What now?

I sent the email to my dad at 18.18 this evening. He replied at 19.20. The amount of time that elapsed between me hitting send and him replying says it all really. He just doesn’t get it at all. Not even a little bit.

He was pretty affable in the email. He thanked me, said he’s taken it on board although doesn’t agree with some of what I said and maintains he is not critical of Nina (wtf!). He said he’s been worried about their relationship for a while, but he attributes that to her having ‘outgrown him’ as she is 14 and he is 60 and ‘what teenage girl really wants to spend time with a 60 year old granddad?’ He cannot see how problematic how he is with her is, how every word he says to her is critical and judgemental and belittling and mean. He says he will ‘back off’ about his worries about her but thinks he has been supportive and encouraging of her. Again, wtf! It is scary that he can’t see it at all and so he will not change. I thought he would at least try to be different and then be better for a while, but ultimately be unable to change (like when I vow never to lose my temper again – realistically this is just not possible right now with the place I am in with my healing – and because I am human – but at least I can see it is a problem and it is not okay when I behave like that).

Maybe this is the beginning of a shift. Maybe I have sown some seeds. Maybe he will reflect. I honestly really doubt it though. I think this is the beginning of the end. The beginning of me accepting that he will never be able to look inside himself and see how he is and he will die with this gulf between us because he cannot let down his defences. I don’t mean that he is choosing not to, but that I don’t think he can. I don’t think he is able to. I think they are him. This is the thing with OCPD and NPD (I hate labels, but these two help me understand him, just as NPD/BPD have helped me make sense of my mum), typically the person themselves cannot see they have a problem, it is always everyone else who is problematic. So they don’t want or feel the need to change or heal or grow, because they honestly can’t see there is an issue.

There was me worrying I would trigger him into a place of shame and self-loathing, or make him angry or sad. I was scared of what it might force him to confront inside himself. Turns out it didn’t even really land for him. I don’t know what I’d expected given that I know he cannot see his own behaviour; he is so out of touch with himself and his feelings and how he is. The way he speaks to Nina is the way he must speak to himself. The way he was spoken to as a child of course, which he cannot see anything wrong with because he cannot bear to look inside and see how damaging his childhood was. It is also the way he spoke to me, all my life, and still does of course. And so beyond all this and deep inside is a real sense from teen and slightly older parts that he really will never be able to take in what he did to us even if we are ever brave enough to confront him. It is very hard to accept that there will not be a reconciliation or a time when he opens up and says he is sorry for how he’s been. I’ve known he won’t but I don’t think I’ve really taken in that actually it will be like this between us forever. Even if I am totally estranged from him one day, it will still be like this. I will be free perhaps, but it will never be different. We have nothing but lies and falseness between us. What a tragic waste.

I don’t know how to reply to his email. What is there to say? How do you make someone see that their whole way of being in the world, everything about them, their personality and the essence of who they are is problematic and shaming and abusive when they cannot see it at all? It is not my job to make him look at himself and change, even if I could. He has chosen not to take this opportunity to look inside himself and left me feeling so confused and bereft and small and invalidated. So hopeless. And deflated. I don’t think he can change and I don’t know how many times I will have to tell him that his behaviour is a problem before I give up. I cannot keep doing this, living this lie, trying to heal myself while allowing in the same treatment of Nina and I that smashed me into pieces in the first place.

There is a storm inside me. I can feel parts on the brink of total meltdown and collapse. It doesn’t have words yet, just a fucking painful mess taking shape and coalescing inside me. Scribbling inside my head and a mash of emotions I cannot access or name. I just want him to disappear so I don’t have to deal with this. I can’t believe both of my parents are so completely impossible that my life is better without them. It feels so unnatural and such a mess.