I need a break

 Sobbing in the kitchen because it’s been literally months since I could leave the house without anyone coming with me. I need a break. I hate my routine or should I say, lack of routine. I’m so burnt out, I’m nowhere near the person I want to be. 

I call my husband to ask when he’ll be home, because I’m a wreck and he’s at the store, perusing supplements. I lose my mind. I can’t even listen to my own music in the car because the kids want to watch DVDs. I’m never alone. Never. And he takes it for granted that at 6 at night he can just stop off at the store and look at pre-works outs and compare protein shake prices. 

Once he’s home, I’m sobbing as I say I need a break. I need to get out of the house. He’s angry at my outburst, angry that I’m overreacting about his little stop. He’s mad that I make him out to be my enemy. 

But I know he’s not my enemy. I’m my enemy. I say yes and its fine and genuinely think eventually it will be MY TURN to waste time out of the house and away from the kids. But then when my turn comes up, I let myself be talked out of it every time. 

I hate my life. I hate how little I take care of myself. I refuse to do what I need to regain my sanity. I said I was gonna be gone all day today. I swore on it. 

But when he said, “I was thinking I’d fill your new car with trash that’s been sitting in the garage for three years…” I let him do that instead. And I lay in my house angrier than I have words for. 

What’s wrong with me. What the fuck is WRONG WITH ME. WHY. I need to leave this house. 

     I'm about 70% of the way through The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah... and so much of it resonates. Yes, my father never hit my mom. And gloriously, we had each other, we had grandparents, we had a phone and eventually internet connection with the world. But this fear of the world... the fear instilled in us at a young age. Dad's flight of fancy where we trusted no one except him. The constant pins and needles where we ALL are required to put his feelings, his energy, his dreams and goals above ours... he was the center of our lives. We were supposed to shrink and define ourselves by his idea of what the world is and how we should feel about it. And mom backing him up, worshipping him as the smartest most spiritual person in the world, raised in a religion that backed up the idea that dad could even be a prophet... I sometimes think of the way I idolized his version of life... I feel like the scene from The Water Boy, where the professor is teaching about where the anger center of the brain is in an alligator and how it's enlarged, and me as the Water Boy, confidently raising my hand to quote "mama". Angry when I'm corrected. Because this was my reality.

    And having to redefine it because he was crazy and power-hungry and defended by ONE woman, gave him all the power I had to give. And every time she doubles down, or feels bad, or tries to forgive him and make us forgive him because she's forgotten and hopes we've all forgotten that the sad, vulnerable, sad little man he was controlled and belittled and shut down anything he didn't agree with and we were all supposed to blindly follow, love, and forgive him forever and ever for him to be able to function.

    He never functioned. He couldn't function and blamed the world about it. It must be the world's lies, Satan at work, only he had a hold on the God's honest truth of what really mattered. Because he couldn't do it. He was a failure from day one of adulthood. He failed to follow through on the potential everyone said he had, he failed his first marriage, he failed until he tricked mom into following him and he put his whole value into who he could convince her he was and we were born into this toxic dynamic.

    And now we're adults, getting to decide we don't want it anymore. Does he know us? No. Does he want to? NO. Does he support us and want the best for us? FUCK NO. Every accomplishment is a bitter reminder of all his failures. I will never let him back in. I don't want him in my life. I will never let him back into my kids' lives. He curated a life that protected him and his ideals and his creepy worldview and whatever he got away with, he did. I have no doubt that he has done every drug made available to him. I have no doubt that he had engaged in exchanges with other like-minded individuals. I have no doubt that he thinks as long as no one knows... as long as he can pretend and force other people to pretend... he will continue being as creepy and manipulative and self-serving as possible. I wish he would just become a product of his choices.

    Growing up isolated, far from the small community he claimed he believed in, constantly at odds with one part of the family or another because they wouldn't conform to his standards. His resentment of my mom's parents, the constant competitive edge whenever he interacted with her father... He was "protecting" us from love. From support. From people who knew better and could recognize the dangerous and predatory nature of my father's version of "love".

    Not just narcissism. But an inflated self-importance that only lacked organizational and charisma skills that came just short of full cult-leader ideals. "Aspie Supremacy". That his version of autism is the evolution of humanity, and we're all just inferior compared to him. That version of him, when he gives into that vanity and dominance, I have no doubt he would let nothing stop him from taking what he wanted, convinced he was doing no harm because they were too little to remember anyway. And we'll never really know for sure. And because of that? I cannot allow anyone to try to convince me it's worth it to let him back into my life.

If it looks like a duck, and gets accused of being a duck from people around you, and insists on befriending other ducks, knowing that they are ducks... and he occasionally SOUNDS like a duck... fucking chances are... HE'S a MOTHERFUCKING DUCK.