Blackfish64

Sometimes the financial funk works the other way around. My Aunt Betty and Uncle Neil were wealthy, happy old folks. They had no children, so they doted on their brothers and sisters children. Spoiled them rotten, matter of fact. Those kids were rotten to them. They borrowed money and never paid it back, stole things from their wealthy home, etc. And when in their dotage, they had enough saved for themselves to be cared for in a nursing home and made the mistake of giving power of attorney to the most treacherous little rat of them all, their niece, Mary Ann. She robbed them blind of what was left of their fortune, even walking into the nursing home and stealing their wedding rings off their fingers, telling them it was for safekeeping, so the nurses in the nursing home wouldn't steal them. She sold them and spent the money. They died alone, broken hearted, and ruined, and separated from each other. That same little rat was also keeping a family secret from her oldest brother, my Uncle Tom. She found out many years before Grandma had died, from Grandma, herself (another treacherous rat) that his father wasn't really his father. Grandma had boinked another guy while she was married to Grandpa and got herself preggers. She never told Grandpa that Tom was not his son. Mary Ann told Tom who his real father was and it crushed him to pieces. He was a car salesman who loved his work, but was in a bad way because of a bad economy, struggling to take care of his family, etc. Three days after he learned the news, he suddenly died of a massive heart attack. Now, the little rat who stole all their money and ruined them is pretty much in the same shoes as they were long ago. She has lied to and stolen from everyone under the sun and no one trusts her or wants her around anymore. She tried to commit suicide one day by driving her car out on some thin ice, only the ice didn't break through. She got out of the car and was trying to slide herself under it, obviously trying to get feel-sorry-for-me attention from the onlookers, they later said. Anyway, that old wretch will die alone in a heap somewhere, and no one will care. The last time I saw her, one of the first things that came out of her mouth was to ask to borrow ten thousand dollars. I laughed in her face and left her where I found her. I'd have no problem paying for a sweet old auntie who told me stories and loved me. I don't care if she's broke at all. She could move in with me anytime. But my old auntie, well, she's on her own. Sorry to hear about your aunt. Sounds like she was a sweet lady. Poor thing. Sounds like you will miss her.

Right on! I started out with Ubuntu and tried a hundred Linux distros since. I am a Puppy Linux fan and user all the way. I love the minimalist distros most of all. Linux at it's very best! Arch is also a minimalist distro. So, here we have the best of both worlds... some of the Pups are Arch based, and they work like a million dollars! But they're free! Ha! http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Archpup I simply do not understand why someone would actually pay money for Windows junk when you can run Linux, a by far and away superior system, for FREE!

The picture I get is that you married a superman on a pedestal, then, as time went on, you discovered that he was just a man on a pedestal. Take him down off the pedestal and give him a hug. For whatever reason, he needs to be strong and doesn't want to talk about his feelings. He probably thinks he doesn't have any feelings. They're buried under all the superman stuff. My wife is the same way. She can't talk about her emotions or express her sexuality very well. That would be revealing weakness, so she thinks. She can't have that. She's too mighty and important to do a thing like that. It's silly. I used to think like that, like I had to keep all my goods secret. I'm a tough-guy, too. But underneath it all, we're the same gushy stuff as everyone else. Got to find a way to get to that. It took me forever to break through. But it can be done. My shield was anger. I made everyone scared of me, so no one would ask any questions.

Yes, Dad is a wretch. No doubt about it. He is a very fragile individual, as most narcissists are. It doesn't take much to make them crack. People are always surprised to learn what little sense of true self, if any, is actually holding these people together. Their lives are a miserable wreck in many cases. In the case of Dad, he stopped drinking when I was fourteen, but continued his dry-drunken rampage. I preferred him when he was a common, narcissistic drunken hoodlum, instead of the dry drunk he became. At least when he drank he laughed and had a good time sometimes. As a dry drunk -- never! He later admitted the only reason he got dried out in the first place was because the night he crashed his vehicle he went into treatment instead of going to jail for DWI. He had to stay sober for a while after he got out of treatment, or he would be put in jail. He just got into the habit of not drinking, I suppose. Now, after all that time, he started drinking again at age seventy! Said he owed it to himself. he did it for a few years, until his rapidly declining health would no longer permit it. A few more words on the no contact with narcissists rule... First, it does happen, it's rare, I know, but it does happen that a narcissist can turn himself around. One of my friends from junior high school was the victim of a narcissistic father. He was horribly abused. His entire family was. My friend had gotten married, had children of his own, and moved out of the house and was in his early thirties, still having an occasional encoutner with his Dad, when his Dad snapped out of it. I don't know to this day what triggered the change in him, but whatever it was, it sent him to alcohol treatment, therapy, and then back to his family, where he was the one who initiated all the healing work to begin. He actually came to his son, my friend, and to his other two sons, and his daughter and apologized to them and encouraged all of them to seek therapy with him. He knew they had troubles of their own on account of himself and his behavior. Make a long story short, he saved his family, and was forever grateful he still had time and the means in his life to do so. He was truly a changed man. I saw him a few times after his change, and just before he died, and I didn't recognize the man. I was blown away. Like I said, it's very rare this happens, so people shouldn't count on it. And no contact isn't always a choice. A girl friend I knew back in the Midwest had a narcissistic husband, who turned out to be incredibly abusive. They had two children together. By the time she had had enough and divorced him, the courts had awarded joint custody, so she had the unbearable pain of handing over her two children to this nut whenever it was his turn to have them. She likely could have gotten a restraining order on him, but that wouldn't do her children any good. He would have contact with them anyway. When the children got old enough, they chose to live with their mother before going off on their own. And sometimes the narcissist just doesn't care about restraining orders and you telling them to leave you alone. They stalk and find people and have contact with them anyway. Lots of people end up dead every year as a result. Sometimes we must look over our shoulder whether or not we like it. Narcissists are nothing to play with. Again, every case is individual, is different. And in the workplace, there are plenty of narcissistic people about. In fact, as much as over ninety percent of managers are narcissists. The company is always looking for leadership skills in managers, and narcissists are extremely adept at demonstrating just what the inteviewer is looking for and land the job. Thankfully, they are not as adept at actually doing the job as they are at interviewing for it and their incompetence often gets them terminated, but they are there just the same, in all kinds of work. I'm not saying the no contact rule can't work, but sometimes it just isn't possible to do that.

