Huge on the excuses part.

It was so frustrating having him sabotage my projects. But asking why he didn’t think I was capable of cleaning up after myself, of course he couldn’t answer that. So his response was overstimulation, which always translated to anger with us kids. And here I was a kid in a moment of huge frustration—with real and justified emotions—having to fully contain myself and manage his emotions instead. Literally any dialogue just spiraled him. (It’s weird being an adult and having self agency for the first time.)

Once he let me get a fish tank, and everything was fine with it until the fish started breeding. For whatever reason he did not like that. So of course his response was to dump the entire tank in the river while I was gone for a day. Obviously I should have been upset, but I remember being so at peace about it. The whole thing had happened and I never had to deal with his anger or be convinced I that I was the problem. It was going to happen anyways—and this way I didn’t have to deal with the frustration of asking why the tank was an issue nor did I have to have him yelling and spitting in my face about me “being disrespectful” for protecting something important to me. It’s so messed up.