Another letter from father!-- not opening this one!

[BackintheSaddle]

remember, he sent me one about V-day that was just nasty- blaming me for all the problems he's had since I was born even though the real truth is he was a drunk and is now just a dry drunk...I'm not opening it, just like you guys told me but I think I'm going to reply...I've not taken the opportunity to let any of them have it...I looked up domestic violence laws in my state and I can get a restraining order against that old man...so I wrote on the envelope 'return to sender' and then decided to mail it back to him in an envelope with a 1-page letter that tells him:
1- I'm done with him, he's disinherited me twice now so he needs to just leave me alone
2- he doesn't have the right to say the things he does to me
3- do not contact me again and if you do, I'm going to get a restraining order
4- I even put on there that on the day that my son attacked me and I called 911, my 'father' came to get him...he didn't walk up to me to see if I was ok, he wouldn't even look at me (he was pissed I dared call 911 on his blessed grandson)...the officer couldn't believe that MY father was acting like that...he never once showed ANY concern for me, my well-being...nothing...I'm SO DONE WITH HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

needless to say, the numbness is gone! I am in touch with my anger, that's for sure!...I've had a hard week, actually...went to work each day but it's so hard to be around people and have my 'mask' on that everything is fine (most have no clue my son isn't even living at home)...it's exhausting...I haven't been posting because when I get home, I just want to feel numb again (!)...;-)....so I watch TV or keep working, something to make it stop....I can't believe I was raised by those peole and that horrible man is teaching my son to act just like him...anyhow, you guys are so awesome to reach out today....right when I got home to get that GD letter....

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/community/threads/why-so-numb.56506/#ixzz2uZb9ZYRP

 

[SeekingStrength]

BITS,

I am so very happy you are keeping the power. This is great!! If he writes again, throw them in a box for evidence should you get restraining order.

I am angry, too. Folks say that on here and now I get it....because your dad is a jerk and WAY out of line. He appears to only love himself.

Good for you and Power On!!

Anger, placed in a healthy way (like you are feeling) is a good thing.


Sent from my iPhone using ConductDisorders

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You are doing the right thing. I am so proud of you. This is hard stuff when we begin it? But reclaiming our lives brings a blast of good, clean strength. You are on your way.

Your father is desperate to get you back under his control. How dare he. His comeuppance is on the way. He will get nastier, just like all difficult children do.

But you have us now.

And we will help you think through it.

There is nothing, nothing he can do to you that he has not already done. You have survived worse. You will survive this.

So proud of you...so sad for you that it has to be this way. He leaves you no choice.

You deserved so much more from your father.

Cedar

 

[BackintheSaddle]

actually, he can use my response as a way to turn my difficult child against me even more...he has a lot of power as long as my difficult child lives there...I have to let him have all that power and let go of all of it...it's hard enough doing that without adding his bullying to it...I had to take some valium to calm down...going to sign off and try and think about something else for awhile...thank you all for helping me through this...I'm barely hanging on, can't imagine how I'd be without someone to listen who understands all this drama

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

He will use everything, anything, to turn your son against you, BITS.

And he will overplay his hand.

And your son will wake up.

You are strong enough to fight this, BITS, or you would not have chosen this time to do it. It is the situation that is ugly, not you, BITS. You are courageous and strong. You brought your father to battle on your terms, whether you realize it consciously or not. He would have liked nothing better than to have seen your relationship to your son destroyed while your son was living with you.

Whether you acknowledge it in your heart yet or not, you chose to fly your colors then.

Your banner has been flying high ever since. And your father hates the defiance in it.

I know it hurts, BITS. It is worth it...and I think you know that, too. Stay strong, be calm, determine what it is you would like all this to like like and head for that harbor.

