dothi

Long story. Last summer I moved across the country and put some healthy distance between me and my AF with the support of my mom, sister, and brother. I am a grad student who has returned to finally defend her thesis (tomorrow morning!). My mom and sister know, and will be there for the defense.

Since I have moved away I talk to my sister regularly on MSN, and my mom usually calls once a week just to check up on me. I want them there because they have actually followed my progress through all of this. My AF has never called me since I have moved. ("I'm not a good phone person, therefore, if the only way I can reach you is by phone, I will not put in the effort. However, I will talk just fine on the phone IF YOU CALL ME.")

I know he wants to come, but I have chosen NOT to tell my AF until after it is over. I am here all week and figured it would be healthiest for me to go for dinner "as a family" after the fact.

Deep down inside I am terrified of the anger I still feel towards him. I know last month that AF's drug addict brother complete with junkie gf "dropped by" the house while my mom was at work. AF has been well behaved for the past couple months (doing dishes and keeping things generally clean, as he only works part-time while my mom works full-time). But then this happened, and my mom came home from work to find beer spilled on the floor, dishes left where they had been used, and two drug addicts passed out in the bed SHE SLEEPS IN (it's in the spare room; she sleeps there when she needs REAL rest before work) Needless to say she was extremely pissed out when she saw this, and slammed the door by the spare room. This is her classic passive-aggressive way of letting the whole house know that she's angry and hurt.

FYI we know they are active drug users as the gf's sister called trying to find her because gf should be in rehad right now, and half-brother's brother called to warn my mom they are visiting because they were evicted from their last apartment. He confirmed that visiting brother is still actively using hard drugs.

BOTH my brother and AF b*tched mom out for being so rude to company. Don't get me started on how disappointed I am in my brother right now. After the house cleared out, AF and mom made the rounds through a lot of old arguments. AF blames mom for driving his friends away, for judging his family, etc. There is no acknowledgement for hurting/disrespecting my mom or her feelings. I guess this is why he married her. He is much older than her and has ALWAYS dismissed her input as immature and worthless for as long as I can remember. I couldn't see it for what it was then. But I see it every time I'm with them now.

All this after he then disappeared with his brother for a few days. Since then he has been drinking with them and showing up at home on days when he needs to go to work. I don't know what the story has been more recently.

I think my mom is close to hitting her codie bottom. With my brother's behavior especially, it sounds like she is finally realizing that the benefit of staying to honor her marriage is NOT outweighing the damage it is doing to the rest of the family. It's hard not to push her to leave. When I was a child and my parents had these arguments, AF would send me to guilt mom and convince her to stay (divorce was threatened many times). I wanted a stable homelife and loving parents, so I did. Mom leaving would help me let go of a lot of guilt, but I realize that she has to do this when she is ready and for herself.

I am here all week, plan to visit with a lot of friends, have slotted time for just me and my mom, me and my sister, etc. My parent's house is about an hour's drive from here, and I have already made it clear that I don't plan to visit.

I don't trust my AF - especially with the brother in town. I don't trust my AF to respect MY feelings at my defense. I don't trust him to have the sense to NOT bring two drug addicts to my defense so that the whole family can be part of my/their success. When I do see him, I know AF will whine/ignore my feelings. He will ask multiple times why I'm not coming home for a visit, why don't I want to see my uncle, etc. etc. etc. I am prepared with boundaries to bypass the "why"s and have booked a counselling appointment post-defense to practice these boundaries. This is the counsellor I was seeing over the two years leading up to my big move.

In one of their recent arguments AF said to my mom, "MY daughter is going to get her master's degree. Whose side of the family do you think those brains came from?" My mom comes from a very conservative culture (women's purpose is to get married and have kids), grew up in poverty, and has always been "slow" because she was not allowed to finish school. Hmmm, the ideal wife for an alcoholic, really. I hate it. I don't even own my own brain. I'm just an extension of what AF wants to see in himself. AF believes I'm "smart" because it's somehow easy for me; I am successful because my mom taught me to be hardworking and even if she was angry and abusive, she always made my education a priority. I know she wants a better life for me, and though I didn't understand it growing up, I now see her strength of character. She single-handedly protected her kids from the far-worse upbringing that my AF would have accepted as "normal".

