dsayers Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 This is not an important story, so for those who are pressed for time or just not interested in lesser stories, please feel free to skip the topic. I didn't want to provide a pretense that the length was indicative of some serious emergency. Backstory (Those familiar with my backstory can skip most of it as I imagine only the layout of his house would be pertinent to the thread.) I was abused as a child by both parents and everybody whose care they left me in, including the church and government schools. Due to lack of real world skills, I eventually went bankrupt and moved back into my father's house. This began out of necessity on my part and continues due in part to mutual benefit. He owns a few houses that I've fixed up for him to earn my keep that he rents out. Also, I work during 3rd shift hours mostly for the purpose of security. So he has an armed guard at his home when he and his wife are at work (1st shift) and somebody who is awake and home during most of the time that they sleep. It also means that at his advanced age (and multiple heart attacks), that he has somebody that can tend to landscaping in the summer and deal with the snow removal in the winter, including at hours just before they need to go to work. His home that I live in is ranch style that had an addition built onto it before he bought it. This supports our situation nicely in that they didn't use the addition much before I moved in and it has it's own full bathroom. There is a door that can be shut to this addition for sleeping/privacy's sake. On the other side of that door is the kitchen. On the other side of the kitchen is a pocket door that can be closed for privacy's sake on their part and they have their own bathroom. With the exception of the washer and dryer being on my end of the house, the house itself is conducive to our living arrangement even in light of our schedule differences. A little over a year ago, I began studying philosophy and pursuing self-knowledge. It taught me the horrific extent of how damaging my father really was. Something my subconscious knew if my physical manifestations in anticipation of his arrival home from work despite being an armed adult is any indication. To editorialize if I may, I can never be sure what will set him off or to what degree he will be set off or take even unrelated things out on me. But he has resorted to kicking me out and threatening the same in order to erase me. We had a major fight in the middle of last year where I tried talking to him about the violence of my childhood, that I was studying philosophy, etc. He made it clear that he didn't care, felt violence was necessary, and was more interested in the effects of my labor than in me or my feelings, experiences, or happiness. Since that time, a burden has been lifted from me as I now know for sure that he wasn't just an untrained guy performing the Heimlich. Also, since he is aware that I am aware, his verbal advances tend to be less frequent and of even less substance than before. His signature move is to draw me into "conversations" with his actions, but immediately remove me from the conversation in his own mind. It ends up looking like one person foisting conclusions onto another and letting that other speak only for as long as it is perceived as not disagreeing with him. I have spoken to my stepmother and she sees this need to be right also and has said it seems worse in recent times. Yesterday's lead up Yesterday, the forecast was that the temperature was going to rise above freezing and that precipitation would turn to rain. When I went out for snow removal purposes at 4am, I only bothered doing the walkways for safety's sake even though there wasn't really enough snow to be an issue. I tend to err on the side of not leaving him something he could try to use against me later. I was awoken at 10 am by the sound of my stepmother shoveling snow outside the window where she knew I was sleeping. The addition I live in is very near the garage, so noise that happens around that window tends to be reflected and intensified. This path leads to a back patio and walkway that my father utilizes to leave seed out for the birds. I was upset that this shoveling indicated that birds were more important than me. However, I didn't hold it against her. She is empathetic towards me and I have no doubts that her shoveling (which she almost never does) was by his design. I have difficulties falling asleep despite being able to sleep quite well once I'm asleep. This event and unrelated occurrences left me operating yesterday on about 3 hrs of sleep, which all stemmed from a completely unnecessary action. The driveway was in fact completely rained on and cleared by time I was up for good. Today's topic Today's forecast was that the temperature was going to drop below freezing while it continued to precipitate, turning to sunny skies during the day. Since the snow was coming down on top of water that could freeze, I cleared all the concrete and salted the walkways, knowing that the sunny day would eradicate everything on the concrete areas. I was awoken at 11 am by the sound of my father shoveling vestigial ice (the salted, frail, crumbles beneath your feet rained on kind) that once again didn't actually require any intervention. I was very upset because it once again was totally unnecessary. I should've mentioned before that he does not know how to relax. Even at his age and given his heart condition, his time off (and mine) is populated by make work. Again, due to my difficulty in falling asleep (and this time being quite upset), I wasn't able to fall back asleep until about 2pm, the hour I'm usually getting up during the summertime. No sooner than I fall asleep, a cat is jumping on me. We have a cat that simply adores me because I'm very empathetic towards her. However, when I sleep, I close the door to the addition. Her food and litterbox is not on my side of the door and if I let her in this part of the house, she would wake me occasionally for attention. This means that somebody actually opened the door without my consent for non-emergent purposes. I was furious, but the cat has a way of calming me down, so I was able to get a bit more sleep even with her presence. Once I was finally up for good and had opened the door, my father came out to my end of the house which mostly only happens when he has something to say to me. He informed me that the cat had been scratching at the door, so he HAD TO let her in. He asked me if I had noticed when I woke up that she was out here and I begrudgingly said, while trying to mask my contempt so as not to invite one of his trademark "I'm right, you're wrong" outrages, "she woke me up when she came out here." Thankfully, he walked away at that point as all he needed was his usual confirmation bias that he made the right decision despite it completely erasing me. This is very small by comparison to the many other stunts he pulls. Which to his credit, does not usually include things that wake me up since he does claim to (and mostly conforms to the claim) that he's considerate of my odd schedule and difficulty falling asleep. Still, I wanted to share it since I've taken to documenting these types of interactions and examining it after the fact to study my own feelings and thoughts (and situation). I thought I'd give sharing it here a try to see what others think and have to say. I was just blown away because I know for a fact that if the other cat was meowing up a storm in anticipation of his waking up (a fairly regular occurrence) , and I went to their end of the house and opened up their bedroom door and claimed that I HAD TO let her in, he'd feel violated and would be furious. Rightly so.
LanceD Posted February 3, 2014 Posted February 3, 2014 Well I'm going to try to be honest and up front without being rude but I'm not particularly good at it. So apologies in advance. This issue seems rather petty. While I understand the history and the awful living situation after reading your story I get the impression that your life revolves around this man. It sounds like you put a lot of energy into identifying and analyzing every little slight against you. It gives the impression that these things are the fuel that you run on. So I wonder, are you codependent? Have you defined yourself based on how you are treated by others? Could you imagine yourself living a life apart from people who treat you poorly? I'm definitely not defending them or trying to in any way minimize the abuse you have suffered in the past. However to me this seems different. It sounds like you are not actually living there while you put your life back together but are living there because it's where you are comfortable. It seems that you define yourself through how others, particularly your father, treat you. This impression I have is reinforced by my inability to figure out why you live there at all. If you have gainful employment why can you not provide yourself your own place to live? I guess I could be missing something or failing to consider some influencing factor. But I just have a hard time believing that you are not there by choice and simply using whatever you did before as a justification to the part of you that knows it's a mistake to live in that house.
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