I hope you are still with us Godsmacker!

I truly do appreciate what you bring to the Nexus, and I am so sorry you know these kinds of feelings that you describe in this thread.  Everyone deserves to feel the unconditional love of those that raised them - it can be the ultimate internal conflict.

I too grew up with mentally ill parents.  My father would sometimes punctuate a severe beating with rape as a punishment.  My mother wasn't much better than this.  All under the guise of a happy, almost ideal, churchgoing family.  My older siblings can't even bare to allow themselves to remember it.  Lots of suicidal feelings and attempts between them; I wasn't immune to this either.

Now, years later, as a parent I know there simply cannot be anything a child could do to deserve such treatment.  Even if you were trying to murder your brother that day in the canal, it was your father's job to protect and love you both, unconditionally.  There is nothing you could have done to deserve being murdered by your father.  If I had been witness to such an event from my front porch, forgive me for saying, but your daddy would have caught a bullet in the brainbox.

It sucks beyond measure, but you have to hold him accountable for his behavior.  You deserve to be happy!  Whatever triggered your father to try to drown you was his responsibility to control.  Don't hurt yourself, man!  This world is far from done with you! It is your father's mental illness, not yours.  You let him keep that mental illness and bury it with his generation when he passes.  Live on!  You can find a happy life yet!