Just finished sending an email to a friend. He had recently become upset with a mutual friends behaviour towards him. I shall not bother you with all the details as they are not that important, & the relevance of his behaviour will become clear with what I am discussing today.
My friend is really hurt & angry about this person. I will call him, P. He took P into his apartment when he needed a place to stay. P abused his hospitality by introducing his girlfriend into the equation so that she rarely left the place, never paid the rent in full, or on time. When another friend caught P in a local pub buying champagne for another, random woman & gossiping raw innuendoes, my friend finally put his foot down by giving him notice of leave. Naturally with this type, he caused an argument & left leaving a deficit in his rent.
My friend & I recently went out for lunch to discuss this atrocious behaviour of P`s. It was rather shocking for me to learn of Ps bad form. As I had known him for many years, but had never really come across this level of behaviour before, certainly not to the depth that my friend explained, it came as a bolt. This morning I wrote an email, upon reflection of this story, to my friend explaining how I saw things, having a background in Psychology helped me piece together fragments of what he had shared with me & I formed a picture. As I wrote I realised that I was no longer writing about my take on P & his shocking behaviour, but on a rather more poignant & meaningful issue to me, my father. What a double whammy to of realised that Ps issues were exactly that of my fathers, & I could easily see why I had P in my life, & why I had never got too close to him, always being aware of his selfish, immature ways. Never did it occur to me that this was really about my fathers treatment towards me growing up. His decency when I wanted to indulge in something, but his sheer self-hatred would refuse to allow him to encouraging me consistently in that chosen subject. Many times he would simply be unavailable for me, any of us, including my mother. He just never got it that his lack of commitment to us wholeheartedly tore me apart. As though he would rather spend time with those that were less intimate than me, like work colleagues, lovers, anyone that would net need him, people he could keep at arms length. My father could not commit to me, nor could he be sensitive, kind to me, especially as I grew up & tried to function on my own. He was never be able to support me. Leaving me in the lurch & changing his mind without informing me naturally gave way to a lack of confidence & self-respect making me massively vulnerable & without the ability to form healthy attachments. Only recently returning to the workplace have I been able to see how much I have grown & able to adjust to challenging situations.
My father & I stopped talking to each other nearly 3 years ago now. I found him an awful, obstructive & needy influence in my life. A person who would rather go out of his way than to encourage, support or pay for anything that was required of him. A man shabby of values & mean of spirit. Arrogant & insensitive to others needs. I had decided a long time ago that I never liked this man much, although I never was in a place where I could acknowledge this severe emotion, for he would treat my late brother & I, as though we were just his friends, & we suffered emotionally because of it. The fact that my brother died, in part due to my fathers lack of positive or quality interaction with him, will never allow me to bring myself to speak with him again.
As I pulled up the negative aspects of Ps personality, I could see that he, like my father was ultimately very lonely & very sad. Here was a person who could not, would not, bring themselves to appreciate anything of value, but would lavish an immense amount upon those that did not mean much. Like my father leaving us boys for someone that he certainly never knew as intimately as his own family. Although I was relieved to find that discussing P I was not as angry as I thought I was. I guess maturity & the sheer desire to be rid of my fathers negative influence upon my life has given me the incentive to burn through as much of my anger & shock that I can without it killing me too ? This man`s personality has done me so much damage & got so much in my way that I simply had to come away from him.
The fact that I had had a friend such as P in my life shocked me, although it did allow me to feel contentment in feeling that I had moved away from my father & perhaps now could begin the process of letting go of the narcissistic wounding in me, begin a clean slate away from needing my father. His influence has been around me for so long that I needed this shift, this epiphany to happen. I realised whilst writing to my friend that after all the work I have done on myself I was still being plagued by my fathers influence.
While at work I begun to feel immensely empowered by my ability to set my own working boundaries & not be afraid to tell the manager what I thought of him, yet this time I was concerned about losing my job, so just spoke to him with honesty. I deserved this of myself, & felt a lot self-respect re-enter my life because of it. This really did enable me to kick start this programme that has been running in me for a long time, to rid myself of any old unhelpful emotional attachment that has held me back. For too many years this man`s influence upon me has set every standard that I had. He would still be around, in me, even though I have not spoke to him in years. His attachment to me has been feeding off of me for years. This has not been helped by the fact that where I have been through so much pain & I have wanted him to help me, but he has not, I have felt a burning resentment, perhaps jealousy that others have received much from him, but me, his son has not.
