How do I leave home without my dads approval, but still maintain our relationship?
I am 18 years old. I graduated high school with honors at the end of January 2019. I have been working for almost three months now and am ready to leave home. I have the support and approval of my mother, but not my dad's. I respect and honor my dad and I have been obedient to the rules of his household, but I am own person now and I am ready to move to a new stage of my life.
I have done a lot of research on moving and the ins and outs and ups and downs, and am fully equipped. I am intelligent, mature, and more than capable.
For the longest time I blamed myself for the past and present predicaments that is my life, and then I realized hey this isn't all my fault and I started blaming my family, and that wasn't right either. People aren't perfect and I can't fix them or life in general. I have learned that all I can do is accept them for them, and love them anyway, and the only thing/person I can truly change is myself and how I see the world. Of course saying this. I am 18 and I do not have to keep myself in a bad situation anymore.
Moving out should just be a part of life. Yes parents miss their children but leaving home is part of growing up, and my dad refuses to see that and refuses to let me leave. He says I am forbidden to move out.
My main concern is how will he react to my leaving?
Will he still want a relationship with me? Will he still love me?
Will he put his control over my siblings now that I won't be there?
Will he hurt my mom for supporting me? Will he blame her?
Will my dad go into a state of depression d hurt himself or my family?
Will my dad destroy the house or any belongings of mine still there?
Will my dad ever be able to forgive me?
Will ever be welcomed back into my home town and child home with open arms and unconditional love?
I want my dads approval and I know I won't get it. I want my dad to accept and love me, but he has made it clear that unless my thoughts, feelings, opinions, and beliefs, line up with his then I am wrong. I love him and my family with all my heart, and even the thought of moving away breaks my heart, but it is something that I have to do, and it is not like I am doing it alone.
I refuse to move and do this behind my dads back. I am going to tell him my plans and everything once they are finalized and he can't ruin anything for me. I want him to be happy for me, but I just can't see that happening. How can I grow and become my own person, but still have a relationship with my dad. There are no boundaries and I do not even know how to begin to implicate one. I have always hated confrontation and would just always agree with him and do whatever my dad wanted to appease him, but in the mean time I lost myself, didn't stand up for myself, and I got hurt, and lost my voice.
Am I being emotionally abused and controlled?
I have never been one to blame others, but I am trying to figure out why I get so frustrated with me dad and why I never feel good about myself after I hang out with him.
I had a really hard time in high school. I did not have any friends because I refused to conform to the other students expectations, I refused to be anyone other than myself, and I could not pretend to be interested in things that were really of no interest to me. I grew up getting bullied and picked on in school and was always the weird girl. I believe all of these things were huge contributing factors to the anxiety and depression that is now trying to wiggle its way into my life. As the years went on and I got into the higher grades of high school I could not even walk onto the school grounds without having a panic attack, or just burst out crying for no real reason. I found school becoming more stressful and I began to hate going to school. I found myself wanting to quit, but I am no quitter, so I looked for others ways of not needing to go to school, but do my work from home. I came up with the solution of online schooling, but my dad did not see it as real school, or normal school, and refused to believe that I could complete school online, and seemed to think that I would not get my diploma. It was my second to last year of school and I just needed to be done, but there was no way I was going to go through life without my diploma.
My dad said I could trust him with anything, that he would listen to me, but he really didn't. My mom tried backing me up with online schooling, but caved under my dad's pressure. I ended up staying in school, but I only took the classes I really needed to graduate and took the easiest of all the classes to lower stress levels. I was on the verge of a mental breakdown, but I managed to graduate high school and with honors. But the only reason I was able to graduate early was because I took those easy classes and took online courses as well. When my dad had started to see how good I was doing in online school he wanted me to take more and more classes. He kept pressuring me to take more even though school was already more than I could handle. I refused to take more than I could take mentally and this really made him mad and I know I disappointed him, he made it very clear.
When trying to do online classes though we took him to the teacher at my school who does online teaching to reassure him that I would still get my diploma and in return he was rude to the distance learning teacher. Really rude. He refused to listen and just sat there with scowl on his face and his arms crossed across his chest.
We then went to see the school counsellor right after meeting with the distance learning teacher and he behaved the same way. When we went to leave he went back into the counsellors office without my mom and I sand spoke to the counsellor. I have no idea what he said, but he had the counsellor on his side now.
I have been graduated and working for 3 months now and I found only a few a days ago that my dad still thinks I was trying to do online schooling so that I could quit. He still doesn't think online schooling is real school even with the proof put right under his nose.
I wanted to get a job right after I graduated, because I was bored with nothing to do at home all day and I wanted to save money to move out on my own. I started to realize that a really big part of the depression was a critiquing father. I have been on anti-depressants and am in my control of my life than before, but that is not saying much considering how controlling he still is of me.
I got a job cleaning apartments, the same apartments that he does maintenance for. I thought this was a good idea at the time but boy was I wrong. Now he stresses me out at work and home. He phones me at least once or twice a work day just to know exactly where I am. When I am trying to do my job he comes in tells me how to do it even though he is not my boss. My dad has become harsh not only with me, but my co worker, and keeps pushing me to be unkind to my coworker and take charge even though she technically has seniority over me and was put in charge of me by the manager. My dad is rough and not very compassionate.
When I didn't have any friends, he told me to pretend to be interested in their interests. My dad didn't care that I had friends or not, he wanted me to be popular more than anything, because he was popular in high school. He told me I should be popular, because he was and I take after him.
In the 8th grade I left for school early because I stopped by at the corner store to spend the $60 I had in my dresser on food for the poverty stricken and I knew if he knew I was going to spend my money there on someone other than myself he would not let me go. So I left early without explanation and he accused me of going out to meet a boy. Feeding the homeless and meeting a boy, yes those are two very similar things. Of course my dad didn't know that I was feeding the homeless, but he raised me better than to be off sneaking around with boys. He didn't trust me or even know me well enough to know that that is not something I would do.
I care very much about people and I only want to help and be a blessing to those around me. Sometimes this means giving away money, or something that belongs to me. Sometimes it means me seeing someone in need and being brought to tears, but either way my gentleness and giving nature had gotten nothing but judgement from my dad. He says I am soft and too sensitive.
My dad sometimes says mean things about my character, and when I say that was mean, I didn't like that he says I just need to learn to take a joke.
I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to mend the relationship, but he doesn't want to admit there is anything to mend, and the other part of me just wants to cut him out of my life, but I really can't do that because I love him. I don't even know why I titled all of this, it is obvious that he does damage to my confidence, mental health, and overall being.
I guess I just need to know that this is not all in my head, because whenever I try to have a real conversation with my dad he just turns everything I say around, points out all my faults, and at the end of him yelling at me, has me in complete tears and utter turmoil apologizing over and over again to him, and hating myself. This is not healthy and I have to leave. I just don't know how I can leave, I feel like it is up to me to protect my mom and my siblings.
Please tell me am I really paranoid? Is this all just in my head?