Your father is running scared, or he would not have sent that letter.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

actually, he can use my response as a way to turn my difficult child against me even more...he has a lot of power as long as my difficult child lives there...I have to let him have all that power and let go of all of it...it's hard enough doing that without adding his bullying to it...I had to take some valium to calm down...going to sign off and try and think about something else for awhile...thank you all for helping me through this...I'm barely hanging on, can't imagine how I'd be without someone to listen who understands all this drama

If your son cares one wit about you, dad will not be capable of influencing him. If he can it's on your son. He doesn't have to buy it. Your son is already not in your corner. He is in HIS corner (his own) believing that he attacked you because you MADE him do it and that you are the bad guy. It is not just you...difficult children are like this...usually self-centered, unwilling to look at themselves, refusing to take responsibility for the things they do, easily ready to discard anything/everything we have done to show our love and caring for umpteen years, and just NOT NICE. So you have two difficult children ganging up against you as your father is just an old difficult child. Age is not a factor here.

You did the right thing NOT reading the letter. And I'm glad you told him you'll get a restraining order against him if he contacts you again.

This isn't something we like to think about, but our parents can not live forever. Then who will your difficult child have to crucify you with?

This is a lose/lose for difficult child.

This is a big win for you in your attempt to take your power back. Honestly, with all the times my father disinherited me, I wish I'd said YEARS AGO what I said this year. He is 90. Yes, it took me this long to think about saying it. "Dad, it's your money. You can do what you want with it. But you can't control me by threatening to cut me off. If you do, I'll still be fine." He hasn't said it since and I truly don't care what he does with his dern money. As for my difficult child, I talk to 36 when he is being nice, and sometimes he is nice. The minute he turns nasty, the phone goes *click*. and he has to wait until the next day to contact me again because I won't answer the phone or read his texts and he knows it. I have warned him I will do this if he swears, disrespects me, or makes ridiculous demands. I hear from him less, but when I do, it's usually at least pleasant half the time.

Have a peaceful, serene day and know, in your heart, you did what you had to do for yourself and most of us, I think, believe it was very right!!!! Hugs!!!!!

 

[Echolette]

Your father is desperate to get you back under his control. How dare he

I had the exact same thought, BITS! This is your dad feeling his control slip.

And he will overplay his hand.

this one I've thought from the beginning. Your difficult child will start to smell the badness...unfortunately that time line can be quite long..as in maybe years...but I am confident it will happen.

Your father is running scared, or he would not have sent that letter.

You can sleep well on that thought. You aren't the only one with fears and insecurity..your father has them too, and bullying is how he addresses them. You are more powerful than you knew!
And you have done FABULOUSLY this time!

Echo

 

[BackintheSaddle]

Well, by now, the old man has my reply but it is eerily quiet this week...I wrote difficult child an email the day I mailed the letter to warn him about it, explain that the conflict is with his grandparents and it's been a long one- not his fault...was a very nice, loving email apologizing for anything I was doing to put him in the middle and that I hoped we'd be able to reconnect soon...he texted me almost immediately to say he wanted to meet for breakfast either Sunday or Monday...he was to let me know late Saturday because of his work schedule and he did but cancelled...I heard from him Sunday night asking about his tax return-- that's all he texted-- 'did you claim me as a dependent on your taxes'? nothing else...no hi, no thanks when I responded...next time if he can't even start a message with a decent beginning, I'm not replying...I just don't understand what happened to my son...he's such a different person than he was raised to be...I've been feeling such 'serenity' about the issues with my father but now I'm awake worrying about it all...did father now forbid difficult child to talk to me? is that why the backing out? difficult child never said another thing about meeting up and I haven't raised it either...he knows how to find me and that I'm willing when he's ready...in the meantime, husband is so depressed he can barely function and the weather is not helping...geez, where is spring!?!...I realize I keep doing my best not to think about it and focus on other things (my kitchen walls are almost done then I'll have to think about it!)...but then on a night like tonight where I haven't heard from him and wondering what craziness is headed my way, it's hard to not lay awake worrying about it...there's not a thing I can do, I realize, to stop or control anything but the hurt just never seems to end or get better...you get so (at least I've gotten so) you can push the hurt away farther and find ways to avoid it... but as soon as it rises back up again, it's no less debilitating than the first time you experienced it...