Thanks for reading. This was a post I had been putting off for a long time. I am struggling with the guilt I feel when I picture my AF finding out that mom came to my defense. I'm afraid that if he does show up, how will I handle myself? I just have to get through this, and then I will be gone and safe again. In all honesty I hope not to return again until it's time for his funeral. His temporary happiness is just not worth how much pain it causes me to be near him.

GiveLove

Dothi,

Put your guilt away, if you can.

It might have some basis in reality if your AF had truly been engaged and involved in your life's progress over the past years you've worked so hard.

For you, because you've been so immersed and it is the most important thing in your universe right now, you assume it would be for him too -- that he would be crushed to not be there. But don't you think that if he was interested in being there, he would've had a clue so far? It seems that his pride in you stops at "I gave her her brains" and does not extend to picking up the telephone or going to your defense. And imho that is just fine. This is not about him. It is about you.

Does your mother know that he is not welcome there, that his brother is not welcome there, that you would be uncomfortable? I would make it very, very, very clear to her so you don't have to worry about him showing up.

You have worked so hard for this.

It needs to be about YOU. ONLY YOU. Your feelings, your comfort level, your wishes. Create an environment at your defense that makes you 100% comfortable, even if it means inviting NO ONE and just having a peace-keeping party afterwards, where at least you can walk out if you're put upon.

Can you find it in yourself to let this guilt fly away from you, until it's just white laundry flapping on a line somewhere far away? It has no place, it contributes nothing to the universe.

I am so proud of you, dothi, and am hoping that tomorrow you have an experience that brings you only a rush of joy and pride in yourself. That is all yours; no one else has any claim to it.

MikeH

Dothi-

I think that the feelings that you have towards your AF are perfectly ok. You have a thesis to defend - you've put a lot of work into getting this far - you don't need someone who never *earned* your trust to "Screw it up." And it's ok for you to be afraid that, if he's there, he'll misbehave. To be a little "Comically cynical," why would you expect your AF to behave any differently than in the past?

I'll give you the typical "guy" quickie fixit answer - it's simple - I would do what's good for you, and stay away from him...

And, good luck tomorrow!!! We are all cheering for you!!!

Mike

dothi

And this is why I posted because that all is absolutely true! I guess it's the result of years of mixed messages, e.g. "you are SO important to me" + "I don't take the time to know what's going on in your life"... "you are the only one who understands me" + "be what I say you are so that I don't have to work to understand you"... When something happens in my life, AF expects that he'll be informed. And if not and he finds out, guilt bombs a'plenty come dropping out of the sky. I wish I could find and pull the plug on this fear and guilt in my brain. My inner child is still scared of... I don't even understand what.

Part of it, though, is definitely how he upped the guilt tactics in the year before I left. Two years ago he went through chemo for lung cancer. During visits in the year before I moved away, when his health came up, he would casually remark that if the cancer comes back, he won't need anyone to take care of him (he didn't want any of us there to even know if he survived the surgery removing his lung tumour). Many times he commented that he would take care of himself in the backyard with one of the guns stored in the house. That was pretty much the point when I told him that I didn't want to see him until just before I left. I said this at the door as AF was leaving, then cried in my partner's arms because of how guilty I felt. I totally expect to get a call one day from my mom, saying that she's come home from work and found him in the backyard with his brains blown out. I tell myself often that it is his choice, and there is nothing I can do that will ever be "enough" to change that, so I might as well focus on living my own life.

Maybe I just don't know what changing all the investment I put in having a father to a sunk cost would look like for me. Perhaps if I learn to accept this, I'll stop worrying about fixing it. Maybe that's why the triggers are still so strong. That and it's too easy to slip back into useless bad habits again.

lol, Yes my mom and sister know that absolutely AF is not to know when or where or that the defense is even happening. My brother knows it is happening sometime this week, but not when as I don't trust him to use discretion with AF.

Thanks GiveLove and MikeH - this is all helping to rattle loose some stubborn clogs in the grey matter here. It's just that with everything so busy these past few weeks, I haven't had the time or opportunity to get this out.

guiab

Dothi,
You are feeling a lot of stress now, and as many ACOA's do, you are trying to solve many problems at once just to increase the stress a little more.

1) Fix relationship with AF
2) Defend relationship with mom, sister, friends, advisors
3) Defend Thesis
4) World Peace (just tossed that in)

Scale back and focus on what needs to be done for YOU right NOW. You can peal off a few layers of stress. AF won't be there and you know that is the best thing for everyone, including him.

