I'm often surprised when I realize what I've been through isn't normal. I only just started to understand how abnormal it is in late 2018, early 2019. It still blows my mind that what I've been through isn't just some commonplace thing? I still struggle to believe that. Ever since I was a kid I just assumed that life was just that way for people.

Things like...how I had 1 friend over one time in my childhood and after witnessing my dad abusing my mom she never spoke to me again, wouldn't look at me in the hallways at school...that didn't make sense to me until I was much older. The only reason it all seems wrong to me is because education is teaching me that it is, and that I am unhealthy, and that in order to break the cycle and not be toxic to others including my own kids someday, in order to be a healthy person, in order to learn to stop accepting unhealthy people as normal and not give them room to be in my life, I must change many things about myself. To say that I'm following what I feel just seems...to paint this picture of someone who knows right from wrong in all of this and has some inner guide or instinct that pushes against it all, and that is the furthest thing from the truth. That's why I'm seeking therapy, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I don't know what healthy looks like, I just know it's what I want.
There's also another factor at play here, which is...once again, how I was raised. My dad was really big on people changing, striving, growing, improving. Doing this was my ticket out of abuse and into the "golden child" place of the narcissist he is, except...I also have a good heart and truly wanted to "do the right things." My dad was stupidly good at making himself seem like a great person with pure intentions while manipulating you in reality. Changes he wanted you to make in order to make you into an extension of himself or get you to conform to his own extreme values and standards (which you could never truly live up to, btw) were instilled as things you should be doing in order to be a loving person or a decent human being, for example. I was not allowed to have a self...I was an extension of him in order to avoid abuse and win his favor, acceptance, approval, and of course...to be a decent human being, "different than the rest of the world" in that he taught me to trust literally no one, everyone was desperately ill-intentioned, even if they didn't see it in themselves, in order to isolate me from everyone else because then he'd maintain that narcissistic control. Again though, it was impossible to meet his standards. It was always a carrot on a string. I didn't feel that I was loved unconditionally, in fact I was taught that unconditional love isn't even real, that it's an unrealistic ideal that people have, that it was an irrational expectation. He's very good at using subtle twisted logic, plus he gaslit and butchered my self-confidence enough to make me dependent upon him to think and guide me, but I thought people who claimed to have or want it were living in a fantasy land. I legit thought that unconditional love was wrong. So...I worked really hard at being loved. I worked really hard at loving people. The self-improvement has become a strong part of my life though, it lingered on. I see the harm I cause in peoples' lives and I want to protect their hearts from myself just the same way I was, in my mind, protecting him. I think some part of me has learned...that I can't accept myself, my flaws. He couldn't be satisfied, his standards couldn't be met; everything I did was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. He would emotionally and psychologically abuse me for literally hours and hours basically each and every day, sending the message that I'm constantly fucking up horribly. It interfered with jobs, school...I couldn't function as a normal human in society because being abused was taking up so much of my time. Neither could he, he didn't work a normal job, he
lived a parasitic lifestyle and manipulated others (including me) to give him their resources to the point of suffering themselves. Part of me did it willingly because I had a big heart and wanted to be there for him and help him, and naive enough to believe his lies which compelled me to do so (such as that anything that wasn't a pretentious job always told him he was overqualified so that's why he couldn't get a job--see "grandiose" on psychopath list, he has every single trait on the lists except he never had legal consequences, he got away with everything well enough not to), and the other part was him making me believe that I was wrong if I didn't help him. He basically used the goodness of my heart against me to get what he wanted. I was working 2 jobs and paying no bills but couldn't even afford to buy myself clothes I needed. Also fucked up my 4.0 GPA in college and went back on my decision to major in psychology because of him. He made me think psychologists didn't know what they were talking about like his grandiose ass did. Of course, now I see that this was just him trying to avoid losing control over me--what would happen if I learned psychology and learned to recognize all that he was doing? Better manipulate me not to trust it so I won't listen!
Being unable to be "good enough" didn't stop me from trying though...and, in part, this was because of another way my dad "reprogrammed my mind" as he himself called it. I think he knew there was potential for me feeling hopeless and as though I could never be good enough. I think he knew that there was the risk of me giving up and not bothering to try because "I can't anyway so what's the point?" If I did that though, that'd reduce his affect on me, so he always taught me never give up. "Keep trying, you can do it." It's the perfect crime: on the outside he appears to be a loving father teaching his daughter perseverance and to be a better person, but meanwhile, he is driving me to pursue his own goals, to live as an extension of himself, to conform to his values and standards (the only "right" ones in existence if you ask him), to...whatever else it is that he wanted. It was a monster disguising himself as a loving and encouraging father.
My point is...the ways he treated me molded my perceptions of myself. I don't think I've grown out of seeing myself as constantly flawed, always falling short in everything...not because I'm falling short of his values or standards anymore, but just that I'm falling short of perfection...which is basically what his expectation was, too. I just keep on trying harder, getting better...and that improvement is the only way I know how to accept myself because it's the only way my dad accepted me. It's the only way I can love myself because it's the only way I was shown love. I'm never satisfied with myself. All of my confidence is built upon the fact that I strive to improve...which is exactly how he "programmed" me to be: "good job, so proud of you now that you're working on doing what I want you to do."