A bit of family drama
Dec. 5th, 2008 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseBecause really, what holiday would be complete without it?
Longtime readers will know, and less-longtime readers might have picked up, that I don't have the greatest of relationships with my father. Don't get me wrong, things could have been far worse - he was really quite an excellent father up until I hit puberty. But due to various immaturity issues of his own, he wasn't able to handle the fact of my growing up. And since my parents got divorced around that time, he basically quit trying. When my brother and I visited him, he still acted like I was ten years old; the one time I tried living with him for any length of time was fairly disastrous. So it was something of a relief when my mother and I moved to Barrow and I had an excuse not to see him.
In the eight years since then (God, do I feel old now), I could probably count the number of times I've communicated with him on one hand - and absolutely the number of times I've seen him (two). Part of this has been the fact that I frankly don't respect him much and haven't wanted to keep in touch; part of it has been that his characteristic self-absorption has meant that he hasn't made much effort to keep in touch. Sometime in the last year he at least made an effort to do so via email, and I finally just flat-out explained to him that I wasn't that interested in a relationship with him, and why. He seemed shocked (it seems that being a self-absorbed sort tends to mean that you think five years between communications is normal and not indicative of any particular disinterest on the part of the other party), but was at least gracious enough to tell me that he was willing to respect my wishes on the matter, and that he'd be around if I changed my mind.
One last bit of familial history I'd like to point out, as it relates to the current story: My father has absolutely no financial management skills. He and my mother got into a good bit of debt while they were married; when they divorced, by rights he should have taken half of the debt. However (and this is another reason I don't respect him much), he used his right of custody to my brother and I as a bargaining tool against my mother; she agreed to take on all of the debt from their marriage in exchange for getting full custody. (I wish to point out that originally, he hadn't wanted custody of my brother and me at all; however, once he discovered that full custody would entitle him to significant child support and alimony payments, he suddenly went to my mother with "Oh, but I love the kids so much, of course I want them to live with me!" This despite the fact that my mother was keeping the house and had the job that paid well enough to support a family. Have I mentioned that, as well as having immaturity and self-centeredness issues, he's also an emotionally manipulative asshole?) So it was something of a vindication, if no particular surprise, to see how five years later my mother had paid off her entire debt load and was making a six-figure income, and how he had spiraled all the way down into debt to the point where he was considering declaring bankruptcy. Needless to say, the child-support and college-tuition payments that he was contractually obligated to pay my mother and me never materialized, something I'm just a tad bitter about.
Anyway, come Thanksgiving, my grandmother (whom I love, and who's always been a bit distressed about the lack of a relationship between her son and granddaughter) asked if Brian and I would come over and visit and have snacks with her and my father and my uncle. I figured, why not, so we went over there and had a pleasant enough couple of hours chatting about games and food and whatnot. As family get-togethers went, it was relatively painless, and as we were leaving, my father gave me a Christmas card. Not really thinking much of it, I took it back to my Mum's place; however, upon opening it, I found a $200 gift card for Fred Meyer in it along with the card.
I'm not quite certain how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was actually rather thoughtful, and far more than I had ever expected from him. On the other, it kind of feels like too-little-too-late - if he wants to buy back my affection, how about some of those aforementioned tuition reimbursement payments? I realize he's not likely to be in any financial place where he can afford to do so, but since that's his own bloody fault (for all that he'd be happy to go on about how it's everyone else's), I'm not inclined to feel much sympathy.
I was going to friendslock this, but on second thought, I'll leave it public. I pride myself on not talking about people behind their backs, and everything in here is something I'd gladly say to his face if I thought he had any actual interest in why I don't like him much. I've mentioned bits and pieces of it to him before, but my impression has been that he's far more interested in maintaining his self-image as the victim rather than fixing any of the flaws in his character, and far be it from me to shatter his illusions.
Longtime readers will know, and less-longtime readers might have picked up, that I don't have the greatest of relationships with my father. Don't get me wrong, things could have been far worse - he was really quite an excellent father up until I hit puberty. But due to various immaturity issues of his own, he wasn't able to handle the fact of my growing up. And since my parents got divorced around that time, he basically quit trying. When my brother and I visited him, he still acted like I was ten years old; the one time I tried living with him for any length of time was fairly disastrous. So it was something of a relief when my mother and I moved to Barrow and I had an excuse not to see him.
