I Am the Tiger (This post is graphic, and may be triggering.)

Hey, guys. It's been a whole month. Sorry about that.

This time of year is always very hard for me. Late February through March are always difficult months for me.

When I was a Junior in high school, my parents were divorcing. My mom moved out in June before my Junior year started. She was attending a university about a 45 minute drive from our house. It made the most sense financially for her to live on her stipend from school in a small apartment and for my brother and I to live with our dad in the house we grew up in.

That is my mom's biggest regret. That she let us live with him. But no one knew what would happen. Not even me.

My father started to want to snuggle with me for comfort after my mom left. He wanted to snuggle more and more. One day he told me I smelled like my mom. He started playing the sympathy card when I wanted to spend time with my friends. Because he needed me. He needed my comfort.

Then he started drinking. It was just one in the evening after dinner. Then a couple.

My friends stopped coming over. He was making them uncomfortable.

After a while he was having several drinks and a muscle relaxer before bed. Before snuggle time.

He says he doesn't remember any of it. I'm not surprised.

He was always wanting to snuggle with me. But as he drank more the snuggling got more intimate than I was comfortable with. Things escalated slowly from June on, but around October I was feeling very uncomfortable. I felt like a replacement, not a daughter. Things continued to get worse and worse. I couldn't get him to let me spend the night at my friends' houses, and I wanted to spend every night away from home I could. But he wouldn't let me.

Every night I had to go into his room to tell him goodnight. I would be in his room for hours, finally getting into my bed around 2 or 3 am. I tried to not tell him goodnight, to just go to bed and ignore him. I got in trouble for not willingly going into his room every night.

I had a part-time job at the time. My first job, working as a sales associate in the men's department of a large department store. I loved my job. Mostly because I was out of the house. I went to work as early as I could, and worked as late as they'd let me.

School was my only comfort for a long time. It was the only time I could get away from him. The only time I was guaranteed to have without him. The only time I was guaranteed to be with my friends and forget about him for a few hours.

As Christmas approached, I concocted a brilliant plan. I had just started dating a new boyfriend, and I, of course, wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. Retail stores start staying open later during the Christmas season. The store I worked at closed at 9 normally, and as the store started closing at 10, they wouldn't let me work after 9 because I was still in high school. Well, I didn't want to go home.

I told my father the truth, that the store was going to be open later for Christmas and that it would take longer to close. I just didn't tell him that I wouldn't be there. Instead, I went to my boyfriend's house.

It was the first time I had ever outright lied to him like that, and I was terrified he'd find out. But he was always too drunk to care where I was until it was time for me to come home. I'd get home around 11 or 11:30, and hope he was asleep so that I could say he didn't wake up to hear me say goodnight.

It never worked. No matter how late I went in to tell him goodnight, I couldn't stay out of his bed. Nothing worked.

I would drive home from my boyfriend's house, and daydream about waking up my little brother in the middle of the night and running away. I'd dream about driving to my mom's apartment in the middle of the night and telling her everything. She'd make him go away and I'd never have to spend another moment in his bed. Ever.

But I never got the guts to do it.

The Christmas season ended, and the store closed at 9 again at the end of December. After that I couldn't lie about working late, because the world of retail is dead until about March. I worked less hours, and had no excuse to stay out late. He wouldn't let me even if I'd asked.

By mid-February things had gotten bad. He was holding me and touching me like I was a lover, not a daughter.

By the end of March, I was going to bed every night crying and wishing someone would ask me so I could tell them what was happening to me. I couldn't get the courage to say something. Not even to my best friends. I daydreamed constantly about running to my mom and telling her everything, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell you now why I didn't say anything. I wish I had.

March was the worst. It was the worst time. But after that he started dating.

I'd thought when he got a girlfriend that things would be better. It wasn't. I got a few nights of reprieve every couple of weeks, but his need for my comfort never lessened. Not even when he started cheating on his girlfriend with his married friend. He later married that friend when she left her husband for my father while her husband was in Bosnia with the Army reserves.

But, the ladies were a distraction, and I spent less time in his bed, because they were in it instead.

