It's the last day of the workweek for most. Not for me. I was ill earlier this week and have to make up the time. Which I will do tomorrow. I have to work 9 hours. Yech.
The work time is worth it though. I'll be able to get a lot done, a lot, without any interference. NO meetings, no noise makers in the office. I can concentrate on the work at hand and maybe get close to getting caught up.
Our list moved from 13 to 27. I'm two calls short for the week, but I'm a week behind so tomorrow I should really be able to get a huge chunk of catch up done.
I found a little bar, Hero's , which is in an old American Legion watering hole.
C and I each had two drinks. We are smart enough to leave well enough alone. I've been chatting with Darrell via instant chat all evening. Two drinks and I feel like such a light weight.
I'm not really cut out for bars and drinking the way J is. He has an addictive personality disorder so it is not surprising that he likes bars and alcohol and drinking. That was never me. The serious stuff I did with him was because I was with him. I never sought it out on my own, and even after he left I didn't seek to alter my realm of consciousness. I was never interested in changing my perception of reality. I always felt like I was stable enough with myself to know I wouldn't harm myself overtly in any sort of drug induced way.
J used to always tell me people did drugs to alter their sense of reality. As far as I can tell, he never understood a single piece of the reality the kids and I lived with nearly every single day. We never knew what little thing would set him off. We never knew what we did to deserve his wrath.
J is abusive. Even six years gone, he can still heap guilt and abuse on any of us. I think the reason that can happen is because he has never taken ownership for anything he did to me or the kids. M says that all of us are suffering from Complex PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
I do think it is telling that all of them, the kids, are in therapy. All of them suffer from complex PTSD instigated from various triggering events. All of them feel they would be better off if they did not have to speak with their father. What a tragedy.
That makes me sad. I understand where they are coming from and I won't condemn them, but how sad a reflection on J's life that his own children do not want to talk to him and only do so out of a sense of obligation on specific celebratory days like his birthday.
It is only sometimes, when I write things like this that I realize how emotionally abused I was. AM I happier now that J is gone? No, not really. But the longer J is gone, the more I see that he really hurt me and the kids. That he really did everything in his power to control us, keep us pushed down so we could not celebrate who we were as these wonderful individuals in a unique family. All the kids are so talented yet we were led to believe we were just the same as the teeming masses. Maybe a little worse.
"Stop your caterwauling," he said, not realizing his daughter had a divine voice. No one knew her full vocal capacities until she sang "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. Her rendition even brought tears to his eyes. But he did not cry. Tears rimmed the lids, but not a drop - dropped.
He never admitted he was wrong. His only "regret" was that he didn't spend the time with the kids that he should have. Do you think that made a difference? No. No, it did not. He continued on the same path of absenteeism that he had been on for better than the last twenty-five years. Nothing changed his behavior. After all, what was there in his behavior to change?
He didn't yell, didn't make all of us walk on egg shells around him, didn't make us feel like the scum of the earth because we didn't know the "right" way to do something - that we had to guess what his perfection was and attempt to live up to some unknown golden bar that somehow we were supposed to intrinsically know, but a bar that was never taught, never explicated, never taught. We were just supposed to know how to mow the lawn
To top it all off - he knew the way it was *supposed* to be done but he never shared that knowledge - just pitched a fit when it wasn't done to his standards. Please, do read a whole bunch of sarcasm into what I just wrote, especially at the beginning. After all, the true abuser will never admit, never see what his words and actions did to another single soul.
I don't want to be that way. I want to know what my goals are, have clear cut ideas on how to achieve them, and then have measurable ways to know how close I've come to goal.
Isn't that the way it is supposed to be? Have some sort of goal and then measure, realistically how close you've come, and then spend some time in contemplation of where you fell short and where you succeeded and then building on the successes?
I think that's the way it is supposed to be - a stepping ladder to higher achievements and goals and a way of accessing how you can do better the next go-round.
Well, right or wrong that is the philosophy I'm buying in to. You can tell someone all you want that they should do x-y-or-z to improve their life but until you see them do it, and make amends for all the harm they've caused in the past, it won't mean a damn thing. Put your money where your mouth is without causing harm. Then maybe I'll listen to what you have to say.