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Oh, my god, that was a hard therapy session.
We talked about how my academic and social life is going really well. I whined about how I have a gazillionty deadlines in the next two weeks (what, do my homework instead of posting to DW? what are you on?). And then we started talking about how I'm kind of transitioned away from the omg-cannot-cope-mayday-fruit-of-the-poisoned-tree feeling about my father, but not as much as she would like me to be.
Like, I think it is really fucking healthy for me to think, "okay, if he sends me another of his patented crazy letters, I will not open it, I will give it to my mom and she can put it in the PATERNAL DOUCHEBAG file, and that can be the end of it." She wants me to be able to open those missives and read them and say, "okay, here is where he is being crazy, and this is why," and decide what to do from there. I can see her point. Kind of.
(Keep in mind, my current state, as explained above, is light years away from my 2005 state, in which I forwarded an email from him to my mother because seeing it in my inbox made me start crying, and then when she didn't get back to me about it for 48 hours, had horrific nightmares that I couldn't distinguish from reality. We're not talking actually "good" coping mechanisms here, even in a best-case scenario.)
And we strayed into how my cousin is getting married, and I only know this because my sister got an announcement, and I feel like I should send a congratulatory letter — I have met this cousin once in my life, I know her name, that she has a tattoo on her lower right back (because she got it when I was visiting her parents, and they were not thrilled), and now that I have done three minutes of Google-stalking, what she does for a living. And I haven't been in contact with that side of my family in, well, almost a decade. Because they're my father's side.
But my problem is with him. Not with anyone who has ever had any kind of contact with him. And my family is so small that the thought of losing half of it because one person is a fucked in the head bastard does not sit well with me.
How do I say that? How do I reach out to these people, who I don't really know at all, and say, "Look, I know we haven't talked in years, but hi." (I mean, well, okay, that's not the hard part, I can handle ritualized contact like congratulatory letters upon someone's wedding.) How do I make it clear that although I'm talking to them, my problem with my father is still there, I don't want to explain it to you, I don't want you getting involved, I'm not going to make you pick sides, and all that jazz? I don't want to hear about him, and if you talk to him about me, that's your prerogative, I'm not going to ask you not to. Their relationship with him is not about me, and my relationship with them should not be about him, you know?
So we started talking about why after almost a decade, I refuse to have any contact with him, why the prospect of a single letter from him still distresses and upsets me to the point it does (see above, this is not a healthy response to a hypothetical, okay?). I have the polished phrases, the "a relationship with my father is not good for me" phrase, the "because contact with him upsets me" phrase. What I don't have, quite, is why. I know why I stopped speaking to him, but it's harder for me to explain why I continue to refuse contact, why we're still estranged a decade later.
Let me tell you how much fun articulating that was. BUCKETS. I had to — yes, had to; Dr. L was visibly frustrated there for a few moments, when she had to remind me, "this is the space where you get to feel things, where it is okay to feel these awful feelings, that is why you are here, I am trying to help you, stop fighting me on this," which is always an awesome moment, and by awesome, I mean awful — force myself to say, "because he's a compulsive liar. because he's abusive." (That latter is really hard for me to say; it's easier to write, for whatever reason, maybe because I feel...appropriative about saying it — I've never suffered physical or sexual abuse, and those are so bound up with the connotations of "familial abuse" that I'm not comfortable with the word.) "because the patterns of our relationship, that I had to be the grownup, that I had to forgive him, that I had to make the relationship work, that I had to be aware, always, of his potential for anger, that I am not sure I am ever going to recover from them."
The anger thing is what's most important for me now, I think. I know he's a compulsive, and quite possibly pathological (in the sense that he believes his own demonstrably false lies), liar. I know that he abused me and my mother. These are straightforward facts. But what I'm still struggling with is anger.
For years, I was terrified of his anger. His temper, just the thought of it, still makes me feel ill. And my temper is like his.
I spent years simultaneously angry at him — why did you leave, where did you go, why don't you love me — and unable to be angry at him, because if I was angry with him, he might get angry with me, and I cannot overemphasize how fucking scary my father's anger is for me. Even today, when I'm an adult, removed from it, safe from it.
So I spent years getting angry with everything else. Fall down, hurt myself: how fucking dare you, what stupid fucking fucker put a fucking ottoman there, fuck off and leave me the fuck alone! And totally unable to access appropriate anger. Get catcalled on the street, get scolded in school for something that wasn't my fault: freeze. Repress. Don't touch the rage, mustn't be angry, if you're angry, the world will fall apart.
Plus the cherry-on-top of seeing people argue in front of me, even casually, even friendly bickering, sends me into a panicky tailspin, because before he & my mother divorced, that was what I saw, arguments. I was five, I didn't understand what was going on, I just knew it was bad. So I think that's connected, because everything to do with my father is a big horrible snarl, but I know about that trigger and I know how to walk away from it. But I still can't handle my anger. I can't touch it. I can't access it in a safe or a healthy way. I either can't feel it all, have cauterized the access paths completely, or can only feel mind-bending uncontrollable rage.
So. That was my session. Talking about the place where I am still hurting, more than anywhere else.
So then I went to Starbucks and bought a ginormous tea and a banana and a salted caramel square (which is kinda gross), because damnit, that was really hard, and maybe processed sugar and caffeine and potassium can't fix everything, but they sure can't make me feel worse.
We talked about how my academic and social life is going really well. I whined about how I have a gazillionty deadlines in the next two weeks (what, do my homework instead of posting to DW? what are you on?). And then we started talking about how I'm kind of transitioned away from the omg-cannot-cope-mayday-fruit-of-the-poisoned-tree feeling about my father, but not as much as she would like me to be.