Thanks, again, for your support and your, once again, even further strengthening my argument. I need say nothing further on that. While it is clear you do not agree with me, nor take an interest in my lifestyle or philosophy, you haven't given us your insight on the original post, the topic of this thread. If you don't mind, what do you think of xtorts post? Just curious.

Thank you, for your incredibly vigorous emphasis on nearly every point I have made.

Night before last I dreamed that America had finally fallen. Everyone was broke, society was collapsed, and there were gangs roving around doing all manner of atrocity. I was moving through the landscape, collecting what I needed for my survival as I went, taking care of myself, and leaving others I met to themselves or trading with them. In my travels, I met with two bad men. They were robbing, raiding, stealing, killing, raping, since there was no police, military, or organized vigilance around to stop them. I was clearly the better man than they, and had survival know-how (I am actually a survivalist and have had much time in the field), and they pretended to be good men in order to get the benefit of hanging around with me. I knew where to get food, water, and how to make shelter, where they were running around in raggedy clothing, at the mercy of the elements and other, stronger raiders. I simply ignored their activities and stupidity and kept to myself as much as possible. They gained from my activities and know-how. I knew that if I tried to get away from them, they would try to track me down. If I tried to run, they would run after me in a frenzy and attack from behind and kill me. I could have simply murdered them with bare hands, pistol, or knife, but didn't want to take any unnecessary risks, waste any bullets, or have any of it on my conscience, thus compromising my own chances for survival. I kept my cool and played it out. They did afford me some extra sleep at night, after all, as we agreed to take turns on the night watch. Fortunately, they were good for something. Lol. I started to build a shelter one night, just before dark. They refused to help and ordered me to get my ass busy building them some shelter--or else. While I was struggling to get the shelter built, I built it so that it would collapse on top of whoever was in it. I planned to get the men inside of the shelter and drop it on them while I was on watch, as they slept that night. While I was building, I got a better idea that would accomplish my goal much faster. I pretended to struggle and have an accident while building the shelter, toppling it over on myself, and causing all the rubble and myself to fall over a cliff and land in some tall trees. I lie on a branch, dangling for the men to see, not moving, on purpose, making them think I was dead. I knew I would soon be rid of them. I knew they would not bother scaling the cliff nor climbing the tree to get to me and my goods. The raiders came runnning to see what had happened, laughed at me, cursed me for being stupid, and ran off. Then I climbed down and pressed on, unscathed. Then I woke up.

The cultures are so dramatically different so as to be completely incompatible. Asking my daughter to conform to my wife's wishes, which she clearly did not understand and clearly resented, just wasn't going to work. Yes, I was tough and requested wife stay out of it. It was the only way to get along. Sometimes we have to do things we don't like. I wish the two could have gotten along, but it just wasn't happening.

