(crying)

ok so i brought yesterday's post to therapy yesterday. been three weeks since my last appointment due to the flu. felt unable really to speak because of all the emotion, so i just printed and brought it to her.

now reeling. here's her reaction:

she said, based on what she knows of my story and such and my descriptions of my dad, that she (a phd in pyschology) believes that my father was a sociopath on the same level as the man who held jaycee dugard captive all those years. she said that she's glad to finally see me stop pulling punches and trying to protect him and really seeing things as they were. she expressed how proud she was of me for the conclusions i've reached and has just encouraged me to spend the next week reinforcing those realizations.

i left my appointment empowered and feeling strong. enjoyed almost a whole day of good stuff before her comments sunk in.

a sociopath on the same level as the man who hurt that little girl for 18 years. i don't watch the news so i googled her story. spent the next several hours and half of today sobbing my heart out. how could my daddy be that bad?

it HURTS!

but she's right. this man took that little girl and kept her captive and did awful things and fooled the world. held orgies. had men lined up to take turns with her. no, my dad didn't steal me - i was his to begin with. but he DID keep me under his violent thumb. he did bind and harm me. i had no tent compound but i had a table in the woods. and he did have friends and they did take turns. he met every diagnostic criteria for sociopath - self centered, lacking empathy or self control, obsessed with causing fear and pain, hurting animals and putting on a face to the world that was very different than the one behind closed doors. wow.

and she's got such a point. why was he enabled to hold her for eighteen years? because people just can't fathom that these things happen under our noses - that these things exist. why would they not think to look for the compound? because who fathoms that such places exist in our neighbors backyards?! so where is the hope for kids who live through that - things like this happen a lot more often than we think or want to believe.

and for the reporters? i know why she never cried out for help. why she didn't try to escape. why she bonded and became loyal to her captors. when you are entrenched in a way of life that includes extreme torture and fear and awful horrible things that the world doesn't believe are true, it's very easy to be convinced that YOU are the crazy one and that really things are "normal" and you have no room to complain. and that if you do, you'll pay DEARLY. to the point that a spirit is broken and you cease to even try because it's been proven it's pointless. and when they twist the world to make it seem like you really are the bad one and they are the hero - and you are forced to serve in order to survive, yeah, pleasure will naturally come from when those people view you positively. after years and years, it's difficult to distinguish that from love. i loved my dad. even to the point of literally offering my life to save his face. and no - i never dared say a word - no matter HOW bad it got.

amazed to consider that i fit in this category. broken. crushed. shocked.

next week friday is the anniversary of the worst of the worst and also of his suicide. i don't know what to feel. i want to hate him. but right now all i feel is grief for the loss of the hope that i will ever have something positive to think about my dad. i wanted a daddy. all i wanted was a daddy. i know i'm 36, but i still have that hole left behind. i lost my dad. i lost hope of ever having one. i deal with guilt because on the one hand, his death was a relief for me, but on the other hand, he was still my dad. who in their right mind can rejoice that another suffers? especially death at their own hands? and then there's the blame game. suicide makes things so much more complicated. and letters left behind leave so many messed up twisted questions. what do you do when so many opposing emotions run so strong all at the same time?

i'm still fighting. i'm still working. i'm still pushing. i won't give up.

at the same time, i'm so tired. and all of this is so unbelievably difficult.

IT HURTS.