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I just read the blog about my Dad from a few weeks ago, and it dawns on me that I may have come across as one of those people who blames his parents for everthing.
Nope. I've always put the blame where it belongs. I take responsibility when I do something, and I try to make amends or corrections where possible.
Where most people think in terms of what is and how, I think in terms of cause and effect. My mother's only problem was that she was overprotective, but it always came out in the worst ways. There was always a ten o'clock curfew. Always. And the one time I broke it, I got home one hour late. Every light was on, Mom's car was gone, my sister and brother-in-law were there and gave me the "we love you" speech. You know, the one where they tell you that your mother and Harris County Sheriff's Department are all out looking for you and say they made things hell for me because they love me? (This was before cellphones. It's also why I never stayed out late again before I left for college.)
Granted, this is an extreme example, but it shows what I went through. There was one case that was even more extreme, but it's a story unto itself. I may tell it in a future blog. I'll say it's the main reason I bombed in college because of how embarrassing and humiliating it was, despite a thousand miles between us.
In the case of my Dad . . . yes, there's a lot I can blame him for.
He took my college fund for a church funding plan that was his idea. Ten years later, I had nothing for college and had to shell out almost $3,000 per semester using savings bonds, some of which had not matured.
The cost is the important thing, but I have to take partial responsibility. Every aspect of my life was going wrong at that point, and I was determined to go to a college that was far, far from everything and everyone. It was the wrong school, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. Two years later, I decided to confront my concerns--and made things a lot worse. But Dad was being a jerk about going to school right away when I kept saying I needed a year off because I was burnt out.
He refused to accept that the grades I received were more than enough to pass and insisted on Summer School, even calling the Vice Principal, himself.
His check was voided and I was told I'd already passed. What happened next, though . . .
He spoke hurtfully.
When I showed him the voided check and told him I had passed the course, he said, "Now where did you get a stupid idea like that?" I remember this more clearly than most things in my life. It was after this that he called the VP, and was mad, afterward.
This is just one example. He made insulting comments disguised as jokes, and often degraded what I needed to do for school. For example, I was supposed to find out my blood type for a biology lab. When he was told, he turned to Mom and said, "We'd better not tell him." He continued this line of reasoning despite the fact that it was needed to compare the results of an antigen test to the known factor. It was one of the few labs I passed, and would have been a 100 if not for the 10 point downgrade for not having my known blood type. When we tried to explain it, he blamed me.
My birthday and Christmas toys and games would disappear after a few days.
After the divorce, I went into the attic for the very first time and found everything. I mean, everything. As it turned out . . .
If it wasn't book or classroom learning, he thought it wasn't any good.
The day I realized this, I knew why I had so many problems in my days playing soccer. I didn't learn the extra skills--teamwork, coordination, planning--that make a player ultimately successful and carry over into your normal life. Granted, I did learn to improvise, and I had a lot of great assists, but I didn't learn those critical skills until much later.
He was planning the wedding to my future stepmother before the divorce was final.
When I found out, after the wedding, I was stunned. He showed me the pictures, and I looked at them in horror. I was totally speechless.
"But wait! There's more!"
Not only did he keep showing up uninvited (which I mentioned in the previously mentioned blog) , but he rented a trailer at the foot of our driveway!
Yes, this was with his "new wifey", as Mom put it. Mom and I lived back in the woods, but since the road was shared, he was able to get away with this. Mom never forgave him for anything from this point on.
He made arrangements for me without my knowledge--or consent.
This was the most aggravating thing he ever did. Not only that, but he would make other arrangments so I didn't have a choice, tying bad into something I wouldn't mind. Psychologists will tell you this confuses the good and bad, and there are still some things I know are good that I still take issue with, today.
He disrespected Mom's wishes when she died, leaving me in a lurch.
I promised her that I would use the money she left me to repair the house. The reason for this was to prove I could do things myself, whereas in the past everybody kept coming in and messing up what I was trying to do.
Instead, he (and my sister) practically raided the house for every last piece of financial information they could find. Mom even hid $300 inside the holder for an electric knife, hanging on the wall that only I knew about. The only way to find it was to pull it out by the bottom and look in the back--they even did this! (See below. The hiding space is shown on the right.)
 
The money is now where I can't touch it. It's been there for 18 years, and it will be there another 15 years. Today, they claim I'm living a good life and that I have a future. All I see is a promise to my mother on her deathbed being torn into smaller and smaller pieces.
