crysthewolf

I read this blog post today: http://ohtobking.livejournal.com/908.html . It was written back in December and I haven’t had any ill dealings with my father since. The odd thing is, I didn’t have any ill dealings with him at the TIME, either. I’ve searched through emails, I’ve gone back over livejournal entries, and I haven’t found anything between the cordial passing of “happy holidays” emails between him and I on the 26th and the next time we spoke at some point in January with him asking if I had his email address blocked (and, fyi, I’d never actually HAD his email address blocked. I don’t block people’s email addresses until they harass me. I simply removed him from my LJ friends list and removed MYSELF from my message board) and me responding that I hadn’t, and then a series of emails asking how each other were.

So you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled over this today. And my first response was, “Well damn.”

I wrote a couple of “friends only” LJ entries on the whole thing but the long and short of it is that I had realized earlier at some point that the source of a LOOOOT of my relationship problems stem from the way my parents’ have spoken to me. Dad has continuously brought up instances of me acting out of a teenager (that, notably, I don’t remember) and Mom has continuously told me what an ungrateful brat I am (when she wasn’t worrying about me going to Hell), and the truth is, I expect the same from everyone else. I think I always have. To be honest, I’m not even sure I believed it from THEM… I’ve just always expected it from other people.

Which is, I think, why I tend to beat people to the punch. I decide for myself “they don’t want me around”, and then I get bitter about it. I can trace instances of this and it makes me cringe. And it’s not that the other people in those situations were exactly FAULTLESS… but I didn’t have much grace for them, either. Because they were just doing what I’d always known they’d do.

Even if they weren’t actually doing it.

So today I begin anew, methinks. For one thing, my father is off the hook. Whether he wants to be a part of my life at all or not, I’m beyond expecting him to make up for the behavior that’s been exhibited in the past, including this particular blog. Fact of the matter is, I’m beyond expecting anything different from him. As far as my older brother is concerned (who is the glad recipient of the previous blog entry, and you can find the rest of his crazy ass here , if you’re that interested… go on, have a good time. Tell him I sent you), he’s got his own bag of issues and I don’t have any interest in dealing with someone who’s going to toy with my emotions and fuck with my head.

The bottom line, though, is that even when I think these things myself… it’s really, really healing to hear it from other people. I had already begun to have the conversation with myself on the question of “What kind of parent says things like that about his own kid on the internet???” and ask myself what I’d think if I’d just stumbled across that blog and didn’t know who it was.

But here, for my sake and the sake of any of my family who may be reading who happen to SHARE Dad’s particularly low opinion of me (and my sanity), I figured I’d repeat some of the things that they said that resonated with me. They’re general good advice and thoughts for anyone going through anything like a similar situation.

Abuse is abuse, no matter how old you are. This is abuse. You don’t have to stay in an abusive situation, regardless of who you may be related to. You are not required to pursue abusive relationships.

And, Dad?

You’re wrong.

Friend:

(I read your Dad’s blog posting) Here’s what I posted in reply:

“You know, this stuff may be between you and her. I do know (and realize) that I don’t know the whole story. Therefore, I realize that your first response is going to be “F— off it’s none of your business”, or something along those lines.

It’s seemed to me that she’s always spoke better of you than she has much of the rest of her supposedly loving family. But the thing is, if you want to call her manipulative, some of your family needs to take a nice long look in the mirror. And as for her turning from God, maybe you should wonder why that is in light of the fact that most people in her life have often bashed her over the head with God and used God as an excuse to treat her like crap.

And as for her claiming you guys are monsters…insufficient data on my end. However, I was there in the movie theater when Will sent her those 7+ incredibly nasty e-mails. I read them myself. I also read the e-mails from her that prompted such an overkill of a reply.

Totally disproportionate, totally destructive, and massively uncalled for. I’m sorry, sir, but your precious son is, indeed, awful for being like that. I was there, you were not.

I also saw the e-mail exchange between Crystal and her Mother that ended most of the contact between them. And, I know you won’t believe this, but Crystal’s mother was flinging out some serious psychological bull. Many people put up with that…some don’t. Crystal falls in the latter group. So?

