Yesterday, Dr. Dragonfly and I just talked about the week before and whether or not I had given any thought to what had happened. I really hadn’t because my clusters were so bad. We started talking about the resentment piece that was so prominent last week centered around my heart with the rage and anger streaming off of it. Talking with her is different. She is very careful with her words and doesn’t suggest interpretation. She leaves the interpretation to me. Sometimes she’ll help me fill in details when I’m stuck, but she doesn’t interpret. If I ask her a question, she’ll explain or give examples not related to my case.
This time, as we were talking, I noticed a new piece had entered into the conversation. We weren’t talking about how my body felt anymore. We were addressing the actual emotion and how it related to my father. If you remember, last week she had me strangle him (pillow) and at the last minute I let go because I felt that he should suffer and feel the pain he had inflicted on everyone else. This week, the was a confusion piece that asked me why? why do you even care? Why do you harbor such resentment for someone you don’t even care about? What’s the rage and anger about? You already know what you’re going to do with him if Mom dies first or if his dementia gets out of hand. He’s cruel, abusive, mean, overbearing piece of shit. Why do you care? Why does this resentment have such a major role?
“What’s your plan?” Dr. Dragonfly asked. There’s a specific home in Kenton that I’ll put him in. The Home is on one side of the street and a cemetery is on the other side of the street. The message is, one day soon, you’ll be there. Every time he looks out that window, he’ll get that message. I won’t call. I won’t visit.
“So, returning to Ohio is a stressor?” She asked, probing a little deeper. “How many days do you spend in Ohio when you go back?” Three or four, beyond that all of the horrible memories of everything that happened to me there come back to me like a flood and I can’t get out of there fast enough. “Just your dad?” No, my dad, school, church, everything that’s wrong with small town ‘murica.
“Is your dad still combative with you now?” Yes. He still baits me into different kinds of arguments. I avoid them as much as possible until it becomes unbearable and then I shut him down. He’ll get into arguments with Mom over nothing and I’ve told him to shut the fuck up bc I didn’t travel 300 miles to listen to him argue over nothing. He’s tried to get physically aggressive with me and I’ve told him to make the first punch a good one bc my finger is on my emergency call button and I have no trouble putting his ass in jail for domestic battery. Even when he’s in my home, he want to argue and shit. I’ve had to tell him to calm the fuck down. You’re in my house, you play by my rules. He went over to the door. I just told him good. Take a walk. You’ll turn right or left and get to an intersection and won’t have a clue where you are. You don’t have a cellphone and no one knows my name. We have privacy in a city. By the time the police figure out where you’re supposed to be, it will be time for you to go home.
“So, basically, you’d like to keep a close relationship with your mother, but your father is there and you don’t want to deal with him. If your father weren’t there, would you visit more often?” Yes. My mother and I get along. She’s intelligent. My father isn’t so he makes up for it in being mean and aggressive. Mom likes it when I’m home. She has someone to talk to and eat different things with. I’d go home a lot more if it weren’t for her. (an now the clusters-flying doesn’t do much for them either)
“What do you think will happen when he dies?” If mom is still alive, I’ll go back out of respect to her. If she’s not, I’ll stay right where I am. I really don’t care. He was just another person who lived in the house that was really unpleasant. I was never good enough, smart enough, tried hard enough, etc. for him. I was 21 and had just gotten back from a year abroad in Barcelona when he finally told me that he loved me and was proud of me. I just looked at him and said, thanks, but it’s too little and too late. Where were you when I was 8? and left it like that.
cazandoconejos 