Without my knowledge or consent, he chose what I have ever so lovingly referred to as "The Sorry Excuse for a Car" ever since
While I was living in New Mexico, I lost my car because it scraped bottom and all the oil ran out. I was 20, I didn't realize what was happening, and I burnt out the motor. Dad came down three times after that. The first two times, he said we'd chose a car together. The third time, he brought down an old car with a messed up paint job and said it was mine.
Instead of accepting my protests, he showed the car to the people who mattered (like my boss!) and told them it was mine!
I. HATED. THAT. CAR.
Not only did three different people tell me they smelt marijuana, but Dad said the guy he bought it from was clean as a whistle--but that the car had just been sitting around for three years. Plus, his teenage son sometimes had friends over . . .
That car was an embarrassment, and I had it for over three years before it mercifully died. Given the engine problems it had, I'm shocked it lasted that long.
Blamed me for what Wells Fargo did to him, which was also done to thousands of other customers
Years ago, Wells Fargo opened $1,500 lines of credit for accounts that did not apply for them. Dad didn't know about it, and as a signer, I had no idea what it meant. So, when I found out what it was, I started letting it build back up.
The problem was that Wells Fargo would notice when a customer was rebuilding the line of credit and shut it down after $200-500 was repaid. Since Dad didn't open the line of credit, he wouldn't even acknowlege it and blamed me not only for overdrafts, but for overdraft charges and (falsified) damage to his credit report.
From what I'm hearing, Wells Fargo still does this. In fact, I was approached by a reporter about Wells Fargo last year. Trust me, if you use Wells Fargo (or Bank of America, for different reasons), get the hell out!
Everytime I wasn't doing what he thought I should be doing, it was off to the psychiatrist.
Dad was the kind of person who would laugh and tell you to do it anyway when you disagreed with him. In more serious cases with me, the head shrinkier was his responce. He would even go with me and start answering my questions for me, from his point of view! And if I tried to get my answers in, well, he'd say I was being aggressive, which reflected poorly on me in the shrink's eyes.
A childhood doctor had a diagnosis, but I never found out what it was. As an adult, two others both said they found nothing wrong with me. Dad was never satisfied with it and kept trying to figure out what he thought was wrong with me.
All of those, alone, plus that he was the only real role model I had, should tell you just how screwed up I was. But there was a single moment when I had total clarity about what was really going on.
He was more concerned over his worry about me than seeing he was the problem.
I would be doing fine and dandy! No worries, nice and peaceful, happy. Then, one day, he'd suddenly show up. Since I had come to understand everything I've explained and how it affected me, I would always be upset because all my plans would be wrecked. He'd always notice that I was upset. But since he never saw me when I was happy, he had no reference point to compare. And since he always butted in on whatever I was doing, I wouldn't tell him anything I was up to, giving him an excuse to keep showing up. Either he kept showing up, or more that I was doing got disrupted. Win-win for him, lose-lose for me. (In a future political blog, I'll explain how this is typical of conservative Republicans.)
Then, one day, about three years before he died, I was complaining (and he wasn't listening, again!) and he made a comment about what he saw and finished with, "All I can go by is what I see. Why won't you tell me what's going on so I can help you? I worry about you!"
And herein lay the problem. He wasn't willing to lay off, he wasn't willing to listen, he wasn't willing to let the facts speak for themselves. He wasn't worrying about me. He was letting his own worry control him. He just wanted things his own way. His worry was because he wouldn't accept that his constant involvement in my life was more of a disruption than anything else, which I finally understood when Mom mentioned something similar on her deathbed a few years before.
It wasn't me. I was enjoying life, working on my career, my friends, my future.
It was him. He was doing everything that stopped me from having a career, good friends, and a future. And, worst, he wouldn't listen when anyone tried to tell him what he was doing wrong. On one occasion, during marriage counseling, he called the doctor a quack and walked out; I never found out why. This is the kind of thing I dealt with until the day he died.
I hope you now have a better idea of how this man screwed me over (and screwed up what I've talked about in previous blogs).
Here's to whatever I talk about next time. Until then . . .
ADDENDUM AUGUST 1, 2020
From the August 1, 2020 blog:
14. He never acknowledged what I did right. This has severe psychological impacts, in that complements often end up being analyzed and taken for negativity. And, yes, this has happened to me.
ADDENDUM NOVEMBER 21, 2020
15. He woke me up every night as a baby, just to make sure I was still alive.
At that young of a developmental age, you adjust to what others do because you can't fend for yourself. If you get woken up every night, you're going to start waking up every night. Or, in my case, not be able to get to sleep.
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