repost:the trailer park grapevine

Yesterday, it occurred to me, since I go here and there on the net, and post things, I ought to repost here those forum replies which I find most eloquent, important, or whatever.

So, this is my first repost...but since I'm a compulsive editor, it's been modded:

...Interesting, how I can find out more things about my Dad from people I barely know, and therefore don't know whether to believe them or not.

My Dad may or may not have slept with a then 18-year old woman across the street...we do know he pulled the peeping-tom number on her when she was 16 and 17, and swimming in a backyard pool over there.
He confessed to her and a friend of his one night, when very drunk, that he had a son with a mistress when stationed in the Air force in Thailand, and had been sending money until my Mom almost caught him at it.
That little bit of info came out a few years ago...I've been meaning to see about tracking down and verifying that I do have a half-brother.
I can't help him financially right now, but maybe when things get better...and if he wants to emigrate I might be helpful...maybe.

Now today, I was out running the dog...and the slightly off old man down the street was outside...and he decided to talk to me.
He didn't realize whose daughter I was...and when he did...
I didn't realize my Dad had stayed with him.
Now remember-all this stuff isn't stuff I know to be true...but:
When I said that my Dad and I don't talk and don't get along, at all, and I don't know where he is and don't want to know, he told me some things...

Apparently, my Dad had been molested and raped as a child-the old man didn't know who. It messed him up in ways he was never able to deal with. And I am not the least bit surprised.

My Dad was also supposedly raped by a female bodybuilder while working as a cabbie this-not 100% sure I believe. I could see the vulnerability...he's never been very built, and him being...what he is (sex addict), she could have just asked him to screw her silly, and he probably would have agreed to try. Unless he said something that pissed her off about the way she looked. Which...in that case...and he does run off at the mouth... and if she was on steroids...

He's good at pissing people off.

And of couse after he moved to New Orleans and a trio of thugs almost killed him-robbery/murder, only they didn't quite succeed in killing him. He took 17 stab wounds, but was able to crawl for help. Was on life support for a month, but failed to die.

As far as it goes though...what was done to him DOES NOT excuse what he did to me.

But viewing that monster with...well...pity, is something that feels very uncomfortable. He damaged me. I'm not capable of being entirely the person I could have been had I not been so damaged. Potential has been permanently shaved off.
Admittedly, benefits have been added: I'm very tuned in to things, I'm sensitive to emotions, I have more compassion towards most things than I think I would have otherwise...but things I'd like to do I can't because I've been rendered way more physiologically vulnerable to stress. Besides that, I'm likely to have more immune system problems-child sex abuse survivors involved in the Putnam longitudinal study did. I suspect this will also cause me to die younger-because my body's always going to put out more cortisol and have stronger stress reactions than it would have otherwise had.

Anyway...
I survived him by learning to hate him. And since he did so much damage, I learned to hate him very well. Now, feeling anything but hate, loathing, disgust, and a desire to kill him...IS EMOTIONALLY DANGEROUS.

That all dates back to when I was 12, and he was taking me to school-a private school. I wanted to go to private school because I hoped I'd get bullied less there, but I was still getting bullied there, too. My depression-though I didn't know it then, would have been considered clinical.  And as always, my undiagnosed learning disability was making it outrageously miserable to do math homework.

I had made him late to work three times in a row because of the math homework and general reluctance to go to school, so he kicked me before we left the house, and kept slapping at me and screaming the whole way to work.
That particular incident pretty much changed our relationship forever. Because I used it.

I deliberately stopped loving or trusting him, because it hurt too much to do so. Whenever I started feeling warmth, or relaxing around him and talking freely, I would recall The Incident...and I would stop those feelings. I would visualize him slapping and screaming as he drove, me terrified and thinking about opening the door, jumping out onto the freeway at 60 miles an hour. I'd talk to him when I didn't have to, and I'd imagine him kicking me. I'd forget to be wary, and I'd visualize his face contorted in rage.

So I didn't kill myself over shame and disgust at what he did probably, at least in part, by hating him, and by fantasizing about killing him.
So feeling compassion for him??? it feels like handling an emotional nuclear bomb.

But today...that is indeed what I felt the barest whisper of. And it shook me up quite a bit.

The money situation has hit the fan again, that combined with the gender situation and this...and I'm struggling really hard just to maintain. 

I haven't done any cutting yet.  Maybe I ought to, because if it gets rid of this awfulness rattling around in  my head, it would be totally worth it.

I'd like to not need to cut anymore, but when I have these periods of intense unpleasantness going on, they are all that works sometimes to make me feel better.  I've  been on the verge of tears for two days now, my chest just aches, and everything else I have tried so far to comfort myself has either not worked or has actually made me worse.