Why Did You HATE ME So?

I’ve spent most of my life wondering why you never loved me.

I’ve wondered why you didn’t want my father to love me, and why you didn’t want me to love my father.

I watched you push me away like you pushed him away and I allowed you to turn my daughter on me the way you turned me against my father.

I always felt like you hated me. Since I was 7 years old, I was pretty sure you didn’t want me. You worked a million hours and never wanted to be home with me. I used to cry myself to sleep at night with visions of you in a car accident or a fire and you were never coming home.

My father only tried to do what was best for me; he had no help and no parenting skills of his own. History would repeat as it did for me, with my daughter.

Dozens of hospitalizations and surgeries and calls from hospital staff and both institutional and outpatient therapists, not once did you answer the phone or return a call. As well as 7 years of sobriety and never did you come to support me, see me or help me in any part of my recovery.

But I’ve been out of your life and her life for so long now; I’m interested in hearing all about your success. How much better is life without me? How has my daughter matured in the time that you’ve had alone with her? Tell me how she’s doing at WORK, tell me how self-sufficient she is, and tell me how proud you are of her.

I have contacted her but she hates me. That’s all you. You got what you wanted all along, your second chance… You didn’t change a fucking thing. The only reason she’s not on drugs or drunk is because you made food her addiction instead. If she knew cocaine would help her drop 150 pounds she'd be stealing your checkbook just like I did.

The events of the day that ended my contact with you were truly insane. We were supposed to have Sushi for LUNCH, but you purchased a dinner sized entrée and gave it to her  to eat ON TOP OF the dinner sized entrée she ordered herself. You are feeding her like you did to me. She’s heavier than I ever was. That’s not emotional eating, that’s a LEARNED behavior. You TAUGHT us how to use numb the pain.

You took guardianship of my daughter and signed for her to drop out of school. You never wanted what was best for my little girl. You wanted her away from me. Now what do you have? You have your homegrown adult child, wearing out the furniture, eating everything in sight, running up the bills and going nowhere.

Yes, mother, your words ring true, I was always screwed up. Denial on your part that your contribution played a role, the only chapter from my childhood that hasn’t been amended. My life improves without the thought of you in it. My pain is lessened when you aren’t here to slice me up and rub salt into the wounds. I hate you for living long enough to hurt me that one last time but I am not angry with you anymore. My acceptance came when the 7 year old girl who lives inside my broken heart was finally able to mourn her mother’s soul. Damn you for stealing my daughter’s.

She will always be MY daughter, you can manipulate her memories, you can poison her mind with your lies, but you can’t wash me out of her DNA… Mark my words, if I die before you, I swear to EVERYTHING you find sacred, I will see she is protected while you suffer a long, grueling and painful, merciless death.

The War Between My Ears

Dear _______, 

Oh how you frustrate me so! 

You've never failed to be right here whenever I need to see you. I love you for that... But I hate you, I wish you weren't always here, I wish I didn't have to look at you everyday. I try to ignore you, I try to believe the lies I tell myself, I wish you would just go away. Go Away, Get out of my life, I'm so sick of you!

Wait, Come Back!

I'm desperately crying out to you in the night, I need you, where are you? I am imprisoned in my own mind, I have no one to set me free but you. I need the solution, I fail miserably without you! Where have you gone, why won't you tell me the answer? I know you are there, reveal yourself!!

Ouch!! Why do you have to sting me so hard? Why does your very existence hurt me so? Why is pain the only method you use to present yourself to me? Can't you be more kind and gentle with me?

What do you mean I am not kind and gentle to myself?

What do you mean I won't remember the lesson if I don't feel it?

I hate when you're right. Why do you always have to be right? When will I know what's best for me? When can I have a chance to prove I can do it myself? I don't need you! I'll show you. You'll see! 

How could you? I can't believe you abandoned me like that. I hate you. Step up and show yourself! You are such a... You are so... Grrrr. I can't even face you right now!

Can you figure out "who" I'm grappling with?

If I told you the "TRUTH" would you re-read my blog post?

IN2L2BWUMHB... another portion of correspondence with my father.

