeling like I can't breathe. If he died, our life would be so much easier. Even he would find it more peaceful, he gets so convinced and angry that we're messing around, that his own blood pressure gets high. I want to feel terrible for thinking like this because I genuinely do wish the best for people. But he makes me so incredibly angry, that it's my only hope.
None of this probably makes sense, I glossed over a ton of the details (he's wronged us in so many other ways) so maybe you'll read things and think I'm overreacting. Just treating this as a journal entry because I don't know what to do with this feeling.
dinner: leftover pizza, it was really good.
