Hi octoberful,

Childhood trauma is 100% sure. He didn't open up to me, but he has sometimes with my mom. But I don't know if everything he said was true. What I know for sure, is what I experienced myself with my grand parents, and how his siblings turned out. They've all been traumatized, with some developing personality disorders. I'm under the impression only one of them isn't disordered but it's too soon to tell.

For over 20 years I hadn't heard anything about them, by the way. It's at his passing, that they deemed it was time to include me in the family again. They claim it was my father's doing. I can believe it to a certain degree but not completely. I was shunned as his kid by my grand mother who had a very strong hold over him, and abused him. What I mean by this, is I feel I was treated on equal terms as him by proxy. She hasn't laid a hand on me (that I can recall), but my experience with her and her children, sort of echoes what he was telling my mom about his childhood. He wasn't the favorite, and therefore my cousins were always getting better treatment than me.

Now that he passed on, some of them claim he was s fsvorite of my grand mother. It's very easy to say things like that, now that he can't defend himself.

It doesn't help that he grew up in a war torn country, and lost his older brother very young (on top of how he grew up at home, with an unloving and abusive mother). Those are my conclusions, because he never told me anything himself.

Even though a lot of times, he seemed to display a blatant lack of empathy, I struggle to conclude whether it was simply a result of the culture he was raised in (machist and patriarchal), or if he was actually capable of feeling something, at least for us. He reproduced a lot of what he saw in his childhood. For instance, he'd get into a rage where he'd insult us, and after a very short time span, would try to act like nothing happened. His mother was doing that a lot and this is first hand experience from me. At times, it seemed like he genuinely feel something, he seemed to like affection and was demanding of it, and he seemed like he wsd capable of remorseful reactions when he misbehaved. It could have been an act, because what I discovered after his passing is obvious proof that he could go far in his lies...

To me, it's as though the older he became, the worse his mental issues got. At least, he was less physically violent as he aged, but he'd start yelling about the stupidest things and insult more often, and insist he was never at fault for anything, he wouldn't take responsibility for a lot of the wrong that he was doing. However, sometimes he indirectly acknowledged his past errors. For instance, he could never keep a job for more than a few years, so even if he was brilliant at it, he would self sabotage his career through his interpersonal relationships with other employees. He told my mom that he was going to behave at his last few jobs, but his need to find flaws in others and being unable to trust anyone is what ultimately made him lose his positions...