Like, I think it is really fucking healthy for me to think, "okay, if he sends me another of his patented crazy letters, I will not open it, I will give it to my mom and she can put it in the PATERNAL DOUCHEBAG file, and that can be the end of it." She wants me to be able to open those missives and read them and say, "okay, here is where he is being crazy, and this is why," and decide what to do from there. I can see her point. Kind of.
(Keep in mind, my current state, as explained above, is light years away from my 2005 state, in which I forwarded an email from him to my mother because seeing it in my inbox made me start crying, and then when she didn't get back to me about it for 48 hours, had horrific nightmares that I couldn't distinguish from reality. We're not talking actually "good" coping mechanisms here, even in a best-case scenario.)
And we strayed into how my cousin is getting married, and I only know this because my sister got an announcement, and I feel like I should send a congratulatory letter — I have met this cousin once in my life, I know her name, that she has a tattoo on her lower right back (because she got it when I was visiting her parents, and they were not thrilled), and now that I have done three minutes of Google-stalking, what she does for a living. And I haven't been in contact with that side of my family in, well, almost a decade. Because they're my father's side.
But my problem is with him. Not with anyone who has ever had any kind of contact with him. And my family is so small that the thought of losing half of it because one person is a fucked in the head bastard does not sit well with me.
How do I say that? How do I reach out to these people, who I don't really know at all, and say, "Look, I know we haven't talked in years, but hi." (I mean, well, okay, that's not the hard part, I can handle ritualized contact like congratulatory letters upon someone's wedding.) How do I make it clear that although I'm talking to them, my problem with my father is still there, I don't want to explain it to you, I don't want you getting involved, I'm not going to make you pick sides, and all that jazz? I don't want to hear about him, and if you talk to him about me, that's your prerogative, I'm not going to ask you not to. Their relationship with him is not about me, and my relationship with them should not be about him, you know?
So we started talking about why after almost a decade, I refuse to have any contact with him, why the prospect of a single letter from him still distresses and upsets me to the point it does (see above, this is not a healthy response to a hypothetical, okay?). I have the polished phrases, the "a relationship with my father is not good for me" phrase, the "because contact with him upsets me" phrase. What I don't have, quite, is why. I know why I stopped speaking to him, but it's harder for me to explain why I continue to refuse contact, why we're still estranged a decade later.
Let me tell you how much fun articulating that was. BUCKETS. I had to — yes, had to; Dr. L was visibly frustrated there for a few moments, when she had to remind me, "this is the space where you get to feel things, where it is okay to feel these awful feelings, that is why you are here, I am trying to help you, stop fighting me on this," which is always an awesome moment, and by awesome, I mean awful — force myself to say, "because he's a compulsive liar. because he's abusive." (That latter is really hard for me to say; it's easier to write, for whatever reason, maybe because I feel...appropriative about saying it — I've never suffered physical or sexual abuse, and those are so bound up with the connotations of "familial abuse" that I'm not comfortable with the word.) "because the patterns of our relationship, that I had to be the grownup, that I had to forgive him, that I had to make the relationship work, that I had to be aware, always, of his potential for anger, that I am not sure I am ever going to recover from them."
The anger thing is what's most important for me now, I think. I know he's a compulsive, and quite possibly pathological (in the sense that he believes his own demonstrably false lies), liar. I know that he abused me and my mother. These are straightforward facts. But what I'm still struggling with is anger.
For years, I was terrified of his anger. His temper, just the thought of it, still makes me feel ill. And my temper is like his.
I spent years simultaneously angry at him — why did you leave, where did you go, why don't you love me — and unable to be angry at him, because if I was angry with him, he might get angry with me, and I cannot overemphasize how fucking scary my father's anger is for me. Even today, when I'm an adult, removed from it, safe from it.
So I spent years getting angry with everything else. Fall down, hurt myself: how fucking dare you, what stupid fucking fucker put a fucking ottoman there, fuck off and leave me the fuck alone! And totally unable to access appropriate anger. Get catcalled on the street, get scolded in school for something that wasn't my fault: freeze. Repress. Don't touch the rage, mustn't be angry, if you're angry, the world will fall apart.
Plus the cherry-on-top of seeing people argue in front of me, even casually, even friendly bickering, sends me into a panicky tailspin, because before he & my mother divorced, that was what I saw, arguments. I was five, I didn't understand what was going on, I just knew it was bad. So I think that's connected, because everything to do with my father is a big horrible snarl, but I know about that trigger and I know how to walk away from it. But I still can't handle my anger. I can't touch it. I can't access it in a safe or a healthy way. I either can't feel it all, have cauterized the access paths completely, or can only feel mind-bending uncontrollable rage.
So. That was my session. Talking about the place where I am still hurting, more than anywhere else.
So then I went to Starbucks and bought a ginormous tea and a banana and a salted caramel square (which is kinda gross), because damnit, that was really hard, and maybe processed sugar and caffeine and potassium can't fix everything, but they sure can't make me feel worse.
no subject
I'm connected via Facebook to a cousin from family I haven't seen in over 30 years. I heard via my sister that her dad died so I sent her a private message of the formulaic sympathy kind: I was so sorry to hear about your dad. My deepest sympathy to you and your mum.
And she sent me back a message saying thank you, hope you are doing okay. So that went well, I think.
Formal-ish messages are a good start because that let's them decide how much they want to respond, you're not requesting a level of family intimacy they're not ready for. Or maybe you're not ready for!