Sometimes words can hurt worse than fists. Especially when they’re from a person you’d give the world to. That was what happened to me. There used to be this time, very long ago, when I was “Daddy’s little girl.” When everything in my life fit together perfectly like a puzzle and when the happiest moments of my life were spent hanging out with my dad. We did everything together. I referred to him as my hero, and he referred to me as “Baby”. This name was like a trademark for me. As long as I heard his voice call “Baby”, I knew nothing could go wrong.

But just around the time I was in 8th grade, my mom and dad divorced. My dad got custody of the kids, me and my older brother. It was the beginning of a whole new way of life. Every night my dad would start drinking in the early evening and not stop until he fell asleep. When my dad was drunk, he’d get mad at me and my brother Greg for incredibly petty things such as forgetting to turn our clothes right-side-in before placing them into the laundry shoot. For this kind of infraction, Greg and I would be sentenced to literally scrubbing down every tile floor in the house on our hands and knees until my father was satisfied, which of course he never was. After we had finished scrubbing we’d be sent to our rooms to clean them for the rest of the night. My dad took most of his aggression out on my older brother. He’d yell at Greg and grab him by the back of the neck, and sling him from side to side. Sometimes in the middle of the night my dad would force my brother and I to wake up, go outside, and run around the block under a certain unattainable time. When we failed to reach the assigned time, he would make us keep going until he felt we were sufficiently punished.

Then Greg started getting into serious trouble with the law and ended up in jail. That left me alone to deal with my father. My father said he was determined not to let me follow the same path; so he punished me more and more frequently. He also started telling me how fat and ugly I was. This torture hurt more than anything, and soon I began to believe him. I thought of myself as fat and ugly and no good.

Eventually I started thinking about suicide. I wanted to cut my wrists open and just escape from all the pain. I stopped confiding in my friends because they refused to believe my father actually did these things to me and thought I was just looking for attention by telling them these stories. Suicide began to look better and better, because then, I thought, my father would regret everything he had ever done to me. I started cutting on myself –just little cuts, but still they left scars. After a while more and more people at school began to notice the cuts, and I found myself sitting in the counselor’s office one morning at school, trying to explain my pain.

It took awhile to get used to talking about it, but after a few sessions I opened up to my counselor. It felt better. I thought that if she told my father how I really felt, that he would finally realize how I had been suffering and start being nice.

But that’s not the way it turned out. Instead, he ignored what the counselor told him and never said a word to me. After that day, I knew I had to make myself believe that my dreams would come true – without my father’s help.

For the next two years of high school things continued on, much the same as they’d always been. I ran away about five times during my junior year alone. I got a part time job but my dad went to my boss and insisted that he terminate me. I tried out for the cheerleading squad and made it, but my dad called my coaches and told them not to let me cheer. Finally, my dad withdrew me from school altogether. I went home to get some money from my room and then run away as soon as I could. But my dad accused me of stealing some of his medication, took my purse and called the police. The police arrived, along with a school officer who had worked with me before. I told them I hadn’t taken anything and they believed me. I started to walk away and my dad came after me. The two police officers were forced to restrain him. I left. That night my father called me and told me he was finally going to allow me to move out. And that was the end of it.

Abuse is abuse, whether it’s physical or emotional. Parents have to discipline their kids, but there’s a difference between discipline and taking sadistic pleasure in making someone feel awful about themselves.