I am human. And the very human part of me wants you to experience this. It wants you to experience the twisting of reality, the challenges to your sanity, the denial of things you KNOW happened. It is coming. It can't be limited to me. Someone as sick as your dad is cannot confine his aberration to only one person in his life.
It is like hate. I told him hate does not stay in one area of your life. It spreads. Your dad would never have the life he does now if he had not given in to hate for Aaron. That one decision cost him his job, his marriage, and, temporarily at least, his children.
But not right now. Right now you are his creatures, body and soul. I only hope that as you grow up and mature you will need the parent who is grown-up and mature. I am just so afraid you will only take the advice of the one who had the PS3. The one who has lost so much through his own choices, but will never see the choice.
You believe you owe him so much. You believe he is owed so much. He is owed nothing except your love and respect. But so am I. You have never hesitated to take what I was owed and give it to him, and for so many years I let you. It is hard for me not to be merciful to the suffering, even if they suffer by choice. But how it hurt.
And how much hurt you will go through, when he finally turns on you. How can I wish that on anyone, even those who deserve it? Even those who allowed him to manipulate their emotions and twist their memories, hurting me in the process?
I know it is coming. Maybe when you are married, maybe when you have your first child, maybe when your spouse leaves you the way I left your dad. But he will turn. He can't help it. I pray I am alive. I pray I can comfort you. I pray you will finally understand what I went through all those years. I pray to God that before I die I hear, "Mom. You were right. I'm sorry. How did you stand it all those years while we treated you that way? How did you take it as long as you did?" And yet the only part of me that is unselfish whispers, "No. Spare them the pain. Let them live in ignorance, unhurt by him."
Sarah, honey, I'm sorry, but I see you marrying a man just like your dad. You won't understand those words any more than I did when my mother said them to me. But someday you will. And you will blame me for being so good at hiding what he was, so that when you heard, "You're marrying a man just like your dad" you didn't run screaming into the hills. But how can your grandmother and I be blamed? She gave me, and I gave you, as normal a childhood as we could, hiding the personality flaws and insanity of the man we chose as the father of our children because we didn't know what else to do.
Alexander, honey, I'm sorry, but I see you becoming your dad. One day I will be comforting your ex and supporting her decision to leave you, because you are just too emotionally abusive and manipulative for her to stand. And like your dad, you will never know why you are so unhappy. I don't know how to change it or fix it. I only hope that in some way I mitigated it, diluted the unhappiness and dysfunction so that one day your grandchildren will marry emotionally healthy people.
I am not sanguine though. Grandmommy married an emotional abuser. Mary Lynn married one, and didn't divorce him either. PLEASE, PLEASE Sarah, remember Aunt Mary Lynn and get rid of yours the way Grandmommy and I did. I married one, and I see every sign you will too. And Alexander, you get more like your emotionally abusive dad every day. I pray somehow, some way, you take what is good about your dad, for there is good, he is not evil only all too human, and leave the dysfunction, abuse, and manipulation behind. But I don't think so. One day your wife won't be able to take it, and she will leave. It will be so hard for me to support you then, knowing how you treated her, because that was the way you treated me, and the way your dad acted before you.
But such is life.
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