In the eight years since then (God, do I feel old now), I could probably count the number of times I've communicated with him on one hand - and absolutely the number of times I've seen him (two). Part of this has been the fact that I frankly don't respect him much and haven't wanted to keep in touch; part of it has been that his characteristic self-absorption has meant that he hasn't made much effort to keep in touch. Sometime in the last year he at least made an effort to do so via email, and I finally just flat-out explained to him that I wasn't that interested in a relationship with him, and why. He seemed shocked (it seems that being a self-absorbed sort tends to mean that you think five years between communications is normal and not indicative of any particular disinterest on the part of the other party), but was at least gracious enough to tell me that he was willing to respect my wishes on the matter, and that he'd be around if I changed my mind.
One last bit of familial history I'd like to point out, as it relates to the current story: My father has absolutely no financial management skills. He and my mother got into a good bit of debt while they were married; when they divorced, by rights he should have taken half of the debt. However (and this is another reason I don't respect him much), he used his right of custody to my brother and I as a bargaining tool against my mother; she agreed to take on all of the debt from their marriage in exchange for getting full custody. (I wish to point out that originally, he hadn't wanted custody of my brother and me at all; however, once he discovered that full custody would entitle him to significant child support and alimony payments, he suddenly went to my mother with "Oh, but I love the kids so much, of course I want them to live with me!" This despite the fact that my mother was keeping the house and had the job that paid well enough to support a family. Have I mentioned that, as well as having immaturity and self-centeredness issues, he's also an emotionally manipulative asshole?) So it was something of a vindication, if no particular surprise, to see how five years later my mother had paid off her entire debt load and was making a six-figure income, and how he had spiraled all the way down into debt to the point where he was considering declaring bankruptcy. Needless to say, the child-support and college-tuition payments that he was contractually obligated to pay my mother and me never materialized, something I'm just a tad bitter about.
Anyway, come Thanksgiving, my grandmother (whom I love, and who's always been a bit distressed about the lack of a relationship between her son and granddaughter) asked if Brian and I would come over and visit and have snacks with her and my father and my uncle. I figured, why not, so we went over there and had a pleasant enough couple of hours chatting about games and food and whatnot. As family get-togethers went, it was relatively painless, and as we were leaving, my father gave me a Christmas card. Not really thinking much of it, I took it back to my Mum's place; however, upon opening it, I found a $200 gift card for Fred Meyer in it along with the card.
I'm not quite certain how to feel about that. On the one hand, it was actually rather thoughtful, and far more than I had ever expected from him. On the other, it kind of feels like too-little-too-late - if he wants to buy back my affection, how about some of those aforementioned tuition reimbursement payments? I realize he's not likely to be in any financial place where he can afford to do so, but since that's his own bloody fault (for all that he'd be happy to go on about how it's everyone else's), I'm not inclined to feel much sympathy.
I was going to friendslock this, but on second thought, I'll leave it public. I pride myself on not talking about people behind their backs, and everything in here is something I'd gladly say to his face if I thought he had any actual interest in why I don't like him much. I've mentioned bits and pieces of it to him before, but my impression has been that he's far more interested in maintaining his self-image as the victim rather than fixing any of the flaws in his character, and far be it from me to shatter his illusions.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 01:15 am (UTC)What's sad is, he probably thinks it does.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 01:20 am (UTC)That said, it's more than he's done in a goodly while, so I'll give him credit for trying, at least. I just wish he'd get a clue and take a good, hard look at himself for once.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 01:20 am (UTC)I don't know the guy, so nothing I can say's going to really hinge on his character, of course. For every bit of possibility that it's just him playing the cheap sympathy angle, part of me wants to believe that maybe there's been a change of heart, that revelatory moment when you wake up, decide that you want your life to be better than what you've already made it, and where the hell do you start? At what point are you the summation of the decisions you've made in your life, and what point are you who you could be tomorrow?
I've been of the mind recently that forgiveness isn't as much a function of the transgressor or the transgression as one would ordinarily think. I find it much more about the forgiver, about one's capacity to come to terms with what one has had inflicted upon them rather than if someone really deserves it, has earned a genuine reevaluation. There've been plenty of people in my life who've deserved forgiveness that I just haven't been able to give, and on the other hand, plenty more who didn't deserve it -- and a few who went on to get more credits toward their Asshole Rewards Card through persistent acts above and beyond the call of mundane asshattery -- who nonetheless got forgiven mainly because I was at a place in my life where I needed that to happen.
That said, I don't blame you for your wariness, for keeping him at arm's length, not at all, given your shared history, and nobody, not even he, should.
