No Contact made easy
When I first came to this board back in *looks at her profile* 2006, I was debating going no contact with my dad. At the time, his drinking was spiraling and he was getting more and more belligerent, calling me names and insulting me repeatedly while having no memory of doing so the next day.
Fast forward to 2011, and surprise! He's more drunk, more belligerent and still drunk dialing me to tell me what a horrible person I am (only to have his words abjectly denied later).
And a little further into 2011: he's arrested on multiple felony counts. To the best of my knowledge, right now, grand jury is still open, and my dad has 29 felony counts already indicted against him. Until the rest of the evidence comes in, we won't know how many more counts will be added to that list.
So what does that have to do with going no contact? Well, see, like many ACoA's, I spent years trying to hold my family together (and more recently wondering why I bothered). So about 30 years of trying to keep my family a family - maybe it's just habit to try to hold them together now.
But this morning, my dad called my mom (he's not allowed to talk to me as I'm a state witness). He told her he was angry at me because "She's the one who put me in here." Yup. You read correctly. Because in the US, a single person can, with no evidence whatsoever and with no due process, lock a person in jail and keep them there under a multi-million dollar bail amount. It was not his own behavior that landed him behind bars, it was my doing.
He then went on to tell my mom that when he got out, he was never going to speak to me again. This is/was a long-standing pattern: he'd get nearly unintelligibly drunk, call me and tell me he was never speaking to me again. Then he'd bring me a token gift of some sort or invite me out for dinner or something along those lines. It became a running joke with my husband - any time my dad would say "I'm never speaking to you again," I'd tell my husband, who would ask in a sing-song voice "agaaaiiinn?" The difference this time is that he's been in jail, not drinking, for four months now. I can't blame the alcohol for his statements. Somewhere in my dad's head, a gear has slipped, and it no longer matters whether he's drunk or sober.
Something snapped in me today. I did not PUT him in jail. He committed multiple felonies. I didn't even know he had done it until this past July. Did I give the police information? Yes. They interviewed me. I told them what I knew. But had he not done the actions in the first place, he would not be in jail.
I had been sending him postcards, even though he wasn't allowed to contact me. No more.
It's surprisingly easy to go no contact with someone who isn't allowed to talk to you anyway.