TARGETED TEENS AND 20s: I have found a new pride and fearlessness

Sky,

I see the re-enactment as an effort to take control again. The death of his mother and his father’s will were events he apparently had no control over his environment at all. His pursuit to become a doctor in the first place came then from a need to gain control over death… to prevent people from dying, like his mother. For a normal person that type of control would have been enough.

But he was not normal… and there are too many spath signs in his responses and the serial killings are excessively controlled. So, saving people would not be enough. Plus, a doctor also loses patients, proving over and over that you can’t save everyone. So, he had to gain a greater control over death… by killing people, and having perfect control over the event and the discovery of the deceased.

The taking of little items of no consequence fits serial killer behaviour to the T. They do it to have a keepsake of their moment of ultimate control over life and death, to turn the act into a possession.

When his sister got the whole inheritance, he was cheated out of his birthright. That would make any normal person angry. Was the forged will a symbolical act? Did he really believe he would get away with it? It probably was both. But it sure was an act to do it over in an uber controlled environment.

This reminds me of my father’s history though: my narcistic aunt did it together with my controlling grandfather to my dad. I know how hurt he was by it, but I’m proud of hte decisions he made.

Here’s the long story of my father’s dysfunctional family: It goes back to the early decades of the 20th century. My grandfather had become half an orphan after his mother died. His father remarried and the stepmother apparently was the proverbial evil stepmom. She didn’t want my grandfather around and he was chucked into an orphanage. I don’t know any details from his childhood there, but it was harsh. He worked from his 14 on. He was an intelligent man and worked his way up as a machinist of trains. He married my grandmother who was a seamstress at a clothing factory. Their first child, my aunt, was born at the start of WWII. At the time she was born though, my grandfather was a POW and had to work at a German prisoner work camp. I remember that he still had nightmares of being caught by the Germans when I was a child. The Germans overran the Belgian army in a day. My grandfather got caught in haywire, and that’s how they took him prisoner.

Anyway, when he returned from his POW time to his home, his daughter was already walking and talking. And in that time my grandmother and aunt had developed an unhealthy symbiotic, clingy relationship. Having had no husband around, she had showered all her attention, worries and anxiety onto her daughter, who had grown up the first two years in her life being the ultimate centre of her life. What my aunt wanted, she would get. And then all of a sudden, a grouchy and traumatised man who had known so little love and cuddlyness stepped into the picture. My aunt was scared of him. And my grandmother rejected him as an oaf. He returned fro POW camp to be regarded as the enemy in his own household.

My father was born in ’44, towards the end of the war. My 4 year old aunt was instantly jealous of him. And she was not corrected for her jealous behaviour. My dad was a hyperactive child. And he spent a lot of time being stuck in the shed. From what he told me, he at least felt as a child that he must be bad. And my grandfather would play the big father to mine whenever other people were around, like promising him to buy him new, well fitting shoes, but then as soon as they were private telling him “You don’t expect me to do that, do you?” While my father was treated like the black sheep of the family, my aunt was praised into the sky for being intelligent, etc…

My father was diagnosed with TBC at his 19 and then my grandparents doted over him… alas by keeping him at bed most of the time. Afterwards my father was rejected from the mandatory army tour because of his TBC scars at his lungs. When he was 21 though the relationship between my grandfather and father had soured so much that my father left his home to go live by himself. My grandfather had given him a huge beating, and my father basically packed up his stuff and left, though he still visited his prior home daily for his meals.

My parents met when they were 23 and they married when they were 24. My aunt was going through rough times with her marriage, and by then a totally fixed narcistic figure, created lots of drama at my parents’ wedding. She made such scenes to get attention. My grandparents naturally doted over her and even my father’s sympathy and attention was called for. But my mother took a stand for herself and opened my father’s eyes to what was happening. She made him realize that my aunt was not the perfect angel, that she was not all that bright either, and that a lot of her misfortune was just drama to get attention. My father then took a choice: his real family was my mother and his welcoming in-laws, the rest was just blood kin. He never wanted to subject the love of his life again to the antics of my aunt.

He did keep a cordial relationship with my grandparents. They visited, but at certain times, preferably to avoid my aunt. Her marriage failed, and her ex-husband remarried someone else. And she used it to return to her mother emotionally. Again, my grandparents and especially my grandmother doted on him. It had all been the fault of the ex-husband (and by all accounts, including my mother’s the man was not worth someone crying over). Though my aunt had her own house, she stayed at my grandparents’ most of the time (even though it’s another city). My mother has always seen that as a sign of abnormality. Of course, there’s no crime in finding support with your parents, but when you’re in your 40s you would like to socialise with people who may become friends, instead of only returning to the nest emotionally.

I was born when my parents were 30. My cousin, my aunt’s daughter was 9. I remember how she always sat in my grandmother’s lap, whereas I was never lifted into hers by her. Only recently my father revealed that he had noticed it too and that he had confronted my grandmother about it. She then said that she feared to get too attached to me. She saw such pain in my cousin as she went through the divorce of her parents, that she feared to bond too much with me and worry about me too much. I do remember I noted the discrepancy between the doting on my cousin and myself. I remember wishing she would dote on me that way too. In any regard, as a consequence I never much felt bonded to her. I certainly didn’t hate her, and I now know that she in fact did grow to love me. But of my family, she was the one I was most neutral about. It was a pity, in a way, because she was the sole official grandmother I had. My mother’s mother died a month before I was born. On an emotional level it were my great aunts, from my mother’s side who took on the roles of grandmothers for me.

