Geoffrey here (yep that’s his name) is my aunt’s dog who’s going to be 8 this year. My aunt lived with us for some of his life, so my family developed a close bond with him. When my aunt lived with us, G would get really excited when we came home and sprint to us.

Lately, he hasn’t been his usual self. We thought it was just old-ish age and he was mellowing out. But today, my aunt found a lump under his armpit, and now the vet are testing it to see if it’s the big C.

Hoping it’s nothing.

I think that article yesterday really fucked me up. Putting aside my sentimentality of the books I have, and how I feel about him, I think I’ve just been so very triggered. I have too many memories to pull from, from childhood to late-20s, like my brain can’t pick which memory to torture me with so it’s just sending them all to the front.

And with it all, is the self-blame; as if I deserved it all. That I wasn’t a good enough daughter, or girlfriend, and that I deserved the abuse. Which I know is ridiculous, I would never ever think that of someone else’s trauma, but I beat myself up for my own trauma. Which doesn’t help anyone or anything. Why should I continue to perpetuate the abuse against myself? I don’t deserve it. But it’s been so hardwired in my neurons that I do deserve it, by my abusers, that undoing those pathways is exhausting. It’s somehow easier to let myself down, than to pull myself through it.

I keep thinking about my mum telling me I’m just like my father, that I’m a terrible daughter and friend (which is gross, she was my mum but she treated me like her trauma therapist). My ex telling me that if I wasn’t such a terrible person then they wouldn’t have to hurt me to teach me.

And I can recognise how wild and foul that all is. I can see it, but somehow I haven’t been able to internalise that it isn’t my fault, I didn’t ask for or want any of that. I needed help.

And it all comes back to how disconnected I am from dad and that side of the family. How I feel like a failure, a black sheep who can’t seem to get it together. My mother preferred my cousin (mum’s brother’s daughter), because she believed in that woo woo stuff. How dad seemed to have a close father-daughter relationship with his sisters daughter. And I’m just the only child left to rot. But I also know that no one can save me but myself. I just wish I had a family member I could talk to about this, that would hug me and tell me it’s okay, that I’m loved and worth it. But Dad said that to my cousin, mum said that to her niece.

Who do I belong to? Where is my family? I just want my dad to tell me he loves me.

And maybe it’s up to me to open that line of communication to him, but I also want him to reach out to me and ask me to talk to him. I want to feel like a daughter who’s father loves her. That I’m not a failure to him. So much of that has to do with mum driving us apart due to her own unresolved trauma, but he’s my dad and I want him to ask me to open up to him. And don’t get me wrong, dad has helped me financially since I left my ex, but I don’t want that to be the foundation of our relationship. Money can drive a family apart. I want to feel loved.

I’m an only child, and went through it all alone. What do my cousins have that I don’t? Why do I feel so left out and left behind?

What have I done so wrong?