Mount Everest. STILL Forbidding. Aloof...

[LoisB]

I wrote this great response earlier today while waiting on a student and Voila! it's lost. :-(

Anyway.

I hear ya Urworthy. I will watch what I say. My mantra has been and always will be...Dad is sick. Something is going on that is causing him a lot of pain and he doesn't realize how much he is hurting others.

At the same time, I feel like my kids are so smart and plenty savvy to come to their own conclusions--as they illustrated so inappropriately on Saturday!

I'm tired of telling them to be the bigger person. There comes a point when everyone should be allowed to just act as they feel. Saturday is how they feel. It just is.

I was re-reading some material on addiction the other day. It helped me re-visit some things I still struggle with...The common thought on addicts is that they are NOT capable of love. They have love for the drug and that's the best they can do. In other words addiction, especially late stages addiction, brings on symptoms of sociopathic/personality disorders. He simply isn't capable of love right now.

Ya ever re-learn something you already knew, but is comforts your heart in a new way?? I guess that's what this info did for me. It reminded me how icy his heart is right now and how much safer we are right now with Smokey at a distance. It also reminded me how he is not the person we knew and loved. He is the shell.

The kids have tolerated a lot of nothing from their dad for two years now. Nothing and, then, these BIG painful surprises!! The OW, the OW living with him, his refusal to help take D19 to college, his lack of consideration or kindness while our kids cried and begged in front of him. I think they have reached their limit. The end of the sidewalk, if you will.

And, I can't say I blame them. They haven't even had the luxury of being able to see him in order to confront his B.S. And, the few times they have confronted him, he ignored their pain by pretending like nothing has changed.

He tried to make his OW/roomie deal a joke by calling her his "roommate" and laughing as he told them. On Saturday, he tried to step over the cold, uncomfortable stuff by tickling D11. She told him firmly to "Stop."

In some respects, I guess I feel like my kids HAVE taken the high road with their dad and have tried like hell to reach out to him. His sad, empty responses have lead to what happened on Saturday. They have given up. They told him so the last time they confronted him. They have been brave, held themselves high while the town and school and neighborhood talked about what their dad "did" and they have walked through so much fire.

I'm not sure I'm willing, at this point, to demand they force a conversation with someone they don't want to see. Someone who really doesn't bother to know them anymore. I feel like they have earned the very adult responsibility of deciding how to handle him for themselves.

Maybe if he had been a great dad before this crisis, I would feel differently. But, the truth is that his kids have all out begged him for attention for decades now and he simply gave himself to his drug. They have gone to counseling, confronted, begged, pleaded, cried, felt the humiliation...Maybe now, it's healing for them to show they are moving forward and don't want such a sick person in their lives?

IDK. I DO KNOW I don't want the girls to ever think it's ok for a man to treat them with such indifference. Father or not, I want them to feel as if they can choose who deserves their time and who is toxic. And, I want them to have the confidence to act on those feelings without regret or guilt like most of women have a tendency to feel even when we have been badly treated.

"I would like to see you act like a woman who is strong and confident, who knows who she is and who is doing great, DESPITE how he treated you, ya know?" Me too.

On Saturday, detaching with anger was all I could muster. I will be able to do more as I keep moving forward.