Joel, Thanks for the response. That is precisely what I was looking to be explained. Now makes sense. I've watched, "The Bomb In The Brain" series twice. Haven't heard of "Irritation number 1763" before. Will look for that. Thanks again, and for the sharing of your great piece. Dad is a narcissist. Dealt with him for eighteen years. The likelihood of them changing is indeed low. Dad never changed, though I did go back to him years later and try to mend our relationship. It wasn't the wrong thing to do, but it didn't work out. I wasn't rattled by him any longer and he could not accept that. Narcissists have to be in control of everyone and everything around them. He stopped in at a family gathering once and he and I got the job of going to the basement to fetch a foldaway table for extra places for a dinner that was to be served. Dad doesn't do things like that. Dad doesn't move tables, do dishes, cook, wash clothes, or do any work of any kind when there are others around. It had been so long since I had seen him, I had forgotten his ways. He sits on his arse and watches television and ignores everyone while they are preparing things for him and getting him cups of coffee. He was already irked he had to go to the basement to get the table in the first place, and had already started to grumble. He couldn't believe someone even had the nerve to ask him to do it. He's the laziest, stupidest man alive. When I picked up the table, he picked up the other end, and what should have been a simple movement up the stairs turned into a little temper tantrum for the old bugger as he quickly discovered I was "carrying it wrong goddamnit!" and dropped his end on the floor, then turned and put his fists on his hips and glared at me, as if waiting for my apology and explanation for my lowly existence, like I always had to do when I was a child. I just looked at him with contempt and chuckled, making him feel stupid and embarrassed and frightened when he realized his ugliness hadn't moved or phased me a bit. He didn't know what to do then. I just stood there, solid as a rock. "Whenever you're ready. Some time tonight, I hope. I'm getting hungry." I said, patiently waiting for him to grow up. Overgrown, spoiled children require lots of patience, you know. He turned and lifted the table of a sudden and marched up the stairs in a huff without saying another word to me or even looking at me the rest of the evening. There was no doubt in my mind the fright that he experienced was born of the thought that I was there now to conquer him, as he once thought he had conquered me. But I am not a low-life, like him. I was there because I was invited to dinner and to enjoy myself. I had nothing to prove. I had nothing to ask for or take from him. I wanted nor needed nothing from him. I was proud of myself and the change I had made in me. The bored, frightened, obedient child I once was had worked and grown beyond all the nonsense and saw through it, and refused to perpetuate it. The chokings, beatings, and psychological abuse and maltreatment didn't stick. I was pleasantly surprised at the way I handled myself. The encounter was good for me. As for some others, it might not be a good idea to have any contact with an abuser. That is entirely dependent on the individuals involved.

My wife is Thai. I don't tolerate anything from her. She tried some emotional tuff stuff with my fifteen year old daughter, but my daughter rejected all of it. I did, too. I simply told her that's not how things are done around here, get used to it. She got used to it. "There is no hitting or yelling and that's all there is to it. If you want to hit and yell, expect to be yelled at and hit back--and then asked to leave--forever. I don't hit or yell at the child and the child is not going to hit or yell at me, or you, or anyone else. Whatever happens, that stuff just don't go around here." "But she don't do things the way I want!" "Boo-hoo! You don't do things the way I want most of the time. Do I yell at you and hit you over it?" Silence. "But I'm the parent!" "You're not the parent. I'm the parent, her mother is the parent. Her parents are divorced. You are the outsider here. Just like I am the outsider when I am in Thailand with you. Do you hear me telling you how to raise your son? Do you hear me trying to tell him what to do or trying to hit or yell at him?" "My son perfect. No need to do anything to him." "Of course, we'd all be perfect, just like you and your son, if only we all had mom and dad, and step-dad, and auntie and uncle kissing his butt, giving him money to save and spending our own money for whatever he else he wants, a master's degree, a place to live, a business to run, a bright future -- yes, we'd all be perfect, just like him, if that were the case. I'd get in line and be a good boy all the time, too, if my mommy slept in the same room with me past the age of eighteen and told me what to do every minute of every day. I'd either be perfect--or I'd find me a steel shovel and bludgeon your overbearing ass with it, which I am surprised he hasn't done so already. When's the last time you and yours did any of that for my daughter? Where were you when she was pushing herself through college? Not one of you so much as even sent her a card and a congratulations. Everything she's done, she's done completely on her own, with bare minimal help from me, and absolutely zero help from her mother or you and your family. If I didn't have to lift a finger to my future or do jack-shit in support of myself I would be perfect, too. Wouldn't we all? The great thing about your son is that he is a grateful individual and realizes that he has it better than most and works his ass off in school to actually make something of himself. He's obviously very grateful for all he has been given and does not take it for granted. As for you, I don't see a grateful bone in your body for all that you have and all the wonderful people in your life and who love and look out for you. I have to wonder what happened to you in your life that makes you so high and mighty and so miserable at the same time that you feel the need to yell and smack others around. You say you're the parent. Maybe it's time you started acting like one. Wake up. The child is fifteen years old, she's known you for a year, you're from another culture. Do you expect her to drop her whole life behind her all of a sudden and get in line and do whatever your whim wants? You act like an overgrown, spoiled child around the child. Sometimes I look at the two of you together and I have to wonder which is the child. It's stupid. There's no reason to be rude. No reason at all. She's not going to do things the way you want, she doesn't have to, and I am not going to support you trying to make her. I think you just need to take it easy with the child and be done with it. Leave her alone." I spanked my daughter twice when she was little. It was a complete waste of time. I never did it again. Anyway, she's doing extremely well now. She was a holy hellion for a couple of years as a teenager. Even then I didn't so much as raise my voice to her. She got past it. She moved on. We all did. Whenever I lost it and yelled, I simply gave a sincere apology when I was ready -- and meant it -- and let them have their honest say in the matter before we moved on. No bullshit. No victims. No scapegoats. No one left out. Compassion. In the past, I was always quick to be angry. My daughter used to tell me, "Dad, you know it's a lot easier to love than it is to hate." "Yeah, I know, you're right." She was always able to forgive me easily, following a sincere apology and explanation for my behavior and actions. I was not always able to forgive myself. That's what made it hardest. Glad that's all changed now.

