The Fine Line

     11 months after my dad's death, I think I've gotten pretty good at walking on some fine lines. I remember when he first died, and I felt a lot of anger. There was some internal conflict - I really, really wanted to be able to cry about his death. I don't know why I wanted this so bad. I guess it's what normal people do when their dad dies. But I was still really mad at him, I wanted to write a mock obituary where I outed him as the disgusting pig that he was. A big part of me was and still is glad he's dead. I also remember feeling really giddy, but guilty, about the fact that my mom was more than likely going to end up back in our country, having lost all of the material things for which she traded my dignity (and she did end up going back there for some time, things-less and broke).

    After a while, a lot of that anger died down. What was the point? He was dead. It slowly transformed into a somewhat sad feeling - not sad that he died, but sad that the unlikely scenario of true change on his part was now completely impossible, and sad that his life was so... pathetic. I don't mean pathetic as an insult. I mean, his life was pathetic in a way where you would almost feel bad for him, had he not willingly committed so many evil acts.

    Let me explain it better. There was a tiny baby boy born to some low-class Eastern Europeans in the 70's, and their poor treatment of him created an actual sociopath. He didn't stand a chance even from birth. All he ever accomplished in life was living illegally in the US, until he emotionally and materially manipulated his only child into getting him a green card, months before she stopped talking to him forever. His wife resented him, and he had no meaningful relationships with people who truly loved him and appreciated his company. None. I suspect he probably had alcoholism-induced dementia before he died. And everything he owned, which was mostly cheap Chinese crap, ended up going to some Mexican single mom who got their apartment and everything in it, after my mom transferred the lease and moved back to Europe. The only thing that's left of my dad is a box of ashes, and the bad memories and scars he inflicted on his wife and child. This can all only be described as "pathetic". He was the loser he always talked about being, I guess.

    We had to put our 17 year old dog down about a month ago. She was a good dog, although near the end of her life, I was getting very overwhelmed and exhausted with having to take care of her. My daughter adored this dog, I kept them apart but my daughter loved to watch her through the baby gates, one of her first words was the dog's name. The dog was only a part of my life for about 2.5 years, since she was originally my husband's dog. But when we put her down, I actually cried. I was far more emotional about an elderly epileptic dog who I kind of hated taking care of, than I was about my own flesh and blood father. And the only person to blame for this is my dad.

    The "fine line" here is having empathy for the abused little boy, who grew into a lonely and extremely adult who probably fried his brain with alcohol and porn to the point where he couldn't even identify the feelings that caused him so much distress, but also being glad that the dangerous sociopath who terrorized my mother and I for nearly three decades is dead. It's hoping that the little abused boy found peace, but that the adult man who abused me so cruelly for so long has finally been punished. It's being able to be angry about the abuse, but to feel at peace with the fact that he can never hurt me again and the fact that even he was put out of his own misery by dying.

    I feel fine with the fact that I don't miss him. Actually, I think it's outright odd that it's been nearly an entire year since he died. I still remember our last interaction, I was at their house and I was very pregnant, and he tried to kiss me goodbye. I told him no, and he stormed off angrily cussing under his breath. A couple of weeks later, I remember his dot on Google Maps approaching the area I live in (I've talked before about how we all shared our locations), and he tried calling me a few times. This was before I officially went no contact with my parents, but I ignored the calls, and sat in my house panicking. He must have taken the hint and I saw that he went back home. I felt relieved. 

    Almost every encounter I had with him as an adult made me feel dread, panic, and discomfort - I don't miss it one bit, but I'm sad it had to be that way. Every time I see my daughter run up to my husband after he comes home from work, or run to him when she trips and gets scared because she finds his presence comforting, I am reminded of what it's supposed to be like between a dad and his daughter.

    I think a lot about what I'm going to do when my daughter starts asking what my parents were like or what my childhood was like. She knows my mom, and I keep my mom on a leash, but I still don't really know what I'm going to tell her about my dad. I don't think she'll ever figure out that something is weird about my relationship with grandma - a part of the leash I'm keeping her on is very strict boundaries about what can even be mentioned in front of my daughter. But I'm glad I get to tell her some partial truths about how my dad was an Eastern European electrician who loved trucks, and that she doesn't ever have to experience what he was really like.

