A Tough Day

I've been kind of lost today.  Unsure of myself.  Without direction.  And anxious.

Today is my dad's birthday.  I have been unable to decide how to deal with it.  I feel like I should make some kind of contact to let him know I remembered.  I really don't want to see him.  It's impossible to buy him anything. 

Today I wished I lived far away.  That way I could send a birthday card and that would be enough.

I'm afraid to initiate contact because I don't want a conversation.  I don't want two-way communication.

I spent the whole day trying to decide what to do.  Until I noticed at about 11:00 tonight that it was too late.  By not making a choice, I guess I kind of did.  I did not make contact.

I wrote happy birthday on his facebook wall.  That doesn't really count though because he doesn't check it.

I'm thinking maybe an apologetic "Sorry I missed your birthday; I hope it was a good one" text tomorrow.  I know it sucks, but it's really all I feel good about and honest in offering right now.

There's a small piece of me that is afraid I'm in trouble.  I doubt it because he doesn't feel insulted very often.  He'll probably just shrug it off.

But maybe I am in trouble.  I guess I won't know until tomorrow.

I'm trying to remember that I'm an adult.  Just because he gets upset it doesn't mean I am in trouble or that I've done anything wrong.  I'm trying to remember that he doesn't control my life, that he doesn't have the ability to punish me anymore unless I let him.

Now if I could just figure out how to stop letting him.

Fear of My Father

This is an incredibly difficult topic to write about.  I have avoided it for a long time.  I avoided it in therapy as well.  It's amazing how powerful fear is.

I have faced fear before.  When something I need to process frightens me I know I need to deal with it, that's the only way to take away the unrelenting power it has over me.

And yet, I still don't want to write about this.

I am afraid to think about it.  I am afraid to remember.  And I am so terribly afraid that my father could find it and read it.  Imagining the fallout if that were to happen is almost enough to make me stop.  Almost.

But it hurts me.  It controls me.  It makes me sick.  It is a toxin I have to get out.

My father is a bully.  He is controlling and domineering.  I thought he had changed.  I guess it was only a matter of time.

He expects people to give in.  They always have.  He makes sure of that.

I wish I had the words to describe how he does this.  I don't fully understand it.  I think it's because I was programmed so young.  I think the control tactics are so deeply rooted that I can't see them anymore.  All he has to do now is look at me in a certain way and I know I have no option but to comply.

I do have options.  I understand that now, at least on some level.  It took several years of therapy but I believe I can choose for myself.  But knowing the wrath I will face if I choose differently from what he wants is enough to keep me in line way too often.

We had an incident recently.  He overstepped his bounds and verbally attacked my daughter when I wasn't there.  She was devastated.  I was so angry.  I thought of many different ways to confront him about it.  I stewed about it.  I vented about it at home.

And in the end, I did nothing.  I did nothing but prepare her for a future attack.  I gave her permission to walk away.  I told her if he did something like that again to come get me or text me.  I told her he was wrong and did what I could to support her.  But I did not confront him.

I am ashamed of this.  It breaks my heart that I was not strong enough to better protect my daughter.

I wonder if I will ever get there.  I wonder if I will ever be strong enough to look him in the eye and tell him how much he has hurt me.  I wonder if I will ever be able to stand in front of him and say no.  I wonder if I will ever be able to tell him he's a bully and unless he changes his behavior toward us he will no longer get to be with us.

But I'm not there yet.  Just thinking about it brings me to tears.  It makes me shake.

Since that incident I have avoided him as much as possible.  We took him something for Father's Day but didn't stay long and I kept others in between me and him.  I haven't taken his calls but I have responded to his texts (I get in trouble if I ignore him).  I avoided a family dinner that my husband and children went to on Memorial Day.

His birthday is in two weeks.  I don't know how I'm going to handle that.

Taking Pleasure in Another's Pain

I was recently accused of gaining pleasure from hurting another person.  Initially it stung.  I got defensive. 

Then I realized that this person was striking out from a place of pain.  I was sad that she either didn't know me very well or couldn't see things as they really are because of her pain.

Other people's pain.  I've spent a great deal of my life concerned about other people's pain, especially pain I caused.  I have given up so much of what I wanted and sacrificed who I am to make sure I don't hurt others.  This is not healthy.

When I first started therapy I was asked what my boundaries were.  I was very confused.  I had no idea what he meant.  I had no idea that I had a right to set boundaries.  The more I learned the more I understood that I had very few boundaries.  I had some legal and religious boundaries, but that was about it.  Other people could push me, manipulate me, into doing what they wanted time and time again.  And the tool they used to do this was their pain. 

By making me feel responsible for their pain they could make me change my behavior.  Even if I knew my behavior was wholesome and healthy, they made me question that and sacrifice that because I didn't want to hurt them.  One of the main motivations in my life is to not cause others harm.  This has been used against me.

I remember sitting in a therapy session sobbing.  I was learning so much.  I was making healthy changes in my life, changes that were so good for me, but they were hurting others.  I remember asking my therapist how these could be good things if they were hurting others.  He told me something that has changed my life.

I felt like I was personally hurting other people.  I was not.  They were hurting themselves.

I had finally set boundaries.  He told me to imagine these boundaries as a brick wall.  They are there to protect me.  I can set these boundaries but others choose what to do about it.  The people who were hurt by my new boundaries were choosing to continually push against that brick wall.  They were choosing to run head-first into that brick wall and then blaming me for hurting them because I built the wall.

I've seen it happen over and over.  Pain is a difficult thing to endure.  We want to blame someone else.  It's easy to see how another person's behavior makes us unhappy.  It's tough to admit that our response to that person's behavior is what determines our happiness.  It's difficult to admit that our own behavior may be causing us pain.

On the other side of it, I've been hurt by others.  By the boundaries that they've set.  Not because these boundaries were unhealthy but because I was unhappy with them and kept banging my head against them.

Seeing another person hurt because of something I did is horrible.  I hate it.  But I must stay true to the boundaries that I need in order to feel safe.  I am not responsible for their pain.  And it's not my job to fix it.