He said, "This malnourishment leaves the child’s self in an irrevocably stunted, incomplete, and damaged state." "Irrevocably" means, literally, that it cannot be changed. So, according to this saying, the damaged child is damaged forever and nothing can be done for him or her, regardless of whether or not he or she has any further contact with the narcissist. And the narcissist is a narcissist forever, and he can't change his ways even if he wants to or if others want him to. My question is, is that what the author is claiming? And, again, If that's the case, what's the point in therapy? What's the point in addressing any of the issue at all? It would be like telling rocks they can't be anything other than rocks. A pointless, useless waste of time.

irrevocable [ih-rev-uh-kuh-buh l] adjective 1. not to be revoked or recalled; unable to be repealed or annulled; unalterable: an irrevocable decree. You use this word in the first paragraph of your talk, which, to my mind, nullifies and makes pointless the remainder of your talk. In doing so, you suggest there is nothing that can be done to help a narcissist, i.e., there is nothing a narcissist can do to help himself? For example, a narcissist beats a child, chokes him, strangles him, lies to and manipulates him, sexually abuses him, nearly kills him on several occasions, thus creating another narcissist in his wake... there is no hope, therapy, recourse, recovery for either of them? Even if they are willing participants in therapy? I am not clear what it is you are trying to say here, but if that's what it is, I would have to disagree. But, even so, if you are correct in that nothing can be done, what then? What do we do with all the narcissists about?

I think the best thing that can be done for victims is for ourselves not to be one of them. I mean exactly that. If you see someone being abused, never fail to do something about it. I will do something about it even at expense to myself. I will not tolerate anything like that around me any longer in my life. Bullies and thugs need to be shut down and put out of business. It is a waste of time to empathize with victims, all alone, while there are no victims about. The act makes ourselves susceptible and vulnerable. And even when empathy is in order, it should be done thoughtfully. It is better to be as healthy, strong, and wise as we can possibly be for them when they are around. The price of our health, of our well being, is eternal vigilance. We don't get any days off from it. I think that is the very nature of life itself. I would agree with anyone who said there are a few too many abusers around. That being said, don't ever be one of them. First, do no harm. First, if it can be helped, don't be a victim.

I reading and listening to John Bradshaw, I have followed many of his suggestions. One of them is the idea of non-dominant handwriting. Basically, I pick up a pencil or a pen and start writing with my left (non-dominant) hand. One of Bradshaw's ideas was to request the inner child to write a letter to the self. I did this exercise with automatic writing, just letting whatever child I was show up as he pleased and write whatever he wants. It comes as no surprise to me a child I once was, the one who was first learning how to write, showed up and wrote me a fine, positive, and happy letter. I have also done some sentence-completion exercises with my non-dominant hand. Each evening, as I take a little while to do some of these exercises, I am amazed at how quickly my non-dominant handwriting is improving. At first it was quite rough, but now it is beginning to look and feel quite natural. On another note, as soon as I am done writing all these little notes and letters and exercises to my self from my child self, and vice-verse, I allow myself this pleasantly surprising little act of wanting to fold the note up and put it in my pocket for later, like the little child in me would have done. I caught myself doing it. I thought, 'Why am I stuffing this note in my pocket?' I went ahead and did it. It made the boy in me happy. Now, this exercise has quite an interesting twist for me. I don't really remember this, but was informed by my mother that when I first started to learn to write I naturally picked up the writing tool with my left (non-dominant hand). Dad and Grandma didn't like it, and screamed and shouted at me, whapped my knuckles with pencils and rulers, pulled the hair at the nape of my neck, and forced me to switch to writing with my right hand. I do recall how frustrating it was to learn to write in the beginning. Perhaps this forced switching had something to do with my frustration. I don't know. Mom wanted them to leave me alone, but they would not. I, obviously, switched to my right hand after all. Another strange thing about my ambidextrousness is that I eat naturally with my left (non-dominant) hand. But I can eat just as well with my dominant hand. When I was in the construction trades long ago, I could work my hammer, trowel, level, pencil, shovel, whatever I happened to have in my hands, with both hands. In living here in Thailand and getting my international driver license, I had no problems at all switching from driving on the left side of the car and the right side of the road to driving on the right side of the car on the left side of the road. In eating with chopsticks, which I almost always do at every meal, I use the chopsticks with my left (non-dominant) hand, though, again, I can use both hands just as easily. Anyway, I will not stop writing with my non-dominant hand. It's just too much fun, loving, joy, and self-knowledge and discovery. I am thoroughly enjoying this incredibly powerful tool!

