Abusive Alcoholics: My Dad & The Hulk

The door slams.  My father is home, again, from his nine-to-five. Happy happy joy joy. I’ve locked myself in the basement with a few pretzels, my laptop, and a glass of water. My stomach is sick from anxiety. Tonight cannot be like last night.

Abuse of any kind is not OK. Verbal, emotional, physical, sexual.

Screaming and physically intimidating your daughter until she literally vomits from fear. Encouraging your 6ft, 280 lb alcoholic girlfriend to do the same until your daughter slumps, cornered into the wall, looking up at you with eyes red from crying, gobs of snot dripping down her face, begging you, Please, make it stop, while you watch with a stare that that reeks of sadistic pleasure. Not OK.

His girlfriend, who I will from now on refer to as The Hulk, insulted me with every obscenity she could think of last night. Bitch. Spoiled whore. Piece of shit. From what I’ve seen, a fucking idiot, who would believe you’re smart? Worthless cunt who came here to take advantage of her father…

Take advantage of what? His great generosity? His forgiving and open mind? Heart of gold? Yes, clearly. It wasn’t about coming here to take care of him after his surgery when he couldn’t walk or drive. It wasn’t about me hoping for a brief respite from being homeless (You deserved to be alone and homeless, you little bitch), or to reconnect with him and his side of the family. It wasn’t about me hoping to make my father see me differently. As a daughter to be proud of.

He texted me this morning, “YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM HERE!” My dad plays the constant victim, and he’s had a lot of “success” doing so.  I do not want to see myself as a victim. Victims are helpless, unable to change their fate. Seeing myself as a victim is un-empowering. Right now, the most empowering thing I could do for myself is to get a job and leave. I’ve been applying everywhere to do so.

When we were out to dinner one night, he told me he has “problems with intimacy.” He clarified to me that he didn’t mean intimacy as in sex – he meant in having intimate, close relationships. Loving people.

I see that now. And I see that there is nothing I can do to earn his love.

I feel some relief in allowing myself to not want to, anymore, though it is hard to accept.

(If anyone else reads this and has been struggling with simliar issues or knows what it’s like, please like or comment. Abusers can’t be fully successful if you know they’re wrong. It’s when you think that their actions and words are justified that you’re really in trouble. I know this because I used to think this kind of behavior was normal. I still struggle with telling myself that it’s not my fault,  that I do not deserve it like my father says I do. What I’m coming to realize, is that an abuser’s behavior has little to do with you, and simply a result of their own unhappiness, anger, and misery. Which is something you or I can never fix.)

what shall I speak of you/what could I say, that would not erupt deafened

It’s time now to be brave and post a few thoughts of my own here.

A little more than two months ago, my father shattered his pelvis in a freak horseback riding accident. When I texted him to say, “Hi,” and found out he was currently being airlifted to a hospital in Arizona for then unexplained reasons, this was my thought:

My father is dying again.

I’ve seen him die once. Heart-attack, splattered naked on the floor, my mother screaming. Usually memories record sounds in traumatic events as semi-silent. Not these. These screams I still feel.

He says now that never happened. He says now that he doesn’t have a drinking problem, doesn’t have depression. His greatest strength is denial. Recently, I’ve recognized the same power within myself, something I’ve evaded for years. Knock knock, on wood. He used to tell me. Every time I wanted something to go right.

Left my friends and lover in Philadelphia to take care of him, here, in rural Michigan.

Weeks and weeks. Walkers. Wheelchairs. Early scraping mornings. Watching his ex-corporate exec girlfriend smush her hulking body against his incisions. Bleed, stuff, swallow.

He never thanked me. He never to meant to thank me for helping him. It didn’t occur to him. It didn’t seem logical, necessary. My father is an artist, and I love him for that, but now he seems more dead to me than ever. I would analyze it further, but I can’t pretend to know him.

What I do know is that living with a man who chases me down into the basement and yells with angry gestures about anything he can at me, every moment no one’s watching – that’s how they do it, those who abuse,  they abuse in secrecy, for secrecy is paramount to success – it makes me afraid to move. To make the slightest sound. To speak. To tap my fingers against the keyboard.

On Facebook, I post:

“My Dad is recovering amazingly, and I don’t think it could have gone so well if I hadn’t made the trip out here or without the incredible help of [his girlfriend, name omitted for privacy.]”

On TV, he watches:

“Enjoy delicious chicken-flavored steak.”