The Dream

Blog post 7

The Dream

Last night I dreamt that I saw my parents and a long dead uncle and aunt. We must have been at a family reunion or something. We were at some sort of resort. I saw my, long dead, aunt and uncle and was so happy to see them. I hugged them both, with joy. I was both happy and surprised to see them. I don’t know if this matters, but this uncle in my dream is my father’s brother.

My father, mother and I were sitting in a room. It kind of looked like a big living room. I think at times it resembled the living room at a house that we had lived in years ago. Other times it was more rustic, and resembled a place that we had had a family reunion at once. We were each sitting in straight chairs a several feet apart from each other.

Anyway, my father was asking me why I had cut him out of my life, and he wouldn’t let up. My mother was parroting him, telling me to tell him.

My mother has been dead for over two years. This dream was full of ghosts.

I said to my mother, “But I told you already. You know!”

I was desperate and very upset. I just wanted this interrogation to stop.

My mother was, in life, not in a position of power to deal with my father. She was dominated by him, also, as she was dependent upon him. She was a homemaker, but more than that, she didn’t know how to manage money or pay a bill. I’m sure my father had her right where he wanted her in many ways.

In the dream, she backed up my father, demanding that I “tell him.” She said that I owed him an explanation for my behavior.

My father continued to badger me for an explanation and I finally had had enough. I blurted out, “You molested me.”

He laughed.

I went on to describe what he had done to me, to him. I said it with conviction.

He countered with, “We were just playing. You are making a big deal out of nothing.”

He said some more things along those lines, but the dream is fading. But basically, he denied and blamed me for “misinterpreting.”

When the laughing and denial didn’t work, he cried. I didn’t love him. I was ungrateful. He hoped I’d get some help with my problem. (Meaning that I was imagining things.)

I told him that his was exactly why I hadn’t talked to him about it.

And this is why I haven’t talked to him about it. I really think that he believes he’s done nothing wrong, that he’s the victim. I think he’s actually that deluded. He thinks he’s entitled to do whatever he wants to women and girls, that they are just there to serve him, and other men. I think he truly believes that women don’t matter, that we’re not fully human. It’s probably how he lives with himself.

Pushback

Blog post 6

Pushback

In quick succession after not seeing my father for Christmas, I ignored his invitation to attend church with him, where the church would be honoring him for his ninetieth birthday, and then I didn’t go to his birthday party at his house that he threw for himself, and I threw away the card that he sent me to celebrate the day that I was adopted as an infant without even opening it. I’ve never wanted to celebrate that day.

The problem was, he kept calling me, even though his numbers were blocked on my phone. Unfortunately, even though he was blocked, his messages would show up in my messages anyway. The phone just didn’t ring. And since I wasn’t responding to his phone calls and I had him blocked on all social media, he resorted to a method that couldn’t be ignored: The United States Postal Service.

I’m sure by this time he knew I was shunning him. By avoiding all of these occasions that were important to him, I’d made it obvious. So he ramped it up with a weekly phone call that I would see transcribed in my messages and cards and letters. He sent a card for Christmas a bit after Christmas. Then he sent a birthday card. The only reason that I opened them was because if they contained any money, I planned to donate it to the Rape Crisis Center. The Christmas card was just a card, but the birthday card contained a letter. I read it once and threw it away. He whined about me shunning him, portrayed himself as loving, and basically accused me of being hateful. I went into a bit of an emotional tailspin, not from the things he said, but him contacting me when I didn’t want him to, brought up the old feelings of him touching me when I didn’t want him to. It’s like he was forcing his unwanted presence upon me.

I threw the “Happy Adoption” card away unopened and was proud of myself for doing that.

Then a week or so later, I got a thick #10 envelope in the mail from him and my curiosity got the best of me.

Keep in mind, that this was, ironically, far more contact than I would have had with my father when I was “in contact” with him. I would only see him a few times a year and now he’s pestering me weekly or so. So much for “no contact.” But up to this point, I’d really just frozen him out.

The thick envelope contained a letter explaining that he was going to see a psychologist and he wanted me to come. He wanted to work out “our problem.” And he sent several pages of computer print outs about the psychologist. I was like, what the Hell?

But I also wasn’t going to bite on his bullshit.

I’d been to counseling with him and it was him lecturing me and focusing on how disappointing I was and ungrateful and rotten. I was not the kid he ordered from the adoption agency. I’d seen this movie before and I know how it plays out.

It’s not my job to persuade my father that he abused me. I’ve told him before and he had the chance to take responsibility and he blamed me. I’m done with that.

It’s not my job to help my father heal. He can do that without me. Or not. It’s up to him.

In the letter, he also talked about how upset he was at me shunning him at his birthday. He has no idea that the gift I gave him for his birthday was not calling the church and letting them know the sort of man they were honoring. Such irony. I had gone so far as to look up the church’s phone number, but didn’t call. It just felt too vindictive.