In another dream night before last, I am in a room with my daughter, who represents my child, me, my inner child, and with my younger sister, and my mother, who represent my old self. In the dream, my daughter, my child, is on the phone with a friend she can't seem to reach. When she hangs up the telephone, she sits down on the floor in front of my treacherous, manipulative, jealous little sister and asks, "Why won't he talk to me?" And she starts to cry. I, also the father of the child, the friend, and protector, can see in her eyes that she is very concerned about this friendship. It obviously means a great deal to her. It symbolizes a good part of herself being cut off from her, blocked out, and she wants it, and/or wants it back. My little sister gives a condescending little smile and begins to open her mouth to work her black magic on the hurt child in front of her. She loves it when people are down and out and she can slip in and exploit their weaknesses. She sits on the dirty floor, hiding behind her mask, pretending to offer help and wisdom, but she has none, and what she does attempt to give to the child is an unsolicited "gift", a trojan horse. I can see the evil about to gush out of her mouth, and also from the mouth of my mother, who is looking on, also with her own little grin, and they are about to say something cheesy, like, "Oh, it will be all right, don't worry about it!" Or, "Oh! What do you need him for anway? We're here! We're your real friends! We know you! Why don't you want to rely on us?" Guilt. Shame. Ridicule. For wanting to understand a thing for what it really is and be done with it and be well. As if they were the only ones in the world who could help the child solve any problems. But really what they want is to keep the wounds open and bleeding. Makes it easier to exploit their would-be victim. I can see the hurt in the child's eyes and tears. This is no superficial, imaginary hurt. This is real pain. The relationship means everything to her. And I stop the garbage from coming out of sister's and mother's mouths by asking a simple, but revealing question about problem she is having, "How long has it been since he last spoke to you?" The child looks up at me, hopeful, attentive, alert for the first time in the dream. "It's been a month." "A month?" I reply. My saying that and the tone in which I said it indicated to her there was nothing further to say or to be done. The child knew as well as I did that was the case. I simply helped the child to break through the barriers and come to the point. I cut out all the nonsense and denial and saw what was really going on. That's the job of the self, the father, and the friend. We both knew in that instant that it was over between them and that she should stop calling and pretending and hoping for anything to change. She bows her head in acceptance and begins to weep and let it all out and move on and reconnect with her best friend, who is not someone else, but herself, the one she is truly missing.

I have an ugly scar on my right shin. I got it when I was a teen, trying to jump over a barbed-wire fence. Safe to say, I didn't quite make it all the way over the fence. Anyway, I wear shorts a lot, and people are always commenting on that scar. For years and years they have been commenting on that stupid scar. "Hey, wow! You have a scar on your leg!" "Hey, no shit, Sherlock?" "How'd'ja get that?" "Trying to jump over a fence when I was a kid. Didn't quite make it." "Wow, that's a mean scar." "Geez, thanks. So nice of you to notice." I swear, one of these days, I am going to walk into a tattoo shop and get a great big huge dragon inked over that scar. I think it would be better if someone saw it and said, "Whoa! That's a cool dragon you got there! I'm getting one!" HOORAY!

I am very surprised and disappointed to see that you think this way. Saw wat dee kraap, most excellent dream interpreter! Buona fortuna!

I like going back, back, way back to the origins of tattoo and piercings and finding what it's all about in the first place. Long ago, tattoo was used as identifing marks in certain cultures. They signified something. When I was in the Amazon River Basin, passing through a high-hungle area of Brazil, where there's not much more than you and the wild men, the leader of the village was identified with a tattoo on his upper lip. And so it goes. There is a good deal of history to it, but I don't want to go on too much about it. Safe to say most of us here know the rest of the story already. Military men were proud to get a tattoo back in the day to show they served, and criminals got their jailhouse ink to show they paid for the crimes and did their time in fine style, if there is such a thing. Personally, I have no aversion to tattoos and piercings. They mean something to the individual who wears them. I've thought of getting a tattoo on many occasions in the past, but always by the time I got decided I would get inked, I forgot all about it next day, and thus I have no tattoos. I got my ear pierced when I was eighteen, got bored with it in a few days, and took it out. Then in the 1990s, there was a huge explosion in everyone getting inked. Tattooing took off like a skyrocket. My wife thinks people with tattoos look "dirty". My daughter wanted a tattoo at sixteen, and wanted me to sign off on it so she could get it done. I refused. She said she was going to do it anyway when she turned eighteen. On her eighteenth birthday, she got herself a tattoo. A couple of years later, she got another one on her foot. She didnt' like it and had it done over and turned into something else. She's now twenty-seven and saying to herself, "What in the hell did I do all that for?" I have no idea. At least she was smart and got them in places they can be easily covered. Her hubby is smattered with tats, too. He likes his tats. Whatever. The only advice I would give to anyone thinking about getting a tattoo is to get it someplace where it can easily be covered by clothing. You might find yourself in a situation, like a very important job interview, for example, where you will find yourself wishing you could cover up that tat. I enjoy looking at some serious original tattoos every now and again. That's another bit of advice I will put forth. Get something original. For crying out loud, get something original. At least have something on you that says what you are. We go to all the trouble of picking out clothing and hairsyles and other nonsense when we really want to make a statement; might as well do something great with your tattoo, too, while you're at it.

