Eating with my father

I agreed to go out to eat with my father tonight. This is normally something that I would avoid at any cost; however, I am desperate to get a job, and he has a lot of contacts in town. As usual, I am quite anxious about it, and I am tired of the fact that, as many strides forward as I make in recovery, I never seem to improve in any areas that have to do with him.

Family dinners were horrible growing up. My father was always in a bad mood at the end of the day, and he would channel his frustrations about work in finding fault with me. He would always yell at me for my "horrible" table manners. He would tell me I was a pig; I was sloppy; I would never get a job in the "real world" because my employers would fire me upon seeing me eat. He ordered me a video on etiquette and make me watch it and practice what I learned at dinner. If I did not ask to be excused and push in my chair after dinner was over, I could not leave the table until I did so. When I got a medley of braces and extraneous dental gear, there were to be no excuses about chewing with my mouth open or getting something out of my teeth. He said I rubbed my mouth with my napkin too hard and reprimanded me for balling it up. My elbows could never touch the table. Even if he did not actually yell at me at dinner, I would always catch him glaring at me as if I was the foulest, dirtiest pig of a daughter to ever be born.

My father did not consider himself harsh about manners. He said his mother would whack him on the head with the nearest utensil if he did something unmannerly. He said he had to sit on phone books to ensure that he sat up straight. He could not leave the table unless every single bite of food was gone--even if something was burned or undercooked or generally horrible, which it usually was. In short, his message was that it could be a lot worse, and that I should be grateful.

I have a younger sister, and I cannot remember her once getting yelled at at the dinner table. Generally, she watched on, likely in a mixture of horror and relief that it wasn't her, as I got a verbal lashing night after night. She did not have good manners; in fact, I remember a phase she went through when she would pick up almost everything from her plate with her hands. One time I pointed out to my father that this wasn't necessarily mannerly, and he just laughed. My bad manners (which truly, were not bad) were indicative of a character flaw and forebode an unemployable future; my sister's were amusing. I of course didn't want my sister to be yelled at; I just wanted to understand why his rules applied only to me. I do not understand to this day.

So, the combination of having had anorexia and having bad dinner experiences with my father makes eating with him just about the worst possible activity. It never gets any easier.