By OxDrover
I remember when I was a little kid, driving with my parents, sitting in the back seat sans seatbelt (there were no such things in those days) and leaning over the front seat, repeatedly asking my parents, “Are we there yet?” or “How long til we get there?”
Of course there had been no reasonable way for my parents to convey to me “how long” since I didn’t tell time when I was four, so there was no use saying “one hour” because I wouldn’t be able to comprehend what an “hour” was. Time is sort of fluid anyway, relative to what is going on. If you are bored, an hour is forever. If you are interested in something, an hour is very short. To a bored child in the back seat of a car, the trip seems to take forever with no end in sight. The trip is a price to be paid for arriving at the destination.
When I started the journey toward Healing from my prior experiences with the psychopaths in my life and family, I was in pain. I wanted the journey to be over; I wanted to get to being healed quickly. The journey itself didn’t interest me any more than the passing countryside had interested me when I was riding in the back seat of my parents’ car. I was tired of that trip before it even started. I wanted to be there!
Unlike the smooth ride in the backseat of my parents’ car, which required no effort on my part, this journey to Healing required me to steer and power the vehicle. I had to make sure I didn’t run out of fuel, and that the equipment was in order. Some days my tires went flat and I had to get out and fix them. Other days my emotional radiator boiled over and I sat feeling helpless on the side of the road with smoke boiling out from under my hood. Some days I was simply out of gas with no refueling station anywhere in sight as far as the eye could see.
The road to Healing was a terrible road, with huge potholes that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and sometimes my wheels would hit these potholes. My tires would sink to the axle and I would have to get out and dig and dig until I could get enough dirt pushed under them to get the car out. Other times, the road would be slimed with mud and I would skid into the ditches of despair.
From time to time I would see someone else along the road, and occasionally someone would come along when I needed help the most and offer me a very welcome hand.
I became so tired from this journey that I just wondered if I would ever get there. What I really wanted was someone to come along and offer me a magic carpet so I could just fly over all this terrible barren terrain and I could just get there to Healing!
Often times the signposts along the road were unclear and I wasn’t even sure I was even on the right road. Other times, some prankster must have turned the signs around because I would take a turn, certain I was reading the sign correctly, and wind up down a dead end trail with barely enough room to turn my vehicle around. At times like these I felt so utterly alone and stupid for not being more careful and allowing myself to get off the correct road.
One day when I felt that I just couldn’t go on any longer, that it was too much work to keep my old vehicle going with broken springs that seemed to make each rut, each pot hole, and each rock in the road jar my back teeth loose, I discovered I was no longer on the road alone. I looked around me and I saw other people on the road. Where had they come from? Had they been there before and I was too self absorbed, too weighted down with my own woes, to even notice them? I also noticed that some of these people were riding bicycles, some were on scooters, some were walking. Some of the others on the road were on crutches, or in wheel chairs, and some of these people were even crawling.
I looked around at these people and then back at my old vehicle with its rusting fenders, threadbare tires and leaking radiator, but I realized that it was not so “bad” after all. It might not have been a Cadillac, but I wasn’t having to walk or crawl. I realized there were others who were less fortunate than me. I felt shame in myself for being so self absorbed, for not realizing that I didn’t have it “so bad” after all. I recited the old saying about, “I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.” I thanked God for my old vehicle.
As I restarted my journey I became acquainted with some of my fellow travelers, and we shared our stories, our pains, and our insights. When we would come to a crossroads that seemed confusing, we would help each other, and if one fell down, the others reached out to him to help him up. Having company on the journey made it seem less lonely. Though there was no magic carpet there to whisk me away to the destination of Healing, it was comforting to have company.
Sometimes I would pause and rest a while with a fellow traveler. As we traveled down the road we would meet new travelers, freshly injured, also seeking Healing. Those of us on the road would call to them to join us in the journey, comforting and supporting each other on the way. Sometimes the newly injured would join us, but other times, those bleeding injured souls would wander off the road or fall in to the abyss and no matter how we would call to them, they would not answer and sorrowfully, we would have to move on down the road toward Healing without them.