I may not agree with all the ways Crystal has dealt with you or her mother. But you need to come down off your high-horse, sir. Neither You, nor Will, nor Crystal’s mother, are free from blame for the way things have gone between you and her. I thank God every single day that my family is not as bigoted, hypocritical and hateful as you people are.

As for warnings…I’ll take your post as a warning about you and the Walter family. I’ll make sure people know about your self-righteous, hypocritical view of the world and your little victim attitude.

I consider Crystal to be a good friend of mine. In fact, she’s one of the few sane people I know, and one of the few people who I hold as high of respect for as I do. Come down off your pulpit, you insufferable hypocrite. You do your God injustice.”

Friend:

And when I missed it, when Mom was throwing shit and slapping me across the face and telling me how worthless I was, I asked if I could come stay with him and he said no. His reason was that, according to him, my Step-Mom believed that I would just have the same problems with her that I had with my own mother.

This made me want to throw a brick in both of their faces.

have no idea whether I should post this comment, because it’s more for your benefit than for your father’s, but here’s what I really want your father to know. If you think that posting it won’t help, I won’t. But if you want me to throw that brick right about now… I will do it with a smile.

***
note: I edited this for bricks. My interest is not to hurt my father, even as much as he’s hurt me.
If any who read this CAN contact her, please let her know that I’ve posted this. I WANT her to know that there are some people in this world that CAN and do survive her “punishments” and do quite well, at that!

I would wish that people like you could never have children if I hadn’t witnessed firsthand that Crystal turned out a more graceful, beautiful, and loving woman than any of you could have taught her to be. I don’t know where she got it. It wasn’t from the kind of person who would post this trash about his own child.

ANONYMOUS Friend (not anonymous to ME, that is…):

Dear God!

Okay … first of all … this is a more than a little embarrassing, but remember when I told you that I was getting into arguments with internet assholes for no reason at all? Well, um, one of them was your brother (his blog is kind of a train wreck, and every so often I would go back and look, and eventually I “had” to respond, and it snowballed from there.) I say this because I can definitively say … that he is a NARCISSISTIC PSYCHO. He is NOT a good person, he is NOT in touch with reality, he is cruel, he is manipulative, and he makes shit up as he goes along to insulate himself from the knowledge of his own ignorance. He’s an asshole. Seriously. He did a very good job of hiding that part of himself in his comments on your blog, manipulating your friends int he hopes that they would view him as gentle, thoughtful, apologetic, self-analytical, and, most of all, victimized … but after a few go-rounds with him (pretty much none of which he actually allowed to be published on his site), I most definitely validate every word in every rant you’ve ever written about him (Btw … just in case you go to check it out - I brought up the Jewish thing because it seems to evoke some kind of weird automatic deference in the more psycho brand of Christians, so I thought it would be a line of argument that would break through with him - not cuz I actually think we’re better than anyone or anything :-).)

As for your - ahem - FATHER:

No father writes like that. No father would try to humiliate his own daughter, or engage in that kind of namecalling. No parent would judge a TEENAGER for having a few bouts of oppositional defiance every now and again - for Christ’s sake, it’s called BEING A TEENAGER. Seriously - if that’s the best he can do for assassinating your childhood character, he ain’t even bothering to hide his self-centered laziness. I’ve come across so many stories about parents’ responses to mentally challenged or mentally ill or addicted children - kids who were five hundred thousand times worse than you or I - and the general assumption of all of them is that the kids might be difficult, but they NEVER stop caring about them they NEVER stop loving them, and THEY NEVER STOP REACHING OUT TO THEM. They ALWAYS try to understand, to reach them on their level, to figure out what’s going on behind the difficult behavior. Seriously. Pretty much without exception. It’s what parents do. Now, some kids might be SO bad that they strain those bonds to the breaking point, but from what I can tell the vast majority of parents would still love their kids even if they were serial murderers - and they would still see the best in them, always. And they’d always do what they could for them, and be there for them if they’re able (it can get complicated if the kid has a drug addiction, etc., but the basic emotions remain the same). It’s what being a parent means. And I don’t care what you did as a teenager or what you do now: you have done NOTHING to even come CLOSE to warranting this sort of behavior from ANYONE, much less a PARENT. (Sorry, this has got me feeling a little capslocky.)

