I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, and all that. But to truly understand, and to help myself, I have to understand. I have to understand him, I have to understand why we had the issues we did, why we argued so much, how it affected me then and now, etc. I can't work through those issues without understanding and accepting them. And to do that, I have to look back, because that's all I have now. Its a part of who he was, a part that really affected me, and if I can deal with it now then it'll make things easier in the long run, as well as I don't want to live hating him. I'm not trying to rant about him, or continue hating on him. I'm trying to understand this. At another point, perhaps i'll talk about his good qualities and the positive things he taught me, good memories, etc.
I think the biggest thing that got to me was the constant invalidation. I was just overreacting, being "a little snowflake", spoiled, etc. What I felt didn't matter because it wasn't the way he felt, or he honestly couldn't empathize or understand it. If it didnt fit in his world, then it couldn't be right. Riding was "just a hobby " and didnt matter, because thats all he could see it as. If I found something upsetting, I was just being a teenage girl and I had no reason to be upset. Unless,of course, it upset him, but he didn't really show his emotion anyways. If he said something that I found overly harsh or hurtful, it didn't matter, I shouldn't take offence, and there was a lot of very cold, sarcastic remarks there.
The other thing that bothered me most, was his "my way or the highway" attitude. It had to be done his way. Everything did. There was very little compromise unless he felt he had to. The other thing was his constant "the end justifies the means" belief. He didn't seem to care what he said, or how harsh or hurtful something was, so long as it got the results he wanted, whether it be good grades, chores to get done, me to stop arguing with him, whatever.
I believe this to be a combination of his personality, how he was raised, and how he learned to be [As are almost all things]. He has difficulty understanding others that are so different than him, and although we are alike in many ways, we are also radically different. He honestly has troubles empathizing and understanding. He was raised without a lot of guidance. My grandma worked a full time job, and wasn't home much. My grandpa apparently was much like him when he was younger, quite strict, it had to be done his way. And as he got older [I believe] my dad learned to be more reserved and keep himself more inward, with his emotions in check, partially because he's a male, but also because he was in so much pain, so much of the time. He went through his own depression and his medical issues caused him a huge amount of physical pain.
And I can't blame him for all of this. I'm exeedingly stubborn myself, and I don't like to compromise, either. I like to have my way. And he just managed to push all of my buttons. And when pushed, i've found, I react in ways very similar to him [Or, at least, I used to, I don't know about now]. So two of us, fighting? Not a good combination.
I've tried to put together a rough timeline of my behaviour towards this. My sense of time is completely fucked, so it may not be completely accurate. But for these purposes, it's good enough.
I started fighting with him fairly regularly when I was about 10 or 11. By 12/13, there was a lot of crying, hiding up in my room, screaming matches, and power struggles.
Ages 13-15, I worked on hating him. More screaming matches, less crying. More shutting down and blocking him off. I built up a shield because I couldn't take getting hurt by him all the time. I was determined to hate him. It was around this time that I discovered that I could numb out instead of cry, because crying is vulnerable and helpless, and numbing is like a wall. And it's hard to break through a wall. At around 14 was also the age where I started falling into my depression, though it was somewhat seasonal, and not that bad. It didnt get really bad until I was 15, and in that time, I also started to self-harm, as well as other habits, some that have stuck, some haven't.
At 15 I also found out how sick he was, tried to get along, failed, still argued with him, still screamed, still cried, still screamed. And then Dad started dying.
It's interesting. His behaviour never changed over time. Only mine.
As time went on, I ended up not bothering trying to express myself to him. Minimal contact, I wouldn't share anything with him unless I had to. Sure if he pushed me and I got frustrated enough i'd lose it and start screaming, but generally, I kept it inside more. I've always done that, but not as much. I just gave up on trying to get him to understand, or to give a little.
At first i'd just scream at him and cry and get upset. Then I developed a longer fuse - it took a lot more for me to freak, but when I did, i'd blow. By 14/15 [end of 14 on] I got quite good at expressing myself in such a way that wasn't whining, that was less "YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND YOU DONT EVEN TRY WTF!!!" and more "I really hate it when you say that, I don't feel like you understand, i'm trying to think of a way for this to work." But his behaviour didn't change when I stopped "being so emotional", as I thought/hoped it would - I thought if I could be clear and calm and not lose it, it would help, but he still was unable to understand and wouldn't give unless he thought he had to to get what he wanted.
