indecision

 The first thought in my head this morning when I got up was my dad.

How is he doing?  Is he eating?  Did he sleep?  what is happening with him?

The not knowing is so aggravating...I keep comparing my experience at being locked up in a mental hospital to his....My biggest fear is that he is not safe.

When I was locked up, I was in a ward with all sorts of people with all sort of mental issues:  drug addicts, depression, schizophrenics, violent people,  it was a salad bowl of people...and the therapy sessions included all those people together, and the therapist only spouted generic rhetoric.  That had a "one size fits all" process of dealing with all the different mental conditions...

This does not help....because each condition needs to be treated differently.  And you do not get the individual help you need...you just get drugged and put in a pot of stew....

This was my experience.  Once I got out, was I all better and cured????? NO, I was on a cocktail of drugs and sent home under the supervision of my X.  Once I got home, not one fucking person, friend or family, even mentioned my stay at the hospital...it was as if it never happened....so I stuffed it, and was even worse, emotionally that before...that is when I made the decision to "LIVE",  I took the gigantic step in leaving, not only my husband and family, but the entire state of Oklahoma...

What will happen to my dad when he gets out?  Will he be ignored the way I was?  Will it be a hush hush secret everyone has to keep....how will this effect my dads mental health???  All those goddamn fucking christians all silently praying for people, but fucking afraid to address the issue head on, talk about it, try and understand it and learn...so they use "praying for you" as their tool of avoidance.

I wish I could tell myself "my dad is in a safe place, he is being given anti-depressants and getting some much need therapy, that they are treating him with respect and honor", but my experience tells me that will not be true....and that scares the shit out of me...

I was in my early 50"s when I was locked up, young enough to make choices about my future, young enough to know how to "play the game" in a hospital to get out...I am not sure my dad, at 81, has the energy to "play the game", get out, and "make a life for himself"....and this scares me as well....

Why do I care so much about a man, a step father, who lied to me about my existence to the Baptist Seminary, a man who told me to "shut up" about my abuse, who denied me the small accountability I needed to validate my past, a man who chose his abusive wife over a child....a man who abused me by omission...

Why do I love him so much?  Is it just "fawning"?  Am I just desperate to have a parental figure who loves me and needs me?  And I just "forgetting, or stuffing his emotional abuse towards me?"

I am so confused by my feelings towards my step father.   Maybe my need for a parent to love me, is super ceding the actual facts going on....am I being delusional to think that my step father actually loves me?  I mean really, my siblings have cut me off on decisions concerning my dad, they do not give me updates, and when they had moved him,  I found out 2 weeks later and in an off hand way....So they have pushed me out, and it is fucking obvious they do not want me involved in dads welfare.

Should I take that knowledge and say "fuck em"....am I spending too much emotional energy caring about a dad, who really doesn't care about me in the way I want him too?  Am I just fooling myself?

Maybe I just need to "get on with my life" and stop trying to help my dad, or even to offer suggestions in his care.  Maybe I am just enabling my dad to stay in his state of mind by helping him and acknowledging his mental state to him...maybe I should just ignore it and it will go away...just like my family did to me, only it just didn't go away, I went away, 1000 miles away to be exact.

So this is where I am at today....lost in indecision.

S