Seriously -

ask a “sane” parent you know. Show them your dad’s blog. Particularly that your dad doesn’t actually give any evidence of any of these supposedly horrible things you’ve done, he simply comes off as nothing more than a whiny, shallow, bastard. Definitely NOT as a parent. The only thing person who looks bad in that blog is HIM. He looks like a fucking idiot, really.

Just as a thought experiment, imagine that the very worst things he’s writing about you are true (they’re NOT NOT NOT FUCKING NOT, and as someone whose parents constantly called her “nuts” and “bizarre,” they REALLY FUCKING PISS ME OFF, but just as a hypothetical.) If I happened to come across a blog like that, and didn’t know the first thing about you or the situation, my first reaction (if it wasn’t that the person was thoroughly justified in distancing herself from people who would so casually treat her like that and call her names like that, which it probably would be), might be that you had obviously undergone some sort of major thought transformation - perhaps, say, joined a cult (the reality, of course, is that you’ve gotten OUT of one - well, two, actually - the church one and your family one - I’ve been doing some research the last few days, and as it turns out, cults can be as small as a family, or even a couple. And they primarily use shame as a means of thought-policing.)

Now, say your behavior really was that alarming and sudden, and there WAS concern that perhaps you were having some sort of mental breakdown or joined a cult. Go take a look at some of the family testimonies on the web that have been written by parents of children who were mentally ill, or who had been sucked in by a cult. How do they feel? How do they behave? Do they call their kids “nuts” and “bizarre” and insult them publicly? Um, no - they do everything humanly possible to reach them, to help them, to support them, to LOVE them.

I think if you showed any one of those parents what your father wrote, they would be nothing less than horrified, and see him pretty much as a monster - a petulant, childish monster - and, given the complete absence of empathy and the fact that the substance of his complaints is essentially that you have the audacity to get angry at and/or disagree with your family members, be “argumentative,” and “turn against God,” I’d wager that they’d probably see him as the type to actually LEAD one of those cults.

Sorry if I’ve gone too far here. I think that touched a bit of a nerve.

I know it’s hard to pull yourself out of the kind of swirling vertigo that something like this can induce, but try, TRY, as an exercise, to view this through other eyes. Take on roles. How would you see something like this if, say, you were … (insert scenario or identity here). Take a bird’s-eye view. Soar above it. See the landscape. Feel every ounce of the compassion that it generates for yourself, even if it only starts as role-played compassion that you feel while pretending to be someone else. (Does that make any sense?)

Friend:

Honestly, with the typo and the ranting, if I had been pointed to that entry by anyone else, I’d say it was some sick troll prank.

I don’t think he wants anything to do with you either. Sad really, but it’s hard to unburn bridges. Best to make your own life better and let others think what others think.

Friend:

Where to start…

I thought about writing a comment on his journal, but he’s not worth it.

Honestly, if he has any question why you appear confused and angry, all he’d really have to do is re-read his entry. It demonstrates his lack of understanding pretty thoroughly. It would only take a small fraction of this bullshit during teenage years to foster major anger and confusion for the rest of your life. AND, I was there; when he HAD anything to do with you, this crap was dished out in no small doses.

I’ve always had a problem with your father, and yes, it’s because of the incident between us that he can’t seem to let go of. But the real reason that bothered me so much is that he was attempting to cut off your lines to all your friends. That form of isolation is abuse, and he attempted to hide it as something that “I did wrong.” It was the first time I saw the side of your father that you had to deal with far too often.

All I can say is, he’s not worth it. Talk it out, spank the inner moppet, etc; but, he doesn’t deserve your reaching out. Don’t feel at all guilty for abandoning him. Since he’s made it clear you’re not worth the energy it takes to be a father, he doesn’t deserve a true connection with his daughter.

Maybe I have overstepped my bounds, and I’m really sorry for that. It just really pisses me off the way he pretends like his actions shouldn’t have any consequences.

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Just to note, I may add more later. I am waiting for permission from various commenters. If one of these comments is yours, feel free to claim it if you feel comfortable doing so.

All my love,

Crystal