...

Christmas was rough without my friends or family. I can imagine that you were met with some unexpected sadness being the first holiday season without Mimi (even just to speak with on the phone). It's been a LONG time since I had heard from Mimi, so my memories of holidays with her and Pepere were very pleasant for me.

This was my second Christmas without {my daughter) in my life. Not for lack of trying on my part. God damn my mother is good at what she does... I really feel like (my daughter) sold her soul to the devil for some material bullshit and unlimited cash flow.

But I need to live my life and let her follow whatever path lay ahead, just like you had to with me.

More and more I understand how frustrated and dis-empowered you were 30 years ago. Yet our relationship still lacks so much.

If it never resonated or meant anything before, please know, Dad that I do love you very much. I've processed and worked through my resentments and emotional issues from my childhood (most of them, anyway). I used to be sour about the fact that you left me behind and got a "do over" with some other woman and 3 other kids. Today I realize you needed to fulfill your own happiness and pursue a better life. Sometimes I wish that it had played out differently, you might have actually known your granddaughter. However I realize the Zen in phrases like, "It is what it is".

Basically, everything has unfolded exactly the way it needed to, in order to get us all to where we are today. You needed to demonstrate your ability to be the husband and father figure that you always known in your heart you could be.

A great friend gave me this: IN2L2BWUMHB

Translated: It's Never 2 Late 2 Be What U Might Have Been

Dad, this is our story!

I've got so damn many dreams and ideas and convictions. I want to do great things, and for the first time in my life I know that I will. YOU are the power of example that helps me to believe it today.

Please stay in touch with me. I will do a better job at that as well.

Merry Christmas, Here's Why I Moved 1,700 Miles from "HOME"

Yeah, I'm pretty fucking far from OK.

I'm no psychologist, but I think it may be connected to the fact that I haven't seen a card, a gift, a phone call, a text message, or an email from EITHER of my parents on my birthday or Christmas in years.

I don't drink anymore, I don't use drugs anymore. I don't run around with abusive men anymore, I don't cut myself anymore, I don't binge eat anymore. (Not that ANY of that was even evident to these self absorbed assholes before I ever told them I had a problem.)

Years of therapy, hospitalizations, jail, and rehabs and the result is the same.

I am alone. I always have been.

Today, I lay in bed sobbing, desperately wanting to get out and go to the beach. But as I get my body to my bedroom door, my heart aches and my knees buckle. Back to bed, sobbing, hours go by and I try repeatedly to get out of my own fucking way. 

I miss my grandparents and those chance holidays of my childhood where I might perhaps have an opportunity to feel loved by anyone. I've seen my Aunts/Uncles/Cousins less than a dozen times in my whole life (well, since I was old enough to remember). I know it wasn't due to any lack of trying on their part, and I always felt loved and cared for when I did see them. 

Suddenly I have all these people step up when I'm 40 and say they knew what was going on and they wanted to help me when I was a child. What good does that do to know now? I've got 40 years of validation that they are insane, I don't need to hear it at my Grandmother's funeral.

I work DAMN HARD not to feel the way I do about my parents. Not to feel all of this pain inside all of the time. But let's be honest, it's the holidays and people get stressed and overwhelmed with misery. I want to trudge forward but I can't lie to myself, the odds of coming out the other end of this wildly successful and well adjusted are pretty much less than nil.

18 and Straight-Edge, STILL My Daughter

The more things clear up for me, the sharper the reality becomes. I am a product of two people who have always had their own internal, personal, or even psychological issues and both continually make the same poor choices, and refuse to acknowledge that they "own" even a fraction of accountability for the things that happen in their lives as a result.

That is OK, I have no control over them, or how they wish to live their lives, and I made one poor choice in leaving my daughter with one of these people when I was actively abusing drugs and couldn't take care of her myself. Sort of a lesser of two evils decision, there really wasn't a better one in hindsight. So for the past 6 years while I've been soul searching and working through 12 step programs to make a serious effort to improve my thinking on a daily basis, my child has been living in the very toxicity which I could not bear. I did make room for my daughter to come and live with me, repeatedly extended the offer over the past 4 years and finally stopped asking. She knows that she wouldn't be allowed to live the way she does where she is. (Up all night on the computer or playing video games, sleeping all day, no job, poor hygiene, no structure, no therapy, no school). I can't control how a teenager behaves, but I can lay down the boundaries of what I am willing to tolerate in my own home.

