Okay, so I kept telling you that I was gonna write another intense entry... I don't know if this is going to be it or not. I'm feeling extremely detatched at the moment, so this may not be any great thing at all. I might just be prattling on and on about absolutely nothing of value. But, since when is that anything new?

I go back tomorrow to the old house. I will finish my room. I know this because I refuse to spend yet another day working on it. I won't shampoo the carpets, but I will get everything done in there. All the trash will be bagged and all the junk and crap that I don't absolutely need will be tossed out.

And why? Because I'm not ever going to allow myself to do this again. Not ever. I refuse, absolutely refuse to ever, ever, ever live in such absolute filth. I refuse to let my life deteriorate so much that I would rather step over a pile of crap on the floor, than breathe deeply.

That might not make any sense to you, but it makes sense to me.

Part of the reason for this decision... I have lived with my step-father since I was four. My attitude and methods of living are almost carbon copies of his. No lie. It's extremely pathetic. I share no blood with this man, but I am so much like him that a person seeing the DNA evidence would swear in court that we were actually blood-related.

We are so very similar.

My father is a hoarder. He holds on to things not because they have actual value, but because he will not let anyone else touch his stuff. Because it's HIS, damn it, and he wasn't allowed to have stuff when he was a kid. Yadda yadda yadda.

I'm not here to get into my father's psyche. I'm here to get into mine. To dive into my own head and pull out the morsel of truth which will allow me to pass on to the next level.

Karen was talking about obsessive personalities. She was talking about how she spent all day playing a specific game, not because she liked it, but because she had to get to the next level.

Well, that's the way I am about my life sometimes. When I can get my head out of my ass long enough to realize that I MUST make a change, I get this fierce need to do it. It's like a deadline to me. I"ve always worked best under a deadline. If I had six weeks to accomplish a specific amount of work, I would wait until the last week and do it all, staying up all night. I would just barely squeek in under deadline.

I want to change that about me. But not yet. Right now I have other fish to fry. *chuckles faintly*

Regardless, the focus of this specific entry... My psyche and my father's role in my life...

I realized tonight that I don't have a father. Perhaps I should say I don't have a Dad. Cause he isn't one. Bill, my step dad, is a nice guy much of the time, but that's when he's gone most of the time. He's severely bi-polar. When he's manic, he's a great man and fun to be with. But when he's depressed, he's lower than low. And everyone knows it too.

He doesn't just get depressed, he gets really nasty. He has that passive/aggressive thing down to a T and he just... he's really good at being an asshole when he wants to be.

Dad was my father, but I wasn't his daughter.

Dad was married before he got hitched to my mom. He had two kids with his first wife. And, he loved his first wife so very much. He was so completely in love with her. And I know that, because he talks about her a lot. Not as much in the past few years, but I figure that's because I just don't see him that much anymore.

Oh, we still live in the same house (except for this recent year where he stayed in his own apartment)

--- okay, for clarification... mom and dad were never seperated, they didn't live in different abodes because their marriage was rocky. They lived in seperate homes because my father's lifestyle is so completely chaotic that the area we were residing in was simply too small.---

Anyway, for the past four years or so... actually the pattern started before I got married and subsequently divorced, but that's gonna be explained later. I think. *rolls her eyes* Please, hang on, I"m trying to do this as clearly as possible.

For the past four years, since the wreck, I've been living with the 'rents again. Whenever dad's pissy, I leave the room. Hell, I was battling my own demons, I didn't need his too. But, I would hibernate in my room. Almost continually.

So, even though we lived under the same roof, I didn't see him. I didn't often talk to him. I didn't really care. I was still in a state of non-caring. It wasn't apathy or ambivilance, really. It was non-caring. I just was completely detached. I didn't listen, hear, feel, think... none of that.

It was a coping mechanism I learned at the hand of my father. I didn't know that then. Hell, I didn't really accept it until tonight. But I learned it from him. Whenever something bad happened, Dad would completely close off, and remain so.

That's what I did. And each time some new thing came along... each time I chose to bare a little of my soul in the hopes that this time it wouldn't be crushed into a million pieces... I was crushed again.

So, I just stopped alltogether. I stopped thinking, I stopped feeling, I stopped caring. Or rather, I stopped allowing myself to care. I still felt inside, but the part of me that was still alive was burried so deep I couldn't feel it on a conscious level.

You know, there are many people out there who say that everyone dreams whether they remember it or not. I don't agree. When I slept, I was gone, I wasn't there. OF course, when I was awake I wasn't there either. But still... when I was asleep, I didn't dream.

