my father

[rainous]

I grew up watching my father repeatedly wreaking havoc around the house and barbarically assaulting my mom night after night.


Hi,

In the context above, if I, as a writer, want to convey a more revengeful nuance that the speaker is absolutely despising his father for all the pain he has caused to the family, is there any way to rephrase "my father" because I can't get past feeling that the possessive pronoun "my" somewhat seems to be a bit too endearing and cozy a word to be used on someone he hates so much.

If I want to keep "father", do I have to keep "my" also?

or is it a cultural thing I can't really mess with?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Preceptor]

The use of 'my' is rather unavoidable. But I understand the desire to remove any affectionate connotations from it. This can be done with some additions.

'I grew up watching my monstrous father...'
'I grew up watching the demon who called himself my father...'

You could also make 'mother' the subject, rather than the direct object, if you switch the verb to the passive voice. Then you shift 'father' away from the focus of the sentence and into a prepositional phrase.

'I grew up watching my mother being barbarically assaulted by my beast of a father, as he wreaked havoc around the house night after night.'