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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/daydaze024 on 2025-11-06 10:06:36+00:00.
22F here, growing up my dad ran the house like a boot camp (he retired from the military when I was 6 and started living with us from then on). I'm not sure if it's because I once had a life without him around, but I could never get used to his presence or rules. He's made a monarch of himself in this household, a literal king. There is no backtalk or opinions, no nothing. I'd try to say literally anything and he’d lose it. Something common he sensed when he sees the slightest disapproval on my face was "You don't put food on the table do you?" Pushing it too far is never an option because I discovered getting grounded is a thing through tv shows. We get beat up, verbally degraded and since my mother is another victim of his we had nothing to protect us. He never let me out of the house for my own interests and sometimes it's like he expected an apology for our existence. My mother tried to gaslight us into thinking it could be worse without him and my siblings just learned to stay quiet (I can't imagine how he's fucked them up in their own story) and me I was certainly the one with the most resentment as the oldest but I just swallowed it and it's ruined my self image and it got to where i couldn’t even order food without second-guessing myself. It's affected my relationship with men permanently. He tried everything to stop me from leaving the state for college but after a lot of nights of fights where I threatened to kill myself and he replied by saying "be my guest", he realized he hated me so much and I'm better off leaving his sight. College is the first place i ever had a peaceful breath. I've been talking to a counselor, unpacking all this crap. Turns out it’s not normal to flinch when someone raises their voice. Who knew. I fucking did. Now that we got the backstory down, I came back home this weekend. Sunday breakfast, my younger sister who's 16 was stressing about a school project at the living room sofa and my dad has this dumbass rule about how when everyone's at the table, everyone should be at the table. He condescendingly calls out her name and she says "Just a sec" and tries to quicken up. He does it again, and again. I try to make things feel normal and tell her "Maybe ask for an extra day, yk it's ok if you explain it to the teacher” and dad slams his fork. “Shut up.” I freeze, the trauma of my childhood resurfaced after months of trying my best to fix myself and find peace. I then noticed how everyone just kept eating and ignored what happened because it's an attempt to make sure things don't escalate, something I was in on for so long and I couldn't believe he's making my little sisters go through as well. I'm not sure if that overprotective side won but the rage engulfed me slowly and I stared at him as my eyes filled with tears. He felt my stare but kept eating and when he realized I'm being serious he looked up at me and said "wtf are you looking at?" I just got up and tried to walk away and he got up and told me to stop and sit back down. I'm not sure what came over me, I just knew I never wanted to see this man again. When I didn't sit back he got up, which I'm assuming is to hit me. Something snapped in me. 20 years of shut up shut up shut up. I swung. caught him clean on the nose. He stumbled away cursing me to get out and never come back like i was a stranger. I went to my room scared and still full of adrenaline ready to get into another fight, packed my shit and peeled out. I know he's going to take out his anger on my family. I'm not ready to think about that right now. i know violence isn’t the answer but he put hands on me my entire childhood and this was just my delayed reaction. I'm still shaking thinking about it. TL;DR: Strict abusive dad shut me up for talking to my sister and I punched him in the face after years of being told to shut up.