Then, at the end of April, he lost his job. I shouldn't say he "lost" his job. He started badmouthing my mom and saying horrible things about women in general. He told me that there was a woman he wasn't even talking to who didn't like what he had to say, but it wasn't her business so he didn't care. Then he got fired for sexual harassment.

That meant he was always home. There was no reprieve. No time guaranteed away except for school. Normally there were a couple of hours after school before he got home from work. But I didn't have that time anymore.

He started drinking more and more. Before long he was going through a fifth of Jack Daniels a week. Plus his muscle relaxer every night before bed. Because he'd lost his job, his girlfriend started avoiding him. Either that or she figured out that he was cheating on her with his future wife. I'm not sure which.

That meant more time with me and the comfort I provided.

Around that time, I confided in my psychiatrist whom I'd been seeing since my first bout with serious depression two years before. I told her that he was being "uncomfortable affectionate." She looked me in the eye and asked me, "Do you want me to call child services?" I told her no.

That question is the only reason he's not in jail. And a question that should have cost her her medical license. By United States law, she is required to report all cases of suspected child abuse, and I'd basically told her that my father was molesting me. She gave me the choice, and I shouldn't have been able to choose.

What she did do was have me bring him to an appointment a couple of weeks later. She saw me alone and asked me if things had gotten better or worse. I don't remember the answer. What I do remember is her speaking to him alone for quite a while. When he came out of her office he was angry. He said the only thing he said about it for another decade: "I wish you could have told me yourself."

After that things were better, but he never came to another doctor appointment with me again.

Within a month or two my mom graduated and they swapped. Mom moved back in and my father got his own apartment near where he had gotten a new job, which he then lost two weeks later. Apparently they didn't like his personality. Ha.

After mom moved back in, I had one of the best years of my young life. The other best year was my sophomore year of college in the dorms. But after that was my first breakdown and initial diagnosis of bipolar II.

I buried that year deep within my brain. I remember trying to tell someone about it in college, but not knowing how because I'd made myself forget most of it.

Five years after he moved out and it was over, I was hospitalized for the fourth time. This time it was 41 days in the state hospital followed by a 15-month stay in a residential program. About three weeks into my 41 days, I decided to tell someone.

When they brought my mom in and I told her... I've never seen her cry that much, or that hard. I think she's one of two people that hate him as much or more than I do. The other being my husband.

After I started talking about it, things started to get better. However, as we learned more and more about what happened, we discovered that I had PTSD. The PTSD took several years to peak, 13 years after the abuse stopped. It wasn't until I got married that we realized the true extent of the damage.

After I got married was the second time I'd regularly been in the same bed with a man.

Its hard for him. There are forms of innocent affection he can't show. There are only certain positions I can sit with him. I can't snuggle with him in bed. There will be weeks at a time, sometimes months, where I cannot have any intimate contact with him.

There are only so many times you can watch someone you love so much curl up in a ball and cry, screaming when you touch them because they don't know it's you with out truly hating the one that made this happen.

I hate my father. I truly hate him. He ruined my life for a long time. And I still loved him. I still protected him. I was still loyal to him. I defended him.

Well, I'm done. I'm done protecting. I'm done being loyal. I'm done making excuses for him, and trying to make him look better.

I'm done.

And I'm pissed.

I have a favorite song now. I won't play the video because it's so campy it takes away the meaning for me.

I have a vision I play in my head every time I listen to this song. After the bridge when she sings the word roar really loud there is a slight pause in the music, at about the 2:53 mark. I picture myself in a baseball stadium. I'm at bat, but I pitch to myself, tossing the ball in the air before I hit it. The ball is my father, and the bat connects in that pause with a loud crack. And the ball soars out of the stadium.

Like that ball, he's out of my life. I haven't spoken to him in a few years. I've moved and changed phone numbers since we last spoke. About a year after I told him to fuck off he tried to force his way back into my life. He was going to be in the area where I live on a trip with his new family, his wife and two young sons. I thank God every day they didn't have daughters. He tried to force me to see him, and I told him, yet again, in even more clear and unmistakable ways to fuck off. He hasn't tried to contact me since.

So I listen to my song, and envision myself in that baseball stadium. And I stay pissed.