abuse on one side, abandonment on the other

To answer the direct question...yes, Dad tried to leave the hospital against medical advice.
He was recovering well after surgery and then had some complications. He wanted out.
I think that's why I was called...Sisters #4 and 5 were ready to leave and they needed reinforcements. After several days of my visit he again wanted out but had another issue to deal with.
(I will skip the details, but it pertained to "private parts")
They weren't going to discharge him, so he demanded to see the MD...got a PA instead...
Dad insisted that an RN and an MD could care for him at home...
well I spoke up and said that I was not willing to take on that responsibility...
and that if if he ended up back in the ER insurance would not cover it...
he stayed put a little longer.

I see it now that the Ugly Duckling is about poor parenting...
and you weren't the only one who felt like an alien in that house...
Despite trying to be good and fit in I always felt that I was barely tolerated.
Estes writes later about the lost zygote...
perhaps you, as a zygote, were meant to be delivered to the house around the corner and yet you landed in the wrong family...
much like the stork dropping an elephant baby in a mouse's nest...
anyway I always felt as if I was different in order to make a difference.

I started another book last night...it is about survivors of childhood abuse and neglect...and how to reclaim the lost pieces...
Any way the stories that she writes of could have been taken directly from my/our life.
It is eerie reading something so close to home.
For example, she writes about one parent psychologically abusing a child by taking away a loved pet and how the other parent who allows it is emotionally abandoning the child as well.
I, of course, grieved for Tinea, our cat...and Champ our dog...and the chickens...
I am learning alot and recognizing alot about my life in this book.

I am preparing for transitions...the girls go back to college...the boys to school...my teaching and classes begin again...life is going to get alot more hectic.
I want desperately to maintain this sense of calm that I have achieved over the past several weeks.
Maintain the peace...
That should be my mantra...

Au revoir...
Maggie