All this sucking up to girls, trying to prove to them you're a "good guy" is bad for men, is bad for you. Just be a good guy, actually be a good guy, and don't worry about it. Good guys have to do bad things sometimes. It happens. But it doesn't make us bad. My case in point, there was this girl who took a shine to me years ago when I worked the hotels in Las Vegas. She went well out of her way to bring me tea, keep me company, always smiled for me, and basically made it clear to me and everyone else that she wanted to be my girl. I was startng to take a shine to her and reciprocate. One night, a drunk started a fuss at the cage with the girl who was working there. I went on to the cage to see what was the matter. It was just another guy who lost, had a few too many, and was looking for someone to take it out on. He was hurling insults at her while she was trying to cash him out and send him on his way. When I approached, he started in on me, instead of her. I let him rant and rave and carry on. But she wasn't moving fast enough for him and he threw some chips through the cage at her, striking her in the face and chest, then he turned to me and tried to grab me by the front of my shirt and slam me into a cash machine that was standing behind me. I instead took him by the wrist and sent him flying backward and over, onto the wooden floor, where the back of his head met wood with a big, "Whack!" The blow stunned him. It was good that it was a wooden floor, else he would have been going to the hospital that night in addition to getting cited for battery. This way, with his skull still intact, I manipulated him by that same wrist, to which I held fast, flopped his dazed self onto his belly, handcuffed him, and, once sensible and safe, escorted him to security holding where he ended up walking out after a while, with dignity, with said citation. My girl saw the whole thing, from beginning to end. She never spoke to me again. It did not occur to her that I could ever do such a thing to another human being. What was I supposed to do? Let him bash my brains in? I lost interest in her immediately upon discovering that she was not willing to try and understand the situation. She thought I was just "being mean". Well, I was "being mean", I admit. Sometimes, in order to protect persons and property, you have to "be mean" when you're a man. The classic question: are men inherently good or inherently evil? Obviously, men have the capacity for both, and for good reason. And, of course, I love my women armed and dangerous. If I'm not there to deal with it myself, and a rapist approaches, Darling, pull pistol from holster, empty contents of pistol into rapist's thoracic and/or ocular cavities. In other words, Darling, 'be mean, be bad.'

Yes, very postitive. I thought some things would come easy. Like I said, I have done much of the hard work already. It's about time some of this paid off. As mentioned earlier, I have read books, journaled, watched videos up the ying yang, sentence completion exercises, and all with important insights and breakthroughs, but never really making a positive, lasting change for the better. It's about time. It's about bloody time. And that's all there is to it. I loved your interpretation! Powerful stuff! Thank you! Yes, wife enjoyed the night. Last night, too. Prior to these events I wasn't doing much acting with her at all. She's the one who does all the acting. She really pisses me off most of the time. I get bored to death with her. That's the best way to describe her most of the time: a bore. She's moody and likes to feel sorry for herself when the world doesn't go her way. She's by far and away the most boring person I have ever had in the sack. She's not a sexy person at all. She could care less if she ever had sex again. And when we do it it's just the same thing over and over again. If I try to throw anything else in there, try to do something new, she resists and complains and refuses with all her might. Trying to get her to reciprocate is like trying to push a ton of lead around. Trying to get her to put her hands on me and do something is like pulling teeth. It's terribly frustrating. So, my newfound enthusiasm and inspiration will go away, will die, soon. I will get bored and frustrated in trying to deal with her soon enough and stop touching her again. Then she will lie there like the spoiled brat she really is and cry to herself and wonder why. I have tried and tried to talk to her about everthing, time and time again, but she is a closed book. She's a big baby who likes to have everything her way. She really is an emotional and psychological basket-case. She's a nut. If I want to move her emotionally, I just tell her that I am packing my things and leaving today, then she goes absolutely nuts. After that, I will be able to hold her attention for a whole twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I really hate this stupid cycle, this stupid game. This is why I reach for pros and girlfriends. Wife doesn't mind. I can do what I like, so long as I don't fall in love and run away with her or get any kind of disease. Sometimes she will even pick a girl she likes and bring her along and bring her in with us. Mostly she just watches, but she participates, too, if I want her to. She goes after the girl a lot more than she goes after me, kissing her and putting her hands all over and inside her (I wish she would handle me the way she handles her!) Then I laugh with her afterward and tell her she is bi-sexual. To my surprise, she always emphatically denies it. Sometimes she asks me, in an apparent, rare moment of mental clarity, "Do you really think so?" "Well, yes, Hunny. You always talk about how the woman's body is such a beautiful thing, you make friends with a girl and bring her home and make love to both of us at the same time, turbo-charged and electrified in playing with the girl and watching she and I ravish each other... yeah, I would call that bi-sexual, among other things. Any further questions? H-e-l-l-o in there! Anybody home?" "Hmmmmmmm... I don't know if that's right. I don't think so." Yikes. I have always been a very highly sensual and sexual person. I love massage, sex, reading, writing, creating things, eating good food, and all kinds of sensory stimulation. I am very highly physically, and spiritually, grounded. Now, we've built this place with all kinds of ideas in mind, to make it a place where people can come and relax, get a massage, enjoy the incredibly beautiful flora all around us, take a course, learn something, have a seminar, etc. It really is amazing. This place has all that potential. But where are all the customers? Lots of them are chased away for really stupid reasons. She appears to me as someone who is deathly afraid of being herself and exploring herself. I think she has a false image of herself that she feels she needs to live up to. She's an emotional dolt. I thought I was abused and maltreated and really bad at this stuff. I'm a thriving expert compared to her. She must have this image as a "good girl", while the rest of her suffers and struggles to have an identity that probably her dead mother and her overbearing, asshole sister would never tolerate, never accept. That's another thing. She always seeks someone else's advice on where to go and what to do with herself, usually an older person. We can never be by ourselves. It can never be just she and I, making our own way in the world, like we did when we lived in America. There, we had lots of fun. This place is like being in a really beautiful prison. The most important thing is that I/we don't do anything that might damage her precious reputation/image in any way. We live in a small village where everybody talks. Reputation is everything. Gossip hounds ruin lives around here. She sees her narcissistic self as a beautiful, successful business woman. She is none of the above. But image is everything to her. Her "fresh face" is all the daily rage. She spends hours and hours gazing at herself in the mirror each day, completely obvlious to any of my wants, needs, desires, and is constantly asking me how her face looks. If I don't respond favorably, she gets really angry and disappointed. It's all about how the rest of the world sees her, and nothing else. But things are changing for me now. And I am not going to stop. I have been stuck with her and her nonsense for a long time now. Have had a great deal of time to observe and think about it all. In a way, I am over her already. I don't see much hope for us anymore. She will not help me out. And the more she stays here, living with the family, the worse it all gets. And she refuses to go back stateside with me. Whatever. I will see where my self-therapy and my own doings take me.