Needless to say because my child has not lived with me for several years and is now 18, she's not really interested in the whole mother daughter relationship. I have talked with her about drugs, about alcohol, about sex, about peer pressure, about anger and rage, she views everything as a lecture, and responds with "I know, Mom". She won't talk about anything but girl gossip and teen-aged drama, I don't  know what to give her on birthdays and holidays, because she is so over-indulged to begin with. She's over 300 pounds, her inevitable addiction has manifested itself in food, although she denies it. I don't know how to help her and suddenly it becomes clear that she doesn't WANT my help. I can't be the one who helps her, I get that, but I am the only one trying. In fact, I am the only person in my family working on improving my life, and that makes me the enemy.

My daughter, views me as an asshole for having not pulled my head out of my ass 12 years before so that I could have been the mother she imagines I would be. My mother thinks that insanity is a choice and blames my father's side of the family for the choices I made which "made [me] crazy". Both are living in the past. I made my amends, and continue to, I follow through by being available and reliable and keeping my promises, my temper improved, although there were many days when I had to cut my visit short, as my bullshit meter was in the red and I was about to blow a gasket.

Which brings us to yesterday. Thanksgiving Saturday with my mother and daughter, out to lunch and to a movie... We get to the restaurant and my anorexic mother says she doesn't want to eat, but orders a meal anyway so that my food addicted daughter can have two entrees. When I make a comment about it, my daughter decides she doesn't want anything at all. The tension begins, there is a disturbance in the force, and I am already the bad guy for having pointed out the obvious. Then we go to the movie, walking back to the car, it is COLD out, my daughter is dressed for early fall not 30 degree weather, starts complaining about the temperature. I point out that she's not dressed for the weather, she argues that her winter coat is no warmer... Naturally, I say, do you need a new winter coat? She says "No, I hate the cold weather" (she has never lived in or even visited ANY other climate). My response is, "OK then, get a job and move out to a warmer part of the world" She SNAPS before I know it she's gone, now my mother and I are sitting in the car while she has her tantrum somewhere outside in this cold which she cannot handle... 30 minutes go by and she finally gets in the car, I ask her why she took off, especially if she is "so cold" she flips out again, almost psychotically, screaming at the top of her lungs and making little to no sense.

The general barrage of fuck you's and I hate you's were followed up by, "You were never there" and "you don't even care" as it turns out, the trigger phrase that had set her in motion was the "get a job" part. "I've been trying so hard to get a job, Mom, you don't even know." A better parent may have allowed this to end right then, however my parents did me a dis-service by not calling me on my lies and bullshit. Earlier in the week and again in the day, I had asked my daughter if she had tried on ANY of the $200.00 worth of clothes that I had bought her 5 weeks prior, "not yet" was the response. Considering those clothes were "help find and secure a job" clothes... Considering every one of her "posts" on social media sites was something about video games or horror movies, and had been time stamped all throughout the hours of the night when most people sleep, and my mother had been complaining to me that she sleeps all damn day long when most people job hunt, I called her out. I threw the bullshit flag, without a notion of my how my actions would be received, and it was ugly.

Although emotionally hung over, I do not regret what I did. I placed the accountability back on my 18 year old, because my mother never did (on either of us). Of course blame has been passed through the family several times, not the same, and not something that I have time for. My daughter has adapted her skills to be in shape for the blame game and this has become very convenient for her. I made it very clear that I wouldn't allow her to lie to herself in my presence. We all make our choices, and we are not victims of the consequences when we make one that doesn't turn out the way we WANT it to. Since life is such a learning experience, I am grateful today for the consequences of my choices, some are a jagged pill to swallow, but all are a direct result of the way I choose to make decisions.

