Father's day aftermath

"Stuff it!" he barked "Just stuff it!" as he waved his hand dismissive near my face as if to shut me up., as I chauffeured him in my car.

"Yea, I have been stuffing it all my life, that's why I'm so angry" I replied soberly. ("...and so fat" I thought to myself, all that rage pushed down with food so that I wouldn't end up on the front page of Newsday for killing him one day).

Dad, I am angry with you for things you will never understand, never admit, never acknowledge. I am angry at you for the last three days when you hijacked my life and ejected me from it, as you often do, putting your needs first and making me a servant to them. I am angry that you can't even fathom why I am angry. I am angry that you have made me into your caretaker and surrogate wife. I am angry that on a Saturday night I was out to dinner with you, instead of hanging out with my friends or staying home doing whatever I wanted to, like most adults. I am angry that you made me take you to a warehouse club store on a Saturday afternoon when it is mobbed, and when I'd avoid it like the plague even if I'd needed something from there.

Then, you race all over the store sitting comfortably in a motorized wheelchair, while I have to go in circles around the warehouse five times looking for you, and exhausting myself. I am expended on you, all the time. There is never anything left for myself. I want to run away and never come back. I don't even care anymore that no one else will take care of you, because you are killing me. You didn't earn this either. You never took care of me when I was growing up, all you did was scream, and yell, and abuse me and the entire family. You abused my mother and my brother so much that they warped into extensions of you who abused me too.

I am angry that you have crossed way over the line into emotional incest, inappropriateness verbally, touching and grabbing at me in the past, and that the wound opened again recently when I saw a scribbled note in your handwriting with "girls gone wild" and the 800 number on it. It makes me sick that you are almost 75 years old, and would want to see something so exploitive of college girls, the same age I was when you started abusing me in earnest. It makes me angry and disgusted that you cannot and will not change or evict than demon from inside you.

I cringe every time you talk about God and the Bible, and give me unsolicited spiritual advice about my life. You are no one to talk. I hate you. I want to be far away from you. You make my skin crawl. You make me want to scream or slice into my arms with a knife till I bleed and can cry and cry and bleed you out. If only I could get you out from underneath my skin, maybe I could take the first fucking free breath of my life.

I miss...

being able to come here and feel safe. I feel like I have lost something that, while not vitally important to my life, still held some significance. I suppose that will teach me to be a little more paranoid and cover my tracks better. I knew I should have erased my URL history from his computer. There was a voice telling me to do it, and I ignored it, wanting to trust that it wouldn't be necessary. I was wrong about that, and about a lot of other things as well it seems. *sigh*

For You

You know I love you & I miss you & that I wish it did not have to be this way.

I wish there were other choices. Options. Alternatives. A box labeled "Other" that I could check. A freezer where I could store my heart until I needed it to feel again. To stop the inconvenient beating, and the tears, all the tears it sends through my eyes out onto my cheeks.

I knew the phone wasn't going to ring tonight, and I realized it would be the first night in about four months that I would not be talking to you. It was hard to bear knowing that it will be that way every night from now on. (It doesn't matter that we might speak again as friends, it will never be the same).

I guess I will have to get used to your absence.

I have no idea how though.

This will probably be my last post here for a while, since you have found this place, and I can't just spill my thoughts here anymore.

Please take care of yourself.

Back Home

Back from my trip to the rolling green mountains of Pennsylvania. I am readjusting to New York. It's quite different there. I liked it a lot though. D.'s apartment is steps away from the Ohio river. There is a bench there where we sat the first day and I looked over the bridge and the flowing water. It was so peaceful as night fell. Little did we know what calamities would befall us in the hours to come when my rental car was found to be dead, and the key got stuck in the lock from some asinine anti-theft device. So much for what I had thought of Saturns. Never again I say. This began a night long fiasco, that did not resolve till the next day after noon. This was a harbinger of things to come.

We had a mixed bag visit to say the least. Very intense, unsettling at times, fun at other times. He is a handful. We had a long talk tonight about all of this, and we are going to take some time this week to think and pray and figure out where we go from here. I love him dearly, but he has some serious issues he needs to work out before we can have a truly healthy viable relationship. So, I am not sure how this will pan out. Maybe since we are geographically separated it won't mean breaking up, but rather refocusing on ourselves now that the first flush of the relationship has opened up to deeper aspects within each of us that need to be tended to. We both have a lot of work to do on ourselves individually. Some of his issues are crippling when it comes to being in a relationship though, so what happens with him will be more crucial to the survival or demise of our union.

As for me, my issues are more things that effect me, and things I need to work on for myself, and for the betterment of my own life. However, of course as I get better, it can't help but have a positive effect on how I relate to him, and others in my life. I am doing my best. That's all I can do. That seems bland and generic, and maybe it is, but that feels like where I am right now. Trying to do my best, and be my best, and build a life for myself.

I am still losing weight, and that is very important to me. It is just but one aspect of self-improvement, but I know it will have a trickle down effect on other parts of my life, especially my health and self-esteem. I am 23 pounds down now, and I am pleased, and confident that I will continue this, slowly but steadily until I arrive at the place I feel comfortable with myself, and healthier. I won't lie, I'll be happier with the way I look too I'm sure. I already see some difference in my appearance but it's not dramatic since I still have a long way to go. My face definitely seems to look better, less puffy, more defined, and I have gone down a whole size. Yipee.

I have some more settling in to do this week, unpacking and getting back into my life here. It's good to be home, in my over-stuffed apartment with my beloved black cat, but despite what a royal pain in the ass he can be, I miss my D. He's a wonder, a freak, and sometimes a colossal mess, but I love him still. This is the deepest love of my life, and also the most troubling. He is a good man, but he has a lot of inner pain and suffering and it bleeds out onto me, since I am closest to him, despite him not wanting to cause me any pain. I told him all of how I felt tonight though, and he has agreed to get some help. I hope he does, for his sake, before mine. Whether we work out or not, I want to see him get better. I hate to see him suffer. It breaks my heart. Never have I wanted so much to take someone's pain away, and never have I wanted so much for someone to stop causing me pain. I told him tonight that it is up to him, he can stay the way he is and be alone, or he can try to get better and I will be with him all the way. The choice is his alone. I have informed him that I am not self-destructive and that I will have no choice but to walk away if he chooses not to get help. So, I have made my parameters absolutely clear. I love him dearly, but I will not let him drag me down. I will hold his hand if he is prepared to make his way up, but I will not pull him up, nor do the hard work for him. I will be a companion, and a catalyst, but not a caretaker. I have had too many sick people of all stripes around me, and it's time for me to take care of myself now. I have to. This is my one and only life, and I'm not prepared to piss it away on pain that is not even my own. God, I sound so much less romantic than I used to be. I guess this is me as an adult. Hmm. Well, it had to happen sometime folks. I'm just a late bloomer. Uh huh, yea, that's the ticket... (Sorry, old SNL Jon Lovitz moment) "My wife....Morgan Fairchild...yea...that's the ticket"