A year later..

Today is the first anniversary of my father’s death.  It’s been an interesting year.  His wife sent me the bills associated with his death for probably four months or so.  I didn’t pay them.  I don’t know her.  I’ve never met her.  I had no contact with him at the time he married her, and I had no interest in resuming any contact with him so I had no interest in meeting her or her family.  You think when your abuser dies, you can calm down and be safe.  You’re just glad to be rid of him.  You never see the rest of it coming.

Prior to his death, we ended our business..not because we wanted to necessarily, but because we couldn’t see a way forward given the circumstances that were imposed upon us.  So, I viewed his death as a plus.  One less thing to deal with.  While it may very well have been a positive event, the rest of my life was in such an uproar that all I wanted was some peace.  I had told myself that everything would change when he died.  Magical thinking, that.  The Course in Miracles tells us that we give everything we see and experience the meaning it has.  That’s powerful, when you consider how much survivors tend to people please.  We manage everything and everyone so that we feel safe.  It’s a never ending process that I’ve discovered doesn’t always end when they die.

The thing is, however, I don’t want to manage anything anymore.  I just want to be left alone to live my life as I see fit.  After a lifetime of living in service to others, which is what survivors do whether they realize it or not, I’ve walked away from all of it.  It’s not that I don’t want to consider the feelings of others, because I don’t know how to do anything else.  And that’s the problem.  I defer to others.  When I don’t, their outrage is palpable.

When I was young, I was clairsentient in all kinds of ways.  And because I never kept any of this to myself, I made adults around me uncomfortable.  Between that and the abuse I was subjected to, I eventually learned to keep what I knew to myself and to manage situations any way that I could.  The problem was, that I couldn’t manage anything..I only thought that I could.  I mean, imagine what it’s like to know what’s about to happen and be powerless to stop it.  I spent my entire childhood terrified.  It doesn’t change when you get older.  It only solidifies into more of the same.

I had no idea about being an empath at the time, or that I had any control over how I perceived the world and everyone around me.  But that’s what I was..and still am. Empaths have a tendency to absorb energy around them, so it’s easy to become overwhelmed by what seems normal to others.  When you know the truth about someone, and you know there’s reason to fear them, it’s difficult when no one else sees it.  They think you’re nuts, which you’re not.  Empaths are especially adept at sensing deception in others.  It’s like a little fail-safe that can give us the heads up when someone isn’t being honest.  But it doesn’t always change future outcomes so it can feel more like a curse than a blessing.  Rather than absorbing energy, empaths must learn to observe it instead.  Otherwise, we can become ill and have little control over our lives.

Many empaths come into this life to help others, more so than for their own growth.  I think that’s what I did.  But it’s taken all this time to figure that out.  It’s easy to feel adrift when that’s the case.  You don’t really belong anywhere, not even in your own family.  You don’t fit in because your energy body moves faster than your physical body, so people are either naturally attracted or repelled.  Give me a complete stranger, and they’ll be telling me their life story in no time.  Oh, and I’m not complaining or anything..I actually appreciate that someone thinks I’m safe enough to tell these things to.  I never realized that it was an energy thing, though.  I just thought they liked me.  I didn’t realize I was actually, in that moment, just a means to an end for them.  And that’s not a bad thing, really, unless I need to be somewhere.

The key to surviving abuse I think is to not personalize it.  That’s impossible of course, because it’s such a personal thing that happens.  But what we have to understand, is that it could have been anyone.  It just happened to be us.  Abusers aren’t picky, other than the idiots who have their type.  But within that structure, all are at risk. It really doesn’t matter if you are their child or not.  It’s about access.  And if your other parent does nothing, then anything can happen.  Clairsentience helped me to know what was going to happen.  That’s a double-edged sword.  It doesn’t necessarily provide safety.  Typically, it does not.  So, ever the manager, I managed my parents’ divorce upon graduating from high school.

Eventually, after marrying and having children, I was able to cut off contact with him, not that he cooperated with my decision.  It took years for our area to even get caller ID on our phones, so until I could see it was him calling, I would stand there in front of the phone as it rang, shaking, tears silently streaming down my face.  When they were older, my boys would answer the phone for me.  If it was their grandfather, they would lie and say I was not at home.  This is what happens when abusers destroy the lives of their children this way.  Everyone follows the program established by the abuser.  We all enable the moron.  If he’s not arrested early on, the family secret expands to include extended family members, which is completely unfair.  After several times answering the phone for me, I got an answering machine.  They were new at the time and I had to wait for the price to come down.  Voice mail was years away in our area.  Call screening continues to this day.

The Course is right.  We give everything the meaning it has.  We can choose to see everything as an extension of God Energy, which it is, or we can give validity to the human behavior happening in front of us.  But human behavior is temporary..transitory.  God Energy, our Reality, is all there really is.  Everything else is a projection of collective consciousness.  Why we choose to incarnate into physical bodies to deal with all the crap we do is amazing when you think about it.  Evidently we must really get something out of our experiences here to put up with the nonsense we all seem to put up with.  And that’s the real problem..thinking any of this is real or that it even matters in the long run.

I’m still learning how to navigate this life.  It’s a blessing that the frequency is rising.  It’s far more comfortable for me, energy-wise.  It’s easier to stay out of the drama and to stay in the present.  Eckhart Tolle calls it staying in the now.  All there really is, is now.  Abusers depend upon us remaining in the past so that they can control our future.  But that’s not our reality.  We are extensions of God.  We are far more powerful than we remember we are.  But as the frequency rises, our collective memory will return, and staying in the now will become much easier.  Perhaps this anniversary will pass without notice, or perhaps it can be remembered for all the things my soul has learned.

Even so, I’m glad the day is done..