Well, my Dad sent me an email today, but I'll get to that.
I also had a therapy session with a new therapist today. Not the most recently mentioned individual; this was a person I thought I would be meeting with every 5-6 weeks or so to touch base. It turned out that I didn't find out until the end of the session that since I will be receiving outside services within the same provider that I will no longer be meeting with her.
Anyway, the session went well. She was a young woman, which is fine; some people are focused and knowledgeable. There were some things I didn't know and some things she didn't know, so we guided one another as we went along. She was very engaged; however, I think that if I didn't know the things that I do, that it would have taken many sessions to have made the progress that we did today. I was able to get her up to speed pretty quickly on the situation, although I had to reiterate several times that my Dad is a sociopath because she kept wanting to coerce me into these "what if" scenarios as far as establishing a mutually healthy relationship with him. I had to be so blunt about his pathology as to rattle off DSM criteria and many very severe forms of punishment that I endured before I got my point across. So then we discussed where I wanted to go with this. I told her I was at a crossroad between choosing between learning boundaries or acceptance as far as just deciding to let go (because I wasn't sure I could work on both), but leaning toward the latter. I told her that if he contacted me that I wanted to support him through this difficult time because I don't know how sociopaths handle grief, but that afterward I wanted to sever ties. At the end of the session I was pleased, because as I am so communicative, I realized that with a talented and experienced therapist I will progress very quickly.
Then I came home to an email from my Dad.
The subject line was: NO SUBJECT.
The body of the email read: "WIG DAY!" And that was it.
Attached were several lovely photos of my stepmom wearing a new wig.
She recently started her 3rd round of chemotherapy treatments and apparently has begun to lose her hair. Otherwise she looked really good.
I have not responded to the email, and I did not receive it without some disappointment, actually. Emotionally, I was already halfway to the outer limits. I was really, really prepared to begin moving on. All things considered - and although I get anxious, depressed, angry, and aggravated at times - I'm relatively happy with where I am emotionally. I'm at a good place to set some boundaries.
But I don't even know what to say or how I should say it. I'm glad to hear from you? Thanks for writing? Stay in touch? I'm a little angry, too. Last time I heard from him he made it seem like she was really, really sick, so I had no idea what kind of condition she has been in all this time. God forbid I should ASK lest I be ostracized. I don't need to be walking on eggshells with this man or have what little of the fragile serenity I have reestablished disrupted, seriously.