 

[Childofmine]

Hang in there, BITS...I agree, learning to live with the not knowing and uncertainty is a whole other thing. I see you taking good steps for yourself.

I suspect you'll hear from your dad---it seems like he can't stay quiet for long and wants to keep on setting you straight.

It's also so hard to see our beloved adult children live lives completely different than we ever would have hoped for them.

Over time, difficult child will see what he needs to see about your father, because your father is showing himself right now. Your difficult child knows who you are, because you raised him. That stands and needs no words.

Glad you have those kitchen walls! What is your next project...

Hugs and prayers for you and your family today.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

There are times when we let the stress of what is happening weigh us down. Soon enough, we are stressed, not because anything has changed, but because nothing has changed.

And we are still weighed down, and we want it over, already.

I heard from him Sunday night asking about his tax return--
that's all he texted-- 'did you claim me as a dependent on your
taxes'?

I suspect this was done at the instruction of the grandfather. Too cold, too cleverly cutting, for difficult child. You are in an ongoing battle, BITS. If it were easy to break free, everyone would do it. You need to stand up.

I think your father will be covering the fear of his sudden seeming unimportance with bravado ~ and very strict rules about who is on whose side and exactly what that means. Whether he has forbidden difficult child directly, or slyly implied that a breach of loyalty to him is the act of a traitor...I believe your father is behind difficult child's actions.

When my parents and I were not speaking for those five years, my mother used every smallest weapon in her favor to condemn husband and paint me into an isolated corner. At the same time, she would call me periodically to offer peace on her terms ~ terms that put the blame elsewhere and condemned my husband and my father. It is a strange thing to do this kind of battle with a parent. We are vulnerable to them, feel so less-than through their judgment and condemnation. It is hard, BITS. Only you can decide whether it is worth it.

Where is your mother in all this?

You know your father is encouraging your son to believe you are to be viewed as he views your mother, right?

The point (and I do have one, as Ellen D. says :O) is that we want resolution. When we are trying to kick a habit, we want resolution. Your habit is the habitual bad treatment, the battering of self concept, you traditionally receive at your father's hands. Without it, you are not sure you are going a right way. You have so little, good or bad, to measure yourself against.

Acknowledging the pattern, acknowledging the feel of your father in your psyche, will free you, bit by bit.

Your question must be: Free me in which direction? What will you replace those old, familiar patterns with? Who and how would you like to be? You get to decide that now, not your father. In that place where other children have a loving parent, you have a killer.

And he has cold eyes.

You cannot control your father. You cannot control difficult child.

You can change your responses.

Then, you can do internal work to change your interpretations.

And that is where the healing will occur.

What would you have to do to get difficult child to come home?

Are you willing to do that?

You are the one with the power, here. Change is never an easy thing. Let go of this twistedness. Concentrate on your own health. Be and become, the best you you can be.

There is nothing else to do at this point, unless you are willing to do what it takes to have difficult child home, knowing your father is there in the background, willing to do whatever it takes to destroy you.

Cedar

Your father is so like my mother. She is so mean, so meaninglessly manipulative, too. Her reward system is impossible to understand. I have witnessed her pointless cruelty, seen the little smile that tells me her point hit and hurt, the person she'd targeted. There is no sense to be made of it. My mother is not going to change. My father died three years ago. She villainized his reputation, refused to allow a funeral or a memorial service to be held, gossiped mercilessly about him, his family, his habits. She was living with another man within months of my father's death. She holds her home over everyone's head though no one needs or wants it. It's all in her mind! Her nose is continually out of joint over husband. She will never stop trying to destroy me and my marriage.