No matter how far I traveled it never seemed I was any nearer to Healing than before. As I traveled the road, it became smoother and I was becoming stronger from my struggles to climb the hills, cover the hurdles, get out of the pot holes, but I never saw a sign that said “how long ’til we get there.” I never saw a sign that said, “Healing 50 miles.” I began to wonder if I would ever arrive at Healing. I even asked some of my fellow travelers, “Are we there yet? How long ’til we get there?” No one could answer me. No one could tell me “how long before we get there?”
As I traveled and the road became smoother, and there were even stretches of pavement that I could roll across without the jarring rocks and ruts, and I began to enjoy the journey. I would gaze off into the distance and see mountains and vistas of incredible beauty that filled my heart with joy just to behold. I had passed out of the terrible salt flats of hell and reached a place where there was beauty and joy, and the road was smoother. Even my old vehicle started to run better and give me less trouble, and I found refueling stations on a regular basis and quit forgetting to check the oil and tire pressure, so I didn’t have flats and other problems so often any more.
Along the road I had also seen some changes and growth in my traveling partners. They were becoming stronger and starting to sing as they walked or rode along. Even some of those in wheel chairs were beginning to walk again, and some that had used crutches had thrown them away and were walking straight and strong. It made me happy to see my new friends recovering and getting better and stronger; it made me feel good to feel stronger myself.
At times my new friends and I would talk about our former lives before we started on the Healing road, and sometimes we even missed some of those people we had had to leave behind. Unkind people who had wounded us, yet we loved and missed, but even those memories of our former lives started to change as we sang along the road toward Healing. We started to make new plans and put together new lives.
I would reach milestones from time to time, the milestone of setting boundaries, another one for forgiveness and a milestone for honesty. As I passed each milestone I felt renewed strength and stamina, but I wondered, “When will I get to Healing? When will I be there?”
Then I came to a milestone that said, “Healing is a journey, not a destination.” I realized that there was no end to the Healing Road; it would go on for the rest of my life. It isn’t about getting to some place and being there; it is about enjoying the journey. It is about growth and learning and companionship with others on the same road. It is about comforting others who have fallen, as there were those that comforted you when you fell. It is the shared experiences of seeing the sun shining on the distant mountains, or reassuring each other during a storm. Healing is about life—living life, experiencing life, and sharing life.
Panther – Call the local police and ask for a way to contact her or someone of her caliber.
about the email: print it all off for the police. you don’t actually have to look at them to do that – make sure you do it with the headers open so that the IP address is showing. Again, he has no idea how wrong this could all turn for him. The Germans are rather fastidious about keeping criminals out of their country, and he is engaging in criminal behaviour.
If you need some help with the police or legal system, please ask Donna for my email. As I mentioned I have access to an extensive network in Germany.
the rats are fleeing. or is that fleaing?
oxy – what i loved about that article was the WHOLE tone – everyone, from the reporter to the girls to the coach, et al just treated it like it was the most normal thing in the world.
i hear you about the attack scenarios – i did self defence training and three different martial arts when i was young – but i still love it when girls kick butt. always will. some butt is SO in need of kicking!
panther – hauling this up so you can read my earlier response to you.
Dear Hurtnomore,
I am not sure WHY your dad is required to pay your school fees since you are over 18, but I am glad that he is required to do so and is doing so.
The things he said to you, the beratement and all the demands that you call him every day and all that are UNREASONABLE…he is trying to punish you. A loving father would be GLAD to get his daughter cataract surgery, because otherwise you would be BLIND. What kind of man doesn’t WANT to have his daughter see better?
You must put out of your mind the terrible things he says and focus on school.
Panther is right, you CAN (if you must) provide for yourself and not have any contact with him at all. As long as he is providing some money for your school, HE BELIEVES HE HAS A RIGHT TO CONTROL AND BERATE YOU…and frankly he may have some rights to that…if you fail any classes or whatever along that line, he may be able to get out of paying for your college. Like I said before, most states do not force a parent to pay for college for a child, or to support one over age 18. But if you must, you can support yourself and you can pay for your own college, even if it is one or two classes a semester and takes longer.
Life is NOT fair, and the “golden rule” is that HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES. So if someone is supporting you financially, they usually make the rules. Independence is FREEDOM but it also has responsibility with it. Good luck and work hard in school.
