Will I ever forgive my parents for setting me up to fail?

Growing up my parents were very unhappy and very negative. They hated their jobs, hated their lives, and had a bad marriage. My father had severe rage and personality disorders and my mother was also sometimes volatile, especially when she drank too much or was stressed in her career. Sometimes she could be sweet and compassionate and I think she genuinely did love me, but I have painful memories of emotional and physical abuse from her as well.

Honestly, they probably never should have gotten married or had children but they had three of them and we bore the brunt of their misery.

My father never wanted kids in the first place but especially did not want a daughter. He never let me forget this and actively tried to destroy my self-esteem from early childhood. He would tell me I was stupid, ugly, pathetic, a bitch, and would never amount to anything in life. My mother in her own way, would contribute to this by building me up and then viciously knocking me down.

Whenever I wanted to try something new or learn something, they would often tell me not to bother because I was too stupid and wouldn’t be any good at it. Looking back, it’s not surprising I struggled with academic problems from an early age, not because I couldn’t learn, but because my confidence was already shot by the time I was six or seven. I was “bad”, “lazy”, “a burden” and a “pain in the ass”, even though I was a sweet kid and almost overly eager to please.

I’ll never forget when I was about 11 years old and I told my parents I would be a professional writer someday, travel the world, and live in NYC. They laughed at me and told me I was crazy to think that someone like me could do something like that. After all, I was too stupid and lazy and, at that point, FAT to boot! (I was going through a prepubescent chubby stage that my mother relentlessly tormented me about.)

As a high school student, I admittedly didn’t do myself any favors.. Instead of using their discouragement as motivation to do my best, I fell into a deep depression and my grades and school attendance slipped dramatically. I would spend days on end in my bedroom sobbing and unable to move. In retrospect, I want to kick myself for being so weak but I was just a kid and dealing with constant drama between my parents horrible marriage and their constant bullying.

I ended up having to attend community college while living at home for two years. Luckily, I had some more freedom and spent most of my time in the library so I earned a 4.0 GPA and was able to transfer to a 4-year college, where I graduated with honors.

Since then, I have done mostly everything I dreamed of as a little girl. I’ve lived in NYC for 5 years, get to write for a living, have worked as a commercial print model, traveled the world and have more travel plans on the horizon. It’s been a lot of hard work and a little luck, but my childhood almost seems surreal now compared to my current life. I also have a wonderful partner who is as much of a friend as he is a lover and a great circle of childhood friends I’m in touch with.

My mother passed away a few years ago and I no longer speak to my father, who remains unrepentant for his abuse. In the years leading up to my mother’s death, she and I had a much better relationship and she was proud of my achievements. She believed that the way she raised me had a hand in my success, and I never had the heart to tell her that I’d made it out in spite of her actions rather than because of them. After she died, it was kind of bittersweet to hear from people that she was always bragging about and showing pictures of me whenever she ran into people. I was her “golden child” after so many years of being fat, lazy, unlovable etc.

Now, as I prepare to enter my 27th year and I take stock of the first 3rd of my life, I’m trying to make sense of it all. I’m effectively an orphan and have survived what genuinely felt like Hell to achieve a life I’m comfortable with but for some reason, peace still evades me. I still look back on my parent’s actions and feel intense rejection, despair, and betrayal. Will I ever be able to forgive them or at least make peace with this part of my past?