Spacegoat

Well Rio if you are anything like me you might be grieving intensely about now. I studied these 3 over and over, over the course of a month or so very methodically while grieving intensely about but still maintaining diligence http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...c-abuse.htmlIt was rough- but, I have been healing since to an extent slowly. I was in an absolute state of distraction up to that, and bagging my head off all walls for years. And by the way it was his video 'emotional vampires' that was the kicker for me, that one blew my mind because I had indeed noticed that grin but like??? The dude is amazing and I really felt for him at the start, now I just respect him greatly. That term 'emotional vampires' had actually been hinted to me before but I was in such a state it didn't register at the time.

I wish it were as simple as no contact for me. I was no contact a long time ago, as soon as I could get out from under and had every intention of staying that way. I was avoiding my father, 'I was missing' according to an ignoramus of an aunt of mine as though it's their God given right to involve me in never-ending misery, and was ignoring phone calls from my mother. Not based on ignorance, I considered it deeply and based on intuition alone I knew that 'no contact' as it is known was the only way I was ever going to live out a life in peace. Well, I had a child with a girl then who insisted on meeting them and the rest as they say is history. Once I reconnected it was depression, insomnia, drinking and so on. It's quite easy for them to call my mental state into question when they are privy to it, I had a mental breakdown from PTSD I was in a suicidal mania because I couldn't get away from them and I was reliving my own miserable past at the same time. I couldn't give a F' what they say or think. Their life to me is nothing but hell, it always was and it always will be. As is mine.

I've got a much bigger problem though. It's my kid being gaslighted now. I can see the struggle in him between what he knows, and the shitstorm of lies he is ad certainly will be subjected to. Is that right? No. Can I sit idly by and let it happen? Cartainly not. My solicitor said she will help me but its real slow going here and I can see that a lot of damage has been done already. So I can't even just drift away in search of peace as was always my plan, it's as if death is the only peace I will get and of course I must have known this already too as I wasn't suicidally depressed for no reason either. Been looking for help with symptoms of this for half my life now, not saying nobody was willing to help but i had to come here to find out what I'm dealing with. And I had to go out in the world while dealing with complex ptsd to find anything that offered relief lo and behold too after reading and looking for cures on the internet. That says it all really. I gotta make one last push for my son but something needs to start happening soon, I cannot spend the next ten years fighting for nothing I'm a spent force already a long time now.

davaidavai

The thing I have the hardest time with is his pull on me. He just wrote me an email yesterday, full of extreme options. There's something seductive about it. It's interesting. His world view is entertaining. He has this charisma.

And then you get close to him and try to have a meaningful conversation about his drug addiction and the response is hauteur, exasperation, homicidal facial expressions, like he's going to get up and literally attack you if you continue your train of thought.

Previously, growing up, I didn't put it together, than in those moments when I stepped beyond the person he was comfortable with and represented an actual person in relationship to him in challenge, he really didn't like that.

I suppose his drug addiction is a gift in a way. It was the thing that made everything plain as day.

I still engage him though. If he expressed the tiniest shard of contrition or willingness to listen to me, things would be different. But he doesn't. He puts forward his old aspirations for me as if I'm not there, as if his plans and goals and ambitions aren't deeply flawed. He writes me stuff like, 'we have each other' not realizing that I'm not there in that capacity anymore.

If he genuinely fell upon hard times, lost money in the stock market, I'd be there. But he didn't. He blew through hundreds of thousands of dollars proudly, every step of the way bragging.

If he took showers and bathed and didn't make an apartment smell like him, along with these other things, I might accommodate a visit. But he doesn't. The man enjoys baths. He must have an hour long bath, the bathroom smelling just like him after.

It would be tragic if the realization dawned on him that he lost me, his family, to drug addiction. Probably the necessary tragedy of hitting bottom and admitting defeat. But it doesn't dawn. Rage dawns. Hauteur dawns. Hubris dawns. Rationalization dawns. In his mind, it is I that have gone down a slippery path. He has been merely persecuted where meth was a justifiable retreat. He loves the construct of me, the child that represented his capacity for parenthood, for love and fulfillment, but the child who suffered his rage, his emotional turmoil, the adult who comes to him trying to calmly speak reason, the offerings of this separate person are contemptible and idiotic.

Spacegoat

hi Dav. Just logged in on the phone here onto this thread. I read it at the time but was/am kinda in the thick of it. It's a very different sounding circumstance so I have little to offer in return. I read your other thread though and seems like you are on a good track. It does very much sound like textbook narcissm. I believe my father may well have been a textbook case (I've been trying to figure out this stuff on some level practically my entire life) however he is very much malignant now. As is my mother and always was I now realise, as are others who are too close in my life. Watch out for that, apparently this gets worse with age and while a textbook example may be upsetting and difficult, malignant narcissm is extremely sinister, dangerous and damaging- quantifiably so, albeit no easy task that. Seriously F'd up. No crackpipes or anything like that around me growing up unfortunately (again making the problem very hard to identify let alone quantify) but you can be sure I would have been hitting that thing, they plied me with alcohol and cigarettes from a young age respectively (and now they use same to scapegoat me with ffs) while telling me I was a man now pfffft. Robbed. Peace on your journey dude