Oxy-I love it-I think I need some help right now in this journey, I think someone is turning the signs around and I don’t want to go down a dead end road.
Hurtnomore-You don’t need his money for school, here what you do. You go have yourself emancipated. I don’t know how a person does it but it shouldn’t be hard to find out. I realize now the government says your parents are responsible for an 18 year old adult, however, if you have yourself emancipated then the government will pay for you, you ought to be able to get a pell grant and perhaps other aide. Check into it.
HurtnoMore,
Just because he is paying for your college and your health insurance does not give him the right to abuse you. IMO, you should continue to take the money he is obligated to pay for you and just ignore him. While you are at school, ignore him. During the summer, go elsewhere.
If you ever do decide to talk to him, THANK HIM for the tuition. Tell him how grateful you are and what a great father he is for doing this. It doesn’t hurt you to pay lipservice to him, as long as you know that this is what you are doing. When dealing with a spath, you have no choice but to act like a spath. Nothing else works.
Get some books from the library about narcissism. One of them is called, “Dealing with the narcissist in your life.”
You have 3 more years to go. You can do it. This is a very good life lesson for you because these people are everywhere and you will continue to run into them whereever you go. Might as well learn the ropes now. I wish I had learned these things when I was your age.
One/Joy: I wrote to Donna and asked her to pass my email addy to you.
hurtnomore and ox and skylar: I agree with ox and skylar, and I actually promote paying your own tuition hurtnomore. I was REALLY stubborn with my jerk of a father with his spath irritation. I am the type that would sooner walk from New York to California on foot rather than put up with an a-hole calling me names the whole ride in their car. That’s just my view.
If I were in your shoes, I’d probably flip him the finger, jump on a train or drive my own car to another state, enroll in college somewhere else where he cannot easily bug me, get financial aid and pell grants, get a job as a waitress, and work full-time while going to school full-time. Wait, that’s exactly what I did do when I was 18! 🙂 Let me tell ya, working a full-time job, going to school full-time, and taking 6 years rather than 4 to finish up my education was WORTH IT because I could tell my father to piss off and ignore his phone calls when he tried to meddle into my life and simultaneously back-stab me while “helping” me at the same time. When you stand on your own two feet, there is nothing they can hang over your head. Ox is right. Independence has a price, but it’s worth every penny. I even tried to have a relationship with him at that point in my life, and even without the strings, he drove me nuts. I eventually just had to tell him goodbye forever. Spaths are apparently notorious for not “getting it” with regards to what their behavior is going to result in. I say this because I think my father loves me in the only way an spath can. His twisted idea of love, I think, is down there somewhere under all that insanity. Maybe something about me being his actual child managed to get into that evil man, but it didn’t matter in the end whether he loved me or not. His sickness drove me away, and this actually means that he worked against his own aims in many ways. He wanted me in his life, but he was too stupid in that classic spath way to understand that his actions were going to make him lose something he actually wanted way down there somewhere. It was really sad to finally let him go.
And, I am now realizing, I didn’t ever fully.
My current disaster didn’t occur in a vacuum. Having an spath father no doubt had something to do with it. Luckily I have finally figured this out.
hurtnomore,
your father’s behavior is meant to dissuade you from college or at least from him having to pay for it. That is his goal.
Whether it is because he is too selfish and greedy to want to help you out, or whether it is a form of ODD in which he doesn’t want to pay because he it was mandated by the authority of a court, it’s hard to say. Probably it’s both.
I’m sure he has other issues related to his narcissism as well.
Your goal is to get through school with the best grades you can and prepared for life as early as possible. So try to figure out ways which make him feel it is in his best interest to assist.
Narcissists value their facade more than anything, so appeal to that. Life is hard enough without making it harder on yourself, especially if you are having problems with your eyesight. You have the courts on your side, so use his money while you need it. You can always pay him back when you have a good job, if you feel like it.
He is threatening to kill himself.
Will he really do it?
I hate this really. I wish I didn’t even care, but I wouldn’t want even a sociopath to commit suicide.
I will ignore him no matter what he says. I just hope he isn’t really going to kill himself.