So it became clear that he wasn’t going to stop contacting me and I was going to have to tell him to stop contacting me. I had been chewing on this for a while and finally realized that it had to be done. That I had to do it.

The last line of the birthday card he sent me said, “Practice love, not hate.” Inspired by that, I sent this note:

The most loving thing you can do for me is leave me alone. Please stop contacting me.

I don’t need to give him any other explanation. I’m done telling him how I feel. I don’t want to open myself to being vulnerable to him. There is a wall between us and I put it there and I want it there.

I hated my childhood and that feeling of powerlessness. I remember that I couldn’t wait to become an adult so that I could get out of my house and have some control over myself and what happened to me. This is me taking control of myself and taking my power back.

It’s not easy.

I knew how long it would take for a mailed letter to get to my dad’s house and I started checking my phone for messages, although none have come yet. Nor any mail. But I’m not convinced that none will.

There is another outcome that I fear. I’m afraid that he’ll kill himself. A close family member of his killed themselves out of anger and mental illness, and I wouldn’t put it past him. I fear the phone ringing and a message from my brother saying that dad’s dead. It just wouldn’t surprise me. I don’t want that to happen but it’s not my responsibility to prevent it, either.

I just want him to leave me alone, undisturbed, to live my life in peace.

Telling Others

Blog post 3

Once I realized what my father had done to me, and that I couldn’t be around him anymore, I was going to have to tell some people, and I dreaded that. I was so used to not being believed, to not being taken seriously, and to being blamed, that I thought nobody would believe me. I thought they would think I was crazy. I thought they would think I was mean.

My daughter was one of the first people that I told. She was home for Christmas and so she’d certainly notice that I was upset and also that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.

The first thing I told her was that I had decided that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas. Her reaction: “Thank God. Seeing him is never pleasant.”

Over the years, she’d grown to just see him out of obligation. I’d never left her alone with him, and he creeped her out with his comments about her being “pretty” and always asking her if she had a boyfriend. She was worth more than that and she knew it.

Then I told her that it was because he’d molested me when I was a child and I just couldn’t see him anymore.

“Well now it all makes sense,” she said.

I asked her to explain.

“Remember that time you came home and found me in the bathtub and Grandpa was there and I had knocked my tooth out and you weren’t upset that I had knocked my tooth out but you were very upset. I could never figure out why. Now it all makes sense.”

Oh my God, yes.

When my daughter was about four years old, she had jumped down the stairs and knocked one tooth loose and the other out. The dentist had said that the other one would probably not last. About a week later, I had left my daughter with both of my parents, not thinking that anything like this could happen, as she didn’t need a bath and my father always left that to my mom anyway. I came home to find my naked daughter crying in the tub, and my father with her, having knocked her other tooth out the rest of the way. It was true, I was very upset, but not about the tooth. I was upset at finding my naked daughter with my father. Even I was surprised at my reaction. I don’t think I really understood why I was reacting like that. I hid things even from myself.

I was surprised at how vividly my daughter remembered this, and accurately.

Next, I needed to tell my son.

This caused me a great deal of anxiety. My father had spoiled my son and they had been close through the years. My son, obviously, is a boy, and my father showered him with attention and encouragement. In other words, he treated him completely differently from my daughter, and from me. I didn’t want to break his heart. He’d looked up to his grandfather over the years and had had a special relationship with him.

Due to some complicated scheduling circumstances, I ended up telling him over the phone. I had wanted to talk to him in person but it wasn’t going to happen.

So, I told him that I understood that he and his grandfather were close, and I didn’t want to interfere with that relationship. I wasn’t going to ask him to not see him or to change anything, but I wasn’t going to see him anymore, and I told him why. His reply was that he was surprised that he wasn’t more surprised. That as he had gotten older, he said, he’d come to realize that his grandfather was a horrible person who also does good things. And he told me that he was surprised that I’d put up with my father for as long as I had.

I’d say that was an accurate description. That’s one of the things that makes this so confusing. He’s done good things. It would be easy if he were obviously evil all the time. But then he’d never get what he wanted. It was very confusing to me.

I had so little confidence, I’d been manipulated so thoroughly, that I’d expected no one to believe me. Instead they believed me without question. They knew me, and they knew my father, and my story made sense. I told a couple other family members and they also believed me right away. This was a revelation.

I made it through the initial admission to myself that I had been molested, something that I had buried for years. (I didn’t have any new memories, I just realized that the things that my father had done to me were wrong. His assurances that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and his denial had shaken my confidence in my gut feeling.) I’d told some people and found assurance and support. And I’d cut off contact with my father, at least on my end. I felt better and more peaceful than I had in years. It was a start.