Around a year after my brother was killed I remembered him selling up & going to live in Florida. I was gobsmacked at his decision, but in hindsight that is exactly the type of man he is; selfish & conceited. The crashing of his narcissism when my brother died was too much for him & he emigrated, then had a breakdown. I feel no pity for him, for he is a childish man that, like me, has had to learn to cope, with his loss.
I certainly have not been able to bring myself to empathise with him over the loss of my brother. He certainly never did with me, & that is something that really hurts me, even now. When I say that I really do not care, I mean it. Where I have had to learn to live without my beloved brother alone, knowing he was killed like an animal by the side of the road, & my father refused to even pay for his funeral, I can honestly say that I have no pity for the man. The only thing that I have to think about is how this anger toward him affects my life. I do not want to make peace with hi, you see. I enjoy the fact that he cannot see me, speak with me, like I said to my friend about P, life really is better without him. I suppose that it really me, at last, being in control over him. At last I now have control over my father, & that is what this is, he cannot control me physically nor emotionally any longer, for I am now the stronger opponent. As a boy I had a formidable opponent to my freedom,obstructing me from carrying out all the things that I wanted to do. He stopped me from going to a good school, receiving a better education, he took me away from my friends & dumped me off in the wilds of deepest Surrey & then left me there when he chose to leave. For this I have never forgiven him, & it was this area that robbed my brother of his life. In this my mother is completely irrelevant, for she does not matter too me within the context of this situation.
The problem here is, self-harm. I am wise enough to see that all my life I have been suffering from internalised anger, eating me up. It is this suppression, well, oppression really, that has robbed me of living healthier, happier & with joy in my heart. I have lived according to my sheer hatred for that man. While he has got on with his life I have suffered at my own hand. Obstructing goodness, fellowship, belonging. I have stopped a career, love, wealth, all from entering my life never realising that all this anger for him was buried away in my unconscious. I never thought to own it or make it my own. To survive I projected it, analysed it, wrote about it, even seeing studied it at University. I saw a Therapist for many years, all just to try to make sense of my deep unhappiness in life. And all along it was my oppressed feelings for this man that made things so unbearable. Many things that have happened over time have just added to my woe, pressure that has compounded in me making my pain deeper & more hidden from it`s deepest foundation.
So, what does all this mean today ? Does it mean that I can now see where I have been going wrong, & looking at the nice people in my life, move away from pain that has been in me for ever ? Certainly I feel that I have, at last, made a leeway into a healthier approach to how I live my life. For I want to feel again, just as I did before I was dragged off to a place that I did not want to go to as a boy. I love the fact that I am making a success of my life now, away from him, without any of his negative input. I guess the paradox here is that he too would like to see me become successful in my own right, however, I am not completely sure of this. I do want certain things to work out in my favour. I have spent much energy preparing for them to happen, so I do not see any reason why they will not. Even my job at the moment, whilst far from perfect, it is giving me the much needed experience of being in the workplace once again, & earning a regular wage which affords me the little things in life that make life nice. I simply never bothered with such things before. In some way, I am beginning my life again after this most intense of depressions. Beginning work again, meeting new people, seeing the types I used to hang around with, knowing that I am no longer anything like them, for they know repel me when I see them, on the whole things now really are getting better. So it is easy to see that my fathers presence in my life is thinning out now like some bad poison that has been in me ruining my life for far too long. The antidote has been found, it is self-respect, confidence & love. Three immense dynamics that are coming together to form a new, more powerful me, one that can, at last, be the man that I was always meant to be.
It is funny how we do so much sub-consciously, without realising that the influence of such a significant person is still so forceful. Under all the bravado something that we try to run away from, just sits there guiding us without realising it.. I would like to think that the reason this lot has come up today is because I am at last moving away from my anger & trying to process it, so that one day I will be able to see through it clearly.
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