Life Updates

     I didn't want to abandon this blog - I actually anticipated using it quite a lot, and for a very long time, as a sort of therapeutic tool. But, my life has changed tremendously, in ways that I intend on eventually elaborating on, plus I've been increasingly busy as my baby grew into a toddler. I am also opening another blog about just my regular life and opinions, where I will not speak so openly and in such great detail about having experienced child abuse (but will still brush up on it occasionally as it is relevant), so that more people would feel comfortable reading it.

    For starters, I have been back in touch with my mom since last June, about a week after my last post on this blog. She left me a voicemail saying that she was moving back to our country, and I just bit the bullet and decided to contact her. I had no idea where she was going within that country, who she'd stay with, or if I'd ever be able to contact her again. I loved her, she'll always be my mother, so I didn't want to risk completely losing even the possibility of a relationship with her. And she did end up moving to our country for about half of a year, until she couldn't take living there anymore, for reasons that deserve their own post. 

    In the beginning, I was very apprehensive about any sort of relationship with her, but so far, she has been relatively receptive to any of my boundaries and it really does feel like she has learned a thing or two from her life and especially her recent experiences. It's a work in progress, but it's functional. She seems to be figuring out who she actually is as a person outside of just being the brainwashed Eastern European wife of a dysfunctional, mean alcoholic pervert. By the way, in one month, it will have been a year since my dad died. I still don't really know how to feel about all of it.

    Additionally, I had to leave my church community of 10 years over long-term harassment that was never addressed by the parish authorities, and was in fact being promoted by them in secret. This happened about a month ago, but the months leading up to this moment were filled with targeted bullying of myself and my family, which caused me to become incredibly depressed and generally avoidant of social situations. The reasons for this are incredibly complicated and have a lot to do with my poor enforcement of boundaries, my tendency to jump very quickly into relationships with people, and the fact that I was an oddball among these people due to some of my lifestyle decisions and personal opinions (ones that had absolutely nothing to do with our faith). 

    I've been grappling with a lot of feelings related to the church issue, namely that a lot of those relationships were not what I thought they were. For months and even years in some cases, I ignored my gut instinct about some of these people. There was a discomfort that I intentionally stomped down. I was a vulnerable young woman who was desperate for a "found family" and for acceptance, and I feel like I was willing to walk into situations with glaring red flags in order to get this, years after I grew aware of the fact that I had a dysfunctional family and gravitate towards abusive situations. How could this be? It made me wonder - how much do I have left to work on? As I sat here writing posts about how much I've grown as a person and how much I've learned from being a victim of abuse, I was unknowingly still making the same mistakes that I was making at 16 years old too.

    And this is awkward to say on a blog about having been a victim of child abuse - but I no longer feel a need to live 24/7 in the world of being a victim of child abuse. I obviously still think about it a lot. I plan to continue writing about it, but probably more sparingly than it was back when I posted regularly. Through therapy, my dad's death, and my focus naturally shifting to creating my own healthy family, I feel like I'm actually healing past it in a truly meaningful way. I don't think these things ever really go away, but I did remark to my mom the other day that there are more days where I don't have that panicky tightness in my chest, than there are days where I do have it. I used to think the panicky tightness in my chest was just the default setting for how human beings feel when I was young and lived with my parents.

    I ended up getting formally diagnosed with PTSD, ADHD, and BPD. I have lost the vast majority of my pregnancy weight. I really want to start learning Spanish this year. I have gotten a bit into writing pen pals from other countries. And I also would like to have another child in the next year or two. Life with a toddler, having to travel two hours one way to a new church every weekend, rebuilding a relationship with my mom, and getting really settled into a relatively stable family life take up much of my time as well. And honestly, I'm very glad for it. The future is looking bright, and I feel like my abusive childhood is becoming more of a distant memory. Still one that requires analysis and talking about, but not to an obsessive degree.

    I intend on making a post about reconciling with my mom, some of the difficult conversations we've had since then, some of her personal growth, some of my struggles with enforcing boundaries, my feelings about my dad's death, and so on... one by one, slowly, over time. Bye for now!