So I stopped even saying anything. If he pushed me to the point of about to blow, i'd just shut down and ignore him, completely stonewall him, or even just leave the room and go up to my room and read a book and listen to angry music. Eventually as I got less and less able to cope and I got worse in other ways, that changed to leave and cut/burn/bruise, but, I still did the shut down and shut him off thing. Eventually I didn't even cry.
[I used to cry a lot. I was a very sensitive child. At a fairly young age, Dad noticed this, and began to try to get me to have a "thicker skin" so I wouldn't get emotionally murdered by the people at school. To be honest, it somewhat worked. Not that things that were said didn't affect me, because, they did. But it didn't make me miserable, it didn't make me break down and cry, and it didn't make me whine, not anymore. As much as it may have contributed to my issues now, I still have to thank him for that.]
It's also interesting to see how my brothers reacted to my Dad. Although they both went with Mom when they seperated, both brothers still had quite a bit of contact with him. Dad and Brother H's [who is a LOT like me] relationship wasn't bad, because Dad and him worked it out so that he ended up treating him more as a friend and as an adult, than a son. Brother R and him argued constantly and then R cut off all contact with him for 4 years. And he's falling into the same patterns of behaviour as Dad, just, with less experience and knowledge [And I want to say intelligence, but, I don't know that that's true and it's unfair to say] behind it, which just makes him come across as a douche on a power trip. -.-
Another thing is, i've always been hard on myself. Maybe not self-hating, but, definitely hard on myself. Always had a NEED for perfection. Both parents, though particularly Dad, always had very high expectations for me. I had to do well in whatever I did. A's in school. Any extracurricular activities I started, I had to finish, and I had to do well in. "Okay" is not good enough. There is still that pressure from Mom, but it's not so much a pressure as a hope that I do well. [She feels stuck, because she believes limited her options by not going to post-secondary education, and thus, ended up with a job that allows us to just get by]
So when you take the pressure I already had on myself, then others' on top of that, you end up with a lot of stress. My method for coping with this? Ignore it. Pretend I don't care. I still do this. The bigger of a deal others try to make something, the more I have to downplay it. At least when it comes to myself. If someone puts too much pressure on me or freaks out at me over something, i'll pretend not to care. If someone makes a big deal out of something [positively or negativeily] I have to downplay it. I've always done this. It drove Dad mental, because he thought I honestly didn't care about anything.
Another part of all this is the fact hat there isn't a lot of middle ground with my emotions. I never fully learned to numb myself JUST enough to deal, and I lost what ability I had once I started using other methods to cope. I always feel emotion REALLY fucking strongly, or not at all. There isn't really a middle ground. So really, numbing was the ONLY way I could cope, with that going on.
Something someone suggested to me while I was bouncing all these thoughts off of them, was that maybe it has to do with the to do with the whole "bottle it up/ignore it/don't deal with it until I explode" phenomenon. Emotions exist on a continuum. However, if you train yourself to ignore your feelings until they've reached a certain point, you eventually won't notice all the shifts on the continuum, you'll just notice when you pass your threshold point, which is extreme. I was thinking that perhaps that could be right, but, I don't tend to bottle up positive emotion, and yet I still feel it strongly or not at all. Except your amygdala is the centre for all your emotions, not just certain ones. So if you train it to respond a certain way to one emotion, it would make sense for it to respond that way to other ones as well.
I don't know. It seems right, and it makes sense...but something's just, not right, doesn't quite fit. I'll have to think about it, to see what's wrong with this idea. Because it's a good idea. It just doesn't sit right with me, and i've learned to trust myself when something seems off.
Anyone have any ideas/opinions/comments on all of this? Sorry for the massive amount of writing, but, that's what you get when you read my blog, haha. I'd appreciate any thought out feedback sent to my gmail, or to my deviantart if you don't have it [in a note]. Thanks guys. :]
And yes, 2 AM is the perfect time to be thinking about all this sort of stuff. You people without sleep issues don't know what you're missing xD
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