She celebrates the pain I am in over my children. It is the one area I was vulnerable to her ~ to anyone ~ and she uses that as her opening to strike, as I've described here before.

Why?

There is no answer.

It is what it is.

Your son will come back to you in his own time.

There is nothing you need to do.

There is nothing you CAN do. Everything you do, your father will use against you. Do not make the mistake of thinking he will not fight you, subtly and with great malice. In the open or hidden away, you represent something other than yourself to your father and he will never stop.

it is eerily quiet this week...

I wrote difficult child an email the day I mailed the letter to warn him

he texted me almost immediately to say he wanted to meet

he was to let me know late Saturday because of his work
schedule and he did but cancelled

he knows how to find me and that I'm willing when he's ready

husband is so depressed

wondering what craziness is headed my way, it's hard to not lay awake worrying about it

the hurt just never seems to end

Is husband depressed over the powerlessness in the stance he is required to take? My husband has been. It is an awful thing to see someone you love taken down while they refuse to allow you to help or protect them.

My husband told me once that examining the waters in my family was like carrying around a little bottle of rotten water. Poisonous, rotten, old, sealed off and stinking water. My husband told me to see it like this: Every time I opened that little bottle of water hoping to heal it, to change it, to see it differently or to try to make it something other than what it was, I was poisoning myself.

"Poison is poison, Cedar." husband says. "It is never going to change. Don't open the bottle."

That imagery has helped me.

 

[BusynMember]

Sounds like my father AND my mother, BITS. Dad controlled with his money and mother would actually withdraw her person completely if she was upset. She would not speak to you. She did this to me. Her voice in my head was my torment for years. I had to learn (and this was not until I was almost forty!) to ignore her voice in my head and to focus on reality. They were conflicting...what she said and what was real about me. I suspect the same goes for your father and what he says about you. Clearly, just by what I've read here, you are a very good, caring, giving person with a heart that is bursting with love. Your father's tormenting voice can make you doubt yourself, if you let him, but he can not change the truth about the good person that you are.

Sorry you have to go through all this parent crapola.

 

[SeekingStrength]

You cannot control your father. You cannot control difficult child.
You can change your responses.
Then, you can do internal work to change your interpretations.

Hi BITS,

I am sorry you are hurting so much right now. Cedar and MWM had such great input.

Your son will come back one day and your relationship will be different and better. I truly believe that will happen. I hope your intense pain lessens very soon and each day you have more happy moments than the day before.

Keep posting. It certainly helps with the I CAN & WILL GET THROUGH THIS. (I post way more than you).

 

[recoveringenabler]

Oh BITS, I am so sorry you are feeling bad now. I can't really add to all the wonderful support you have been given..........just wanted you to know I am here too, sending you caring thoughts and prayers for you and your difficult child and your husband. ...................I hope a little bit of peace finds you today...........

 

[Childofmine]

BITS thinking of you today and hoping YOU had good sleep last night and will have a better day today.

To heck with that mean old man!

Sending hugs and prayers and hopes for good blessings for you today.

 

[BackintheSaddle]

Thanks everyone for your responses and great advice and support...the week got better and I actually got to see difficult child this week!...haven't laid eyes on him since mid-January and he called Wed to ask if he could come by and pick up some of his things. I worried that my father was putting him up to something or it would somehow not be good but I couldn't help myself, I waited outside until I saw him drive up. God, it was good to see him! I asked my husband to come out and say hello and make it a 'nice' encounter if he felt like he could. I ran up to difficult child and hugged him, he had his girlfriend with him and she was friendly too. It was a fine 10 minutes and husband came out and hugged him too! That was major-- like Cedar says, husband has hated to watch me go through all this and that's what's happened to him, I think...the powerlessness of his position to 'fix' things is overwhelming...difficult child's face lit up when Dad came out to hug him...that meant more to him than seeing me I'm sure...it was a pleasant visit, short, sweet, I don't think my father even knew about it (maybe?), and I made sure difficult child left knowing that we hoped he'd come see us more, we didn't mean for him to think we never wanted to se him again...haven't heard from him since but it's amazing how seeing him made me feel so much better...