I'm forever alone and I love it. Wouldn't have it any other way. I like to work alone, think alone, ride bike alone, walk alone, eat alone, do just about everything alone. Solitude seeker here. Nothing wrong with being alone. I don't even see other people most of the time. It's like they don't even exist. Currently, I am looking for ways to make money online so that I can work at home-alone. Sick of going to work. I hate going to work. People are boring. Jobs are boring. I love it when I can work at my own pace and do what I want to do. Having sex is better with a partner however. I like to masturbate, but sex with a partner, or two, or three, whenever possible, is better than doing it alone. But partners aren't always available. If I have time for it, I will do the research and find a good pro to meet with for fun and games.

Well, I was advised to pay attention to my dreams... Things have gotten better already. I have been conscientiously working on telliong myself positive things and when I hear bad things going on in my head, I stop and ask what it means, what it is doing there, and start asking what I need to do to help solve the conflict. Something along those lines. And it's working. I felt light-hearted all day yesterday in my work on controlling my thoughts and feelings better. I was running away with them instead of them running away with me for a change. Last night's dream was a light-hearted, funny one. I dreamed a friend of mine and I were in high school together. We never actually went to high school together, but there we were in high school just the same. He was carrying along with him a briefcase, and when I asked him what it was, he opened it up and showed me a combination television set and computer gadget he had slapped together haphazardly. Though it didn't look like much, it worked beautifully. I was flabbergasted. I wanted to own the thing immediately. Joe said, no problem, I could have it. He was putting together another one that was going to be even better, I closed up the case and happily took it with me. Then I woke up. Obviously, my negative thoughts make me feel 'heavy'. And I have been this way for so long that it all feels 'normal' to me. It's starting to break up. I have to keep focused. Focused on the fountainhead! I want to know what my negative thoughts are telling me, yes, but I want to solve the problems, not just keep on having them. Now, my friend, Joe, is a comedy nut. I met him a couple of years ago in a comedy show chat-room I got into by accident. He's really into comedy. He's really a light-hearted, fun guy, and not much seems to bother him. He thinks I'm "really smart", and sometimes when we converse, he tells me to slow down on what I am telling him so to help him understand it. I'm a very serious person. Joe is never serious. He finds my seriousness fascinating. I find his ability to never seem to care about anything and to laugh and have a good time all the time fascinating. I wish I coud laugh like that. I wish I could see what is so bloody funny all the time. I'm so intense. He's so not intense. Joe is kind and never laughs at the misfortunes of others. He jokes about himself a lot. He's overweight and trying hard to get into shape. He never has sex with his wife. I'm fit as a fiddle. I never have sex with my wife, though, due to my new mood, I could not keep my hands off her last night. It was great. I think Joe is hurt inside and wants to heal. I know I am hurt inside and am healing.