My mother and daughter may never change, what changed yesterday was my participation in their game. I do not have to go to every fight I am invited to. I've changed and I will continue to change, I am a work in progress and I do not do everything right. However, I crawl beneath no one, and owe no more apologies to this family. My amends are continued as I live and continue to grow and continue to learn from the errors of my ways, like any adult is meant to do. I hate the thought that my daughter is inevitably going to have to suffer through some of the most difficult times of her life, almost needlessly until she finds that she's lying to herself and that blame doesn't matter. Other people's behavior doesn't matter, as it is uncontrollable, that all she can control are her own actions and reactions to her choices and consequences. However what she finds along the way is part of her journey, not mine, and I refuse to be abused any longer.

If I love you will you love me back?

I have spent my life trying to make the people in it happy. When I was 6 years old, I came home from school to find my father sobbing on his bed, I asked him what was the matter... He told me that he wanted to blow his fucking brains out. A co-dependent, caretaker was born. A year later I would find the rejection and disappointment that comes with seeking the approval of others, just too much to bear, and I made my first attempt at suicide. My MOTHER's response: "We don't talk about these things... Don't you dare bring shame to my family... What will people think? I won't be able to show my face in church if you don't start acting right... What's wrong with you? People are going to think you're a crazy person". 

Sometime around 9 years old I discovered the art of cutting. Come to think of it, this may ave started with picking Mosquito bites, I remember those being problematic when I was young. I cut my thighs, my arms, my stomach, my hands, even my face I carved words into my arms and the words "fat bitch" into my belly, backwards so that when I looked in the mirror I could read it. In the beginning, it was simply because physical pain felt better than emotional pain. Toward the end, I was doing it because I hated myself and I "deserved" the pain. Around 11 or 12 I had sex, with a boy my age, it didn't do anything for me, it would be years before that was done properly and became an unhealthy addiction of it's own. Home made and underground tattoos took the place of cutting temporarily, while Cocaine on the other hand, provided me with EXACTLY the relief I was seeking. One small line and within an instant I saw pure anarchy, and felt my body release the pressure of fear, doubt, shame, insecurity, and rage as fast as an untied balloon being let go. I loved it, I sensed mayhem, I sensed evil, I sensed depravity, and I was overcome by the need to chase it all. Side effects of my regular use of stimulants were: increased focus, weight loss, decreased appetite, loss of moral or spiritual values, increased interest in crime, mood swings, increased irritability, emotional instability, propensity for violence, increased rage, decreased artistic creativity, developed a mastery in the skill of manipulation and the art of lying. Now my parents would not trust me, they would not speak to me, they would not want me to be a part of their lives at all. I felt rejected by my own family, misunderstood, and cast out. 

All of my choices were unhealthy, and stemmed from the original Daddy issues... I needed to prove myself to men, I needed approval, I needed validation. I did EVERYTHING I could to feel appreciated, loved, complimented. I believed all I had to do was love. If I loved my Dad, he wouldn't blow his brains out. I've been in ALL of my former relationships thinking, "if I just love him right he won't drink so much" or "if I can prove how much I love him, he won't be so angry" or "if I love him the way he needs to be loved, he won't hit me" or "if I love him enough, he'll never cheat on me"... Yet my track record will show, I've been cheated on, beaten on, screamed at, and I've carried the drunk into the house at night. So for the sake of my own mental and or emotional health, I needed to change my behavior around men.

I'm not a victim of anyone else's behavior. My own poor choices have been the catalyst behind the pain, chaos, and drama in my life. I've been a willing participant in my sordid past with relationships. hat is the pattern I need to break for myself. It appears that I am attracted to the wounded ones... never the actual needy ones, but the scared and defensive, and often dangerous ones. Even today, while working on real recovery, I am able to see that I STILL make these foolish choices. I am now realizing that my own father will never give me an ounce of what I thought I needed from him. I recently stopped chasing him for approval, I stopped seeking validation. I turned and faced him, at almost 40 yrs old, and I demanded his respect. He froze, he laughed, he agreed and I was given validation, I felt empowered and emancipated at the same time. 

Perhaps few people identify with this as described. Far fewer, I bet can capture the elation of emotional growth.