I have been there with a thesis defense. You are so going to hit this out of the park.

GiveLove

I too was impeccably trained by my family to feel guilty if I did not follow the narrow course of action they desired.

So I suppose this will be two milestones in your education: your thesis defense and your dothi defense against long-term operant conditioning. I know you will rock the house on both.

Let us know how it goes - we love these little victories.

ICant

dothi - I am a grad student too so I just wanted to send some good luck your way. You will be fantastic soon to be Dr Dothi. Please update us.

evmdimples

not much more to add to the great feedback you've had, but wanted to acknowledge your achievements both personal and educational! Way to go!

dothi

Hey guys, thanks once again. Reading your comments really helped calm my nerves that night before the defense - which went very well, btw. Smooth presentation and a pass with minor revisions, as expected

This week has taken a lot out of me. I left a good community of friends and colleagues behind when I moved away. I was racing around to catch up while scrambling to complete revisions. My mom was here for 3 nights, each of which I spent visiting with her resulting in my frantic working/socializing with friends during the day. There was a lot of planning and discussion regarding my AF.

Now that the week is over, I am finally slowing down and managing to sleep. But since I've come back to my university town, I have not been able to sleep more than a couple hours a night. Especially with the thesis presentation, I have been dry heaving regularly - my key symptom for excessive levels of anxiety. My nerves are so shot that there is just no way I could handle any kind of interaction with my AF or the rest of the dysfunction. Now I am so GLAD I never gave in to my guilt. I had been contemplating offering to see him for dinner "as a family" or something.

My sister just finished training in a field similar to my mom's, and was offered a job at her mock interview at one of her placements. My mom worked on her resume while I was working on my revisions, went and handed in her resume, and got a call for an interview the next day. The manager said it would take two weeks to do the criminal record check, but after that, she would like to orientate my mom into the job immediately. In as little as a month my mom could be moving from the small town she's spent the past ~20 years and into a bigger city where she can be closer to my sister.

She was verbally processing a lot while she was here, hashing out all the times in her mind where she wishes she would have acted/chosen different. After she returned home (my parent's house is 1.5h away from the town of my university and where my sister is living), she phoned me. She said she can't even stand to look at AF's face anymore. I reminded her to focus on her plan for leaving, and how lucky she is that it's all happening so fast. She has a good friend in this town who will load what stuff she wants in the back of her truck on the morning of the big escape. She knows that once she leaves, she can't go back for anything - that it will be too hard to watch the house she took care of degrade in her absence. She knows things will go downhill really fast, especially with AF's brother hanging around and now another drinking buddy buying a house on our street. I like to think that having her watch my thesis defense helped to really inspire her - in terms of facing a difficult test and pushing through it. Apparently she was very nervous for me throughout the entire question session

There are so many positives accumulating for her that I think it's meant to happen in that funny way life plays out at times. In addition a good friend of mine has offered to go for tea or shopping with my mom once she gets here, and a professor friend of mine who is member of my mom's culture offered to acquaint my mom personally with the ethnic community present in this larger town. I am excited and worried for her. I am extremely worried about what will happen if AF finds out both that (1) I can back to defend my thesis without seeing him, and (2) my mom is planning on leaving. But it's out of my hands. I have given my mom the best advice and support I have, and I know she will have people ready to defend her once the decision is put into action. AF will really try to tear her down, sweet talk her, and bring her back. I hope she will be stronger than me in leaving the guilt behind.

Thanks for reading. God this has just been an exhausting week...

guiab

Dothi
You have my most sincere congratulations. Excellent stuff.
I am really impressed with the progress your mom has made too, and your sister.
Hey, is that 'flight of the Valkyries' playing off in the background??

GiveLove

I think it IS Flight of the Valkyries.......and this isn't Apocalypse Now!
(sorry...let me know if that's too obscure a reference.....)

Way to go, Dothi. What exciting changes to be witness to...whatever happens, this is a very interesting development for the three of you.

ICant

Congratulations on the successful defense. A pass with minor revisions - it doesn't get any better. Well you can pass without any revisions but as far as I'm concerned that falls into grad school/urban myth territory. I know of one person. And I'm so happy to hear of the huge changes all round with your mother as well.