I loved my grandfather though. He stood up for me in his home. My cousin, who was on the brink of teenhood couldn’t stand me as a toddler, and did petty things to me. My grandfather chasticed her for it. And if my cousin acted jealous, it was understandable… she was a child herself. But even my aunt showed envy over me. I have nothing but antipathic memories of her: a woman in her 30s being jealous over a 3 year old niece? When she was kind to me, it was in a leechy manner. I felt how cold she was inside, and how much of it was but an act.

My grandfather had accumulated some wealth, and my father and grandfather seemed to have a better relationship, while my father as an accountant helped my grandfather with getting the most out of his financial transactions. And my parents had been under the impression that while my grandmother always sided with her daughter, my grandfather sided with me… was a just person with feelings of what was right. They sympathized with him as the man who was always regarded the oaf in his own home, even as an old man, because my aunt was so often there.

And this perception continued, until my grandmother died in her 70s because of her diabetes complications, Where my grandparents used to have a marriage contract where if one of them died, the inheritance would go to the children and the remaining parent would have use over the deceased’s possessions, without the children able to take that away. But shortly before my grandmother died, they had altered the marriage contract into one where the other partner would inherit, and the children only when the last parent died. It made no sense at all, except that my grandfather wished to remain in control. And my grandmother was barely burried when he started with his control games. Some of the stock ownership deeds had disappeared from the vault. And my grandfather gave my father the clear message that unless he did his bidding, he would not see the money.

My father was in his 50s already and chose for his real family instead of my grandfather who suddenly was buddy-buddy with my aunt all the time… a woman who he used to despise, and she used to despise him. I wished to visit him, but only if my aunt was not there. He started to shun me as well.

We learned of his deat through the lawyers. When my parents went to investigate for when he had died, it turned out he was already dead for 3 months. Normally hospitals have the legal plight to alarm ALL of the direct family if someone is dying. But my aunt managed to get hospital staff on her side, and we were never alerted. Then my parents found the death letter sent to all the family and friends of my grandfather. And we were named in it as part of the party to invite them to come to his funeral. LOL, how could we invite anyone to his funeral, when we didn’t even know he was dead? It was the ultimate evidence on how my aunt tried to make my father and his family look like “bad people”. Of course, everyone who received that letter would assume we knew and think ill of us for never showing at the funeral.

Worse, just as with my grandmother, my aunt had him burried with a Catholic mass. While my grandmother could have been called religious, my grandfather never was. He was an atheist and social democrat to the chore. When my grandmother was burried with a mass, we as a family who sat at the front row, never even stood upright during mass, never joined the religious service, including my grandfather… except for my aunt of course.

Anyhow, needless to say my grandfather left the brunt of the inheritance to my aunt. However, at least no parent is able to disown a child. If you have one child, half of the possessions will lawfully go the child. You’re free to designate the other half to whomever you want. If you have two children, then each gets a third, and you can decide what to do with the other third. My grandfather decided to give it to my aunt.

My mother had supposed that my grandfather was at heart a fair man. She had expected him to divide the free one third to his grandchildren, my cousin and I. She had expected though my grandfather would keep what my father would inherit to a minimum. In the end, now she concludes that my grandmother ultimately would have chosen to do the fair deal. That she was in her heart juster than my grandfather was.

My father did put the lawyers on it, to make sure that as much as possible would turn up. And there was an agreement that we would get back the charcoal portrait I once made from my grandfather as a teen. He was very proud of that portrait of his. It was a portrait that is hard to bear to watch though. Through my emotions I used to see a kind man in him towards me. But when I draw a portrait, my more objective unconscous is at work. I can’t see it while I draw, since I’m focused on measuring the facial distances, etc. But when it was finished, you see the face of a harsh man (comparable to Daniel Day Lewis’ expresson in There Will Be Blood). Though he was proud of the portrait, it even shocked my grandfather when first confronted with the image of it. Weirder even, as it used to hang above his couch where he sat in and he grew older, he started to look more and more like his portrait (the Dorian Grey effect). My aunt was also supposed to give a ring from my grandmother to my father, which he wished to give me. The first time she gave him a worthless nothing which surely was not it. The second time she gave him some glaring shiny thing she got from some post-order company as a free gift. He never tried to ask again.

My aunt is nobody we wish to know. My real family has aways been my parents and my mother’s family. I always suspected that after my grandmother died, my grandfather finally saw his chance to gain his daughter’s “love” for the first time in over 50 years. Now, I suspect he may have been more sinister than any of us ever suspected: he hit my father, he pretended to be generous to my father to outsiders, and he might only have been protective over me in his household because my parents were the sole ones who treated him with respect in his own home, so that his position in his household with my narcistic aunt remained in balance. My artistic (more objective) eye in me recognized he was cold inside. And while my grandmother was stupid and basic in her outward favoritism, at least she was in fact a warm woman.

I’m proud of my father, who managed to escape the grasp of hs dysfunctional family. It left some scars. And him and I used to fight lots, whenever he tried to live my life for me and tell me what to do so often. But I know he does that out of concern, worry and love for me. He wishes to spare his child from pain. I just avoid mentioning troubles too much to him, to avoid a dispute over it. And he tries to control his responses when he learns of it first time around. He’s sentimental and can be easiy touched at genuine show of affection. He cried one time after all of this at an intimate Christmass gathering, affirming to my one of my mother’s sisters and her family, that to him they are his true family. He cried two weeks ago according to my mother, when I inscribed myself as a guest on a radio show on music or a band you gotten to know through your parents, called “my father was a rolling stone” (in my case Randy Newman) and had a radio interview over the phone talking about that music connection. And I’m very grateful that in that way, I’ve had an example of human love between my parents.