And thanks for sharing this with us. Nice to know my lineage doesn't hold the monopoly on familial dysfunction, no matter how much it may seem so this time of year.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 04:09 am (UTC)I like what you have to say about forgiveness; I've come to similar conclusions myself. I've often wondered if I've forgiven my father, and exactly what that would entail; I've long since given up being angry with him, but that has more to do with the pointlessness of the exercise than true forgiveness. I think at this point it's more that I just don't care anymore, because caring creates expectations, and having expectations where my father's concerned is an exercise in frustration. The few times he's actually reached out to communicate with me, I've held out some hope that he'd have had that revelatory moment and might actually put some effort into maintaining a flow of communication. But so far, that's not been the case - we get past the "the weather is fine, thank you" point of conversation and then things just grind to a halt. (I'll admit I'm probably not being incredibly sharing, myself, but I kind of feel like he should be the one to take the first step across the bridge, perhaps because I get the sense that he needs me more than I need him. Does that make any sense, or just sound snobby?)
Nobody's family can escape dysfunction, trust me. In The Eight: Reindeer Monologues (the show I was doing this time last year), Cupid (the flamingly gay one) had a lovely little spiel on how messed up everyone's family is:
Daddy's a workaholic,
and Mommy's an alcoholic,
and little brother's a sodomite,
and little sister's a porno queen.
Chemical dependencies
and botched suicide attempts
and repressed memories of sexual abuse
and child molestation spewing forth at the dinner table
over turkey and cranberry sauce...
It's a bit over the top (the whole play was), but it's not entirely inaccurate. Far from it, in some families.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 09:50 am (UTC)I hope that conversation on the matter has been of some use to you. I love that you go to your friends and ask for advice/input, not because you want your current viewpoint reinforced but because you're actually looking for advice.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 07:32 am (UTC)He might have grown up. I'd suggest giving him the chance. I know this is like throwing an ice cube on a burning house...but it is something, right?
My dad and I have never been close. Correction. I was a TOTAL daddy's girl up til 6th grade or so, then my dad and I lost touch. He became a hardcore workaholic. He left in mornings before I was awake, got home after I was already in my room on my computer or in bed. My parents are still together, my relationship with my dad has improved, but for years I didn't even call him dad--he was Richard to me. It didn't help that he had no clue I'd grown up. He was still asking me if I knew what certain super-basic words were when I was in high school. (Yes, Richard, I know what democratic means, fuck off now.)
It took me a long time to give him a second chance, and while he's still not as close to me as he used to be, he's become an important part of my life again.
Our relationship wasn't as bad as it sounds like yours was. But my point is simply that sometimes when you give someone a second chance, they'll show you they deserve it. Your father will probably never make up for everything from when you were younger. But he might show you that he can be someone for you now.
Just my two cents.
Dear Old Dad
Date: 2008-12-08 12:50 am (UTC)This is not because he is a bad person, he is just has so much "case" that weighs him down. Suppressives are terribly wounded underneath their smooth exterior. They are among the most afrid people on the planet. They are stuck in a past that was so terrible that they can't face it and they dramatize "everybody is the enemy" without being aware of it. They can't really complete or accomplish anything for themselves because they are constantly on the alert for an attack that they are sure is going to come - even though it never does because what they are afraid of is something that happened in the past, not something that truly exists now, in present time.
One survival strategy they master is to undermine your self esteem and invalidate you covertly. Their viewpoint is entirely self centered and they don't really empathize with others or comprehend that there could be any other viewpoint than their own. They are often charismatic and are attracted bright, creative people and will "feed" off their talent and success in a vampire like fashion.
Suppressives create co-dependent, unhealthy relationships and unfortunately, they look like everybody else and pass for "normal". Less than 10% of the population is truly covert hostile but the trail of human emotional and mental destruction they leave in their wake is what accounts for so much of the grief the rest of us go through.
Covert hostile individuals have great difficulty changing - to the point where you can say that they do not change. This is one way of identifying them. Others include observing whether they complete cycles of action, observing if they are surrounded by emotionally broken people, There is a whole set of "anti-social" behaviors that go with covert hostile. It is a dangerous condition because it never looks like what it is.
My advice: don't cultivate a relationship with your Father beyone "Good roads, good weather" conversation. And most of all, don't waste one more moment worrying about him. If he was capable of change he would have changed long ago. I do believe that your Father loved me, you and Ace as much as he was capable of - but because of his mental condition, he didn't have the capacity to demonstrate his love once you reached puberty and were capable of challenging his actions, his values and his thinking.
Bottom line: Don't try and figure out why he gave you the $200, just say "Thank you Dad - Merry Christmas" and leave it at that. You are beautiful, you are talented, you are incredibly intelligent and I love you dearly Rose Rose. I am telling you the truth as I know it from rock bottom experience. But most of all, trust your guts where your Father is concerned - you have good guts! Do what they tell you. Love, Mum
Re: Dear Old Dad
Date: 2008-12-08 01:52 am (UTC)