One of the things I did to help my daughter learn how to drive was take her out into a vacant lot and just let her rip. She slammed on the brakes, stomped on the accelerator, did burn-outs, made sharp turns of a sudden, etc., pretty much whatever she wanted, short of damaging my car, of course. It helped her to get the feel and control of the vehicle. She found the exercise exhilarating and liberating. That's really what it's all about. A car is a machine. She is in control of it. It is not in control of her. It takes a while to get that control. It's not a horse that will buck you off if it doesn't like you. A horse will watch where it is going even if you will not. A car won't do that-yet. If you head for a tree, the car will be more than happy to oblige your ramming into a tree. It just doesn't care. You have to watch where you are going at all times. A car won't fight back. It does only what you tell it to do, provided it's functioning properly. Cars that drive themselves are here, though not out on the roads yet. We still have to learn how to drive.

I am not familiar with the Bradshaw goods until as of late myself. But I have watched a lot of the YouTube videos on him and he makes a lot of sense and his techniques have worked for me. That's all I need to know. His ideas about shame, shaming, toxic shame, and healthy shame have been tremendously helpful and eye-opening, too. To say I am "rough-around-the-edges", as many do, would be an understatement. When trying to give myself sweet-talk, sweet self-talk, it doesn't always work. I'm a rough and tough and I like being that way. So, as doing as Bradshaw suggests and talking to my child self, it causes me to slow down, way down, and consider the child in the exercise. You can't be rough and tough with a child until unless it's just play-fighting and wrestling, which children often love to do, even the girls sometimes, and even then one must be careful to not let it get out of hand. The boy must be handled with care and taken seriously. The most difficult thing about it as I talk to my child self, is giving answers in a more gentle manner. As a man, and a rough one at that, I often don't take my method of delilvery into consideration. I just blurt it out. People often mistake me for being angry and/or overbearing. I'm not. I just want to be heard. I think that is another reason I try to be concise in my writing. I want to be understood. I love things to be clear and I love to make things clear. The boy, the baby, needs a lot of time, but not so much as I thought he would. I don't think this is going to take a long time. I have done much of the work already. He has nothing to fear anymore and he is not afraid. I am his champion and I am there to protect. And I am a rough-and-tough, and I like to go-go-go-go-go, just as he does. And at the same time, he understands that I, too, need my own space, and to be able to go at my own speed and exercise my own strengths, and experience my own capacities, which are greater than most. I think this is something I will be doing for a long time because, if nothing else, it is enjoyable and productive. Dad often looms off in the distance. He is apprehensive and will not approach. He wants to approach and be a part of the fun, but he knows better. He wants things his way. He always has. But we have tried things his way already. It doesn't work. He doesn't realize that it is not he, himself, who is not acceptable, but his ways and means. He behaves a certain way because he chooses to do so. The denial, the facade does not work on me anymore. He isn't fooling anyone anymore, and he can think of no other way to behave, and if he can, he is afraid to do it. But that's his problem. He does not want to take a step in another direction. We've all got to fight to be free. We've all got to take that first step, no matter how steep, no matter how scary. There is nothing I can do for him. He knows better than to approach this man or this child in his old manner because he knows that if he does he will be killed. The child will step out of the way and steer clear, being the sensible one he has always been. The man, knowing full well the nature of the foe, will rise and kill him. In the past, he could simply wait like a vulture until you did some imaginary hurt to him, then he would swoop down in front of you with that big, dumb, ugly, condescending smile on his face and he would own you once again. Never help or teach, direct, or coach when something is done wrong, but come down like a thunderclap and belittle, smash, wreck destroy, divide, and conquer the little boy. When something is done right, say nothing, do nothing. There's no way to get an angle on things there. There's nothing to use on me there. And what good is that? But he no longer has any of his former options as a way in. I'm a rational man and these games are no longer acceptable in my world. They never were. I did what I had to do to get by him and get out. All that's over now. And he knows it. I don't do business that way. And this leaves him wondering what do to. "After all", Dad always said, "what good is a friend if you can't use them?" Years ago, on Dad's seventieth birthday, he treated himself to something he had wanted to return to for a long time: drink. After forty years of being what many call a "dry drunk", Dad took his first drink and liked it. He said he had been waiting a long, long time to do that. I didn't associate with him, but heard about it through another family member. He said however that Dad was taking care not to let any of his children or grandchildren see him drink. He said he owed it to himself after all these years. After all, no one ever comes around to see him anyway. There is nothing else to do with his time, so he complains. I don't have to wonder why that is. None of this surprised me in the least. Same old coward he always was. No, Dad won't be joining this party any time soon. The more he hangs around, the more he fades off into the distance. His loss. Not mine. I have already put my best foot forward. Your turn, old man. I love Alice Miller, too. She helped me make a lot of headway in this journey. She's a good read and a big help.

Thanks for the tips and the encouragement. Yes, go ahead and use the material for your podcast. I'd love to get a link to it when it's ready. Meantime, on the road to recovery, another day, another new opportunity to work it up!