It was interesting though, one of his big issues is depression and I listed out for him all the symptoms I was observing in him in November when he seemed to be taking a turn for the worst and I made him go see psychiatrist...one big one is that he never bathes...he MIGHT take a shower 2 times a week and he works at a car wash-- so he gets sweaty and would come home and be very stinky for days...one of the things my father kept saying in his letters was how wrong I was about all his symptoms because he was bathing every day, had friends, and so on....but when he came Wed, same thing...was visibly unkempt looking and stunk...the same smell of someone just not taking care of themselves...I guess my parents don't notice?

and my mother...well, that's a long story but she's from a very mentally ill family, her mother was put in psychiatric hospital when mother was 4yo and never came home again...my mother is borderline personality disorder and takes my father's abuse but is also cruel and manipulative in ways he's never been..I've had more and bigger conflicts with her over the years and resolved a lot of those feelings as best I could but honestly still idolized my father, saw him as the one trying to keep peace, but in hindsight, now that I see more clearly, he was always at the center of the bad memories I have...he's type of manipulation is less obvious than hers and more effective for that reason...I don't know how I came out of that family intact-- I do have clinical depression, have been on medications for years but also been in therapy a lot of years to process all this dysfunction as I can....

my kitchen is almost done by the way!!! hoping to finish it tomorrow...and the next project is my hen house! we're getting into the chicken raising world...we've had 1 hen who's adopted us the past year (from across the street) and I've got 12 eggs in an incubator that I'm hoping to get her to start sitting on in the near future...we have plans for our coop and much of it about ready (our hen lives in the horse barn now), just need some good days of weather...here's hoping for spring soon!...hope everyone is finding peace this week and weekend!

 

[pasajes4]

It sounds like you are in a much better place.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I love it that you had eyes on with difficult child! And you got to hug him and see girlfriend. And husband came out, too.

:O)

I don't think your parents knew, either. Know what? They don't matter.

They don't matter.

difficult child matters.

You matter, and husband matters.

The new chicken ~ she matters, and her dozen babies to be. All the happy things matter, as this whole, long winter comes to its end.

Very happy for you, BITS.

Cedar

 

[recoveringenabler]

I was so happy to read this BITS! You sound so much better. Seeing him sounds like a win/win/win for everyone. I hope you have a wonderful, easy, happy day today..........

 

[Childofmine]

BITS, I love that you wrote about seeing difficult child and how good that made you feel and then you wrote about the kitchen and the chickens! What balance. You are happy to see difficult child---living in this very moment of just enjoying your son and the fact that he was here with his girlfriend (he's not alone! yay!) and then you are also thinking about the things you are excited about in your own life.

All around such a great post, BITS. I hope you reveled in it all day today as well. And the sun is shining where you are.

 

[BackintheSaddle]

Thanks all....I FINISHED THE KITCHEN!! gracious, it took a lot longer than I'd imagined but it's done and so bright and yellow! (my husband says it looks like a DOT would paint it)...;-)....it's bright, I'll say that...no news from anyone so a quiet pretty weekend...my husband is still in the midst of blues...he's extra critical and isolating himself...hoping he starts feeling better...yesterday was hard because of it...he came inside and was so critical about what I was doing-- I was making a mess, would take forever to clean up, the yellow was too bright, and I had been working 8 hours straight on that paint job...I ended up bursting into tears...he apologized, felt bad he'd hurt me, knew I was fragile but it's like I'm the one who's the main victim here-- I got grabbed by my son, my parents 'disinherited' me, not him...I understnad that he's depressed and at a loss too but somehow I'm the one taking care of him lately and am exhausted...maybe we do need marraige counseling...I'd have to make him go though...not sure I'm up to it