March 31: random thoughts

I am feeling as though I have been a major breakthrough, and that I need to spend a lot less time thinking about narcissism. That is, I do not have a constant need to process it. It seems less important that I understand every nuance I’ve let narcissists are doing around me. I feel as though this is because I know I am finally free from my parents, they cannot hurt me, at least, they cannot force me to come back.

**

Today at work, I jokingly asked Joe, “did you miss me?” I had been gone away from work for four days, due to the pandemic. He replied directly, hope the boat like a sore thumb!” I just laughed it off. Hey said a few other things that were typical of himself, and rice and I left them all. I don’t even remember them, I did not keep them in my mind until I would have any time to write them down.

Laughter truly is the best medicine. I realize this is what Rice uses all the time with Joe says something immature and ridiculous. He just laughed it off.

Interestingly, I am feeling free to do the same…

***

I just had a strange time. I do not think I have ever really missed my parents. 

I remember as a child being in tensely lonely. Praying over and over for a friend. As a team, praying desperately for a mentor figure. I remember making a very strong emotional connections to other children, other authority figures, counselors account, etc. Some of them I wrote you, or remember do you leave for years. A few of them, I still remember their names and can call them up by memory.

… But I do not ever remember missing my parents. Oh, I probably had times when I wanted them to be around. When I was excited for them to be home, when I wanted them to do something for me, or especially to be proud of me. But that deep emotional longing of wanting to be close to someone that you cared about? I don’t think I can recall such a feeling. Not for my parents, anyways. It seems that I emotionally bonded to just about everyone and everything else except for them… Given what I have discovered, that is hardly surprising.

 **

Don’t try to squeeze blood from a stone, and you will not be disappointed!

Apparently, from the youngest age, I push my emotionally. This was the right thing to do. It is what I need to go back to doing.

I think part of what drives this is that I have a craving for something like a normal parent relationship. But there just is no possibility of that. I can be there a motional slave, or something stranger and darker, I can enter into their dysfunction. But they could never enter into my life and give me something positive.

It is for this reason that I need to cut all ties.

More than that it is for this reason they’re cutting ties makes sense. I have nothing to gain from maintaining ties. Really, neither do they.

Because if they would contact, they were just trying to reestablish with patterns. Which I am not prepared to do.

I neither want to know I need anything from them. And they have no power over me. So there is nothing more to say. 

***

My dads criminal record

My dad’s criminal record is short, but very intense. In his late teens, he joined his big brother to run with a gang in a big city nearby. My dad has told stories about this time. Times they sought off shotgun’s, and thought it was fun. Times when they planned to Rob grocery stores. “No one thanks to Rob grocery stores! They always rub banks, but grocery stores have more cash on hand, and less security!”

He talked of the gang leader, a man with no soul. A man that you looked at, and just fell terrified to the core. He says he still feels afraid of that man.

One day, there was a terrible event. The evil man broke into a church diluted. My uncle was there. So was the priest. The evil man he did religion so much, so the story goes, that he made the priest kneel on the floor, and shot him in the head.

My uncle was arrested as an assessor he to the crime. He testified against the other men. This was the event that rocked my dad’s world, and ended my grandfathers life in a season of intense worry, when everyone was terrified of the evil man or his gang coming to break into our home.

This was the season that propelled my father to seek out religion, and that religion temporarily brought some relief. I think it brought some relief to his pain, until he started being sought out as an expert. I think this is where things started to turn for him.

In his 20s, he was scared, confused, but tried his best. In his 30s and 40s, he was seen as an expert, and increasingly lean towards dysfunctional patterns that he had learned from his family. In his 60s, he seems much harder.

**

He did the best he could…

I once asked my father if my grandfather was a good dad. My dad paused, and looked in the distance pensively. He rubbed his teeth together in his agitated way. “He did the best he could, I think…”

My father always spoke of his father in such glowing terms, this statement came off a little strange. But it seems accurate. And maybe it is something I could say at my own father. To some extent.

“He did the best he could, considering…”

… Considering that he was raised by an alcoholic, who had learned to harness rage and cruelty in World War II, and had turned himself into a very dangerous man, only to find himself for an unrecognized in the far north after the war.

… Considering that his upbringing gave him narcissistic tendencies

… Considering that his upbringing gave him (or perhaps his jeans) psycho pathic tendencies, or the inability to feel the pain of others. No doubt, this is one of the things that made him attractive to the game, all those years ago.

… Considering that he had and still has disassociative disorder

… Considering that his father had Machiavellian disorder, and pass it onto his son. In other words, a way of seeing people as I think it could be controlled, and manipulating people in a very heartless and I’m feeling way.

… Considering all these things… Did he try his best? Does anyone? Certainly, he could have done better. Certainly, there were times when what he did was absolutely terrible. It left deep and lasting scars on myself and my siblings and many other people in town.

It is accurate you call him an evil man. It is accurate to call him a weirdo, I creep, and a dysfunctional man. It is very accurate to say that he is unsafe around my family, and on trustworthy

It is also true to say that he did try. And it could have been worse. He decided not to go down that path with the game. He really did reach out to religion to try to better himself. Eventually, religion became a way where he could exert himself, and feed his last for power and self clarification, and especially for validation.

But even with this, it could have been worse.

But what am I trying to say here? Saying that it could have been worse is not the same as saying that he did the best he could.

I too had a bad upbringing, quite similar to his, I would think. I too went through a prolonged season in my late teens win I struggled a lot with disassociative disorder (I realize that now) and also cycle pathic. That is, I did not feel emotions. I did not feel emotions of others, and I did not feel my own emotions. I remember reflecting on this very deeply. It bothered me that I thought no emotion whatsoever. This lasted for several years.

But I did something about it. Did I do something about it? Is it legitimate to claim praise for something that God did? I kept fighting and fighting for health until I found breakthrough. I repented of some sins, found freedom with per Naga fee, (which was affecting my pleasure centers, I think, and creating a regular flows of dopamine, perhaps having something to do with the lack of feeling). I saw that relationships with healthy people. Although I felt bad about it, I began avoiding, sometimes shining unhealthy people. And I really got better. And I continue to fight, and I continue to get better.

“He did the best he could.” With my kids say this of me?

Would it be fair to say? There is always more that one can do. However, if I were to stand my own life up on one side, and my father‘s life up on another site, there is a difference. I have to admit, there is a marked difference.

Yes, he probably had it worse than me. But also,… He stopped trying! He did not try his best. He is not trying his best now. I know that he is somewhere simmering away in rage. As he does this, he is cutting off his feelings. He is settling down into his Psychopathia. Because it just makes life easier if you don’t care about the feelings of others. As long as he is in the state of rage, he is nourishing his sadism. It would genuinely cause him pleasure to cause me pain. That is not hyperbole. That is simply the truth. It would cause my father pleasure to cause me pain right now. Because of the state that he is in. And the more he stews, the more he hyper focuses on his own rights, his own feelings (what is left of them) and strategize on how to feed himself. That is, he becomes a more and more pronounced narcissist. If there was any even any room for growth in this direction.

I am glad that as a younger man, he had a good mentors. He was trying his best. He really did try at times. And there are some good memories. There are also sometimes I can forgive him for -- because he was young, and really doing his best.

But that doesn’t excuse the man that he has become. Going through trauma, especially the trauma of childhood, explains a lot. But there is no excuse for giving up, and leading our worst demons take over.