Duncan watched me one night. He was concerned because there would be periods of time when I would simply stop breathing, or so he thought. He watched me while I was sleeping. I laid there, completely still. I didn't move at all. There was no eye movement... the whole rapid eye movement part of sleep was non-existant. He found out that it wasn't that I stopped breathing, but that I was breathing so slowly that he couldn't hear it.

He even pressed his ear to my nose and mouth, to see if he could hear me breathing... He couldn't. But he could feel my breath. He was very, very concerned about that. He talked with me about it a few times. He said that it was really earie and totally unnatural. He said that if he hadn't felt my breath, he would have sworn I were dead.

It's possible that I dreamt during those nights, but I highly doubt it. In my opinion a dream is the sign of an active mind. I definately did not have an active mind. I didn't have an active anything.

Regardless... back to the way my father fits into this mess.

Starting at about the time I was maybe 8 or so, Dad was getting really, really nasty. When we would eat dinner together, the four of us, Dad would pick on Dan and me. It wasn't some teasing-gone-too-far kind of thing, it was picking. The way a ten year old boy will pick on kids a little younger than he is because he wants the attention they're getting.

He loved mom. He put up with the kids cause we were her baggage. But we were competition. We weren't HIS kids. His kids had been stolen from him (his take on it) by their mother who ran off with some asshole. She was involved in a series of one-night-stands and marriages. Hell, I think she's been married more times than everyone else in my bizarre and twisted family... combined.

However, she is not the point either.

So, Dad was jealous of us. Mom would give us attention. And she would give me attention because she loved me. And Dad hated that. I don't think he hated it on a conscious level. AT least I hope it wasn't on a conscious level. I want to think that he has behaved the way he does because of the way he himself was raised.

But... fuck, that's beside the point too. Hell, three quarters of this shit is beside the point.

Do I have a bottom line without all the damned side story and explanation?

I don't have a father. For whatever reasons (oh yeah, I'll probably get into this on another day, I'm just extremely tired of the subject right now). I just... There is a father figure in my life and it's nice to have that when I need protection or when I need someone to move something heavy.

But... *shrugs*

I don't have a dad. And I haven't had a dad since I was about a year old. And hell, the memories of my biological father before the age of 16 are nill.

So...

To move forward from here and no longer be limited by past demons...

I don't have a father. I have a room mate who thinks he has the right to boss me around like a kid. I'm 31.

I need to be respectful of him, but I don't have to treat him like he's my father. Because HE removed himself from that role long ago.

there was a time when he tried to be a father. But that ended around 79.

I live with a roommate who is a crotchety old man. Sometimes he's a nice guy and sometimes he gives presents. He acts like an alcoholic still. And, most likely, I should get involved in another ACOA group. I think the meetings would be very helpful to me now.

I"ve been through them before... but I didn't really pay much attention... I wasn't "adult" enough to understand it. It was something I was doing because it was somewhere to go where I didn't have to be with my father.

Bottom line?

I don't think I can come up with a bottom line. This is something I have to work on for a while.

But, I'll start with an ACOA group (that's Adult Children of Alcoholics, by the by) and start looking at my father as he truly is. A crotchety old man.

When he gives me ultimatums, I simply say, "Oh, I understand." Then, I do whatever I want to anyway. That's the way he deals with Mom. He told me so. When he gives me commands, I simply say, "Oh, I hear you." And either leave the room, or continue doing what I was doing before.

I will not let his demons become my own again. Not ever again. And, I will learn to open up again. Though that terrifies the shit out of me.

I don't know how you people do it. I don't know how you go through life opening yourselves. I don't know how you... *shrugs* I don't know how I'm going to do that.

I don't know how to trust.

I am so fucking scared.

And I hate being scared because it seems so very weak to me. And weakness simply can not be tollerated.

And yes, that is an echo of my father's attitude.

Every single time you hear me talk about how I will not cry... how I can not cry... how I can not show weakness... Those are echoes of my father's spirit.

I refuse to wear his spirit any longer.

I am an adult.

I don't have to wait until he says I'm grown up. I don't have to wait for him to okay my existance.

I don't have to wait for him to be proud of me. I have to be proud of me. I have to be happy in who and what I am. His opinion simply doesn't matter.

When my counselor told me those things three years ago, I thought he was full of shit.

He was right.

Bob Pengrie, you were right. I"m sorry I didn't trust you.

This entry was finished at 10:30p. I now have 50 minutes to come up with two more entries in order to make it 8 entries in 24 hours. *smirks*