The exchange

Eric texted me at 1:30am about how he felt about me getting restraining orders against my dad. I saw that in the morning but didn’t have time to reply until 11am and it took me almost an hour to write him back.

***

When you told me the other day about your father’s childhood, it made him a 3-dimensional character to me. Growing up in that chaos and violence, joining a gang just to survive, of course he had anger management issues, and back then there weren’t resources available like we have now to deal with that. 

The fact that you were able to tolerate him until now despite what happened during your childhood indicates that he made at least some effort to improve his behavior. Too bad he fell apart under pressure and reverted to his worst instincts in the end. 

To you, he’s been a villain and a source of toxicity. Cutting him out is probably the right thing to do for your family. 

To him, this is probably the worst thing that’s happened in the past 30 years. He’s basically losing his entire family and support network, right? And it’s due to an issue he’s probably tried to control, but lost his grip on. 

I feel sad because I’ve been cut off before by people I loved for things I couldn’t fully understand or control, and I’ve also had to separate from more than one person I loved due to their repeated toxic behavior. All these cases were sad events, even if they were the right decisions for those that made them. 

Do the abandoned deserve to be abandoned? If you look only at what they did wrong, it might feel that way, and maybe that’s enough. But nobody chooses the shit they endure during childhood, or the calibration of their brain and nervous system. Even for those who have a desire to be better people, to shed the baggage that was heaped upon them, will they ever find a viable pathway to do that? Does everyone who can’t figure it out quickly enough deserve a lifetime of ostracision and loneliness?   

I think the answer is that it’s irrelevant what we deserve. This world operates on cause and effect, with a side of randomness. Your father got dealt a shit hand of cards. He did what he could with them, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. The toxicity that others dumped on him was too much to overcome. And to me, that’s sad. 

Maybe that will be me again someday, probably not for anger, but for something else.

****

I have been thinking about this ever since I decided to take legal actions against him. However I would not frame the whole thing in terms of abandonment and what everyone deserves. Yes there’s also fairness involved. How much and for how long can we let someone keep taking the emotional resources from us without us getting the resources we need in return?

I was able to tolerate him because his abuse forced me to develop hypervigilance. And yes, I am also much more emotionally intelligent than anyone else in my family so I have been able to perceive what’s wrong with emotions and intervene before he explodes. Did he make an effort to improve his behavior? Maybe a tiny bit, but not much. He’s never read a self-help book nor talked to a therapist or even had a close friend who he can open his heart to. I’ve been his only source of self-help, therapy and financial support. His behavior has improved because I’ve helped him see things differently. However, when I’m not there, he can’t regulate himself and still can’t communicate what he needs and feels. Now I am determined to draw my boundaries—I cannot and will not be his translator forever because no one else gives me that kind of support and I am completely drained emotionally to keep taking on this role. In my whole life I have been the one holding everyone’s life together, and I am absolutely exhausted. I’ve been protecting my brother since I was 3 and my mom since I was 9, when I had mastered verbal attacks and used them like a machine gun. My mom never had the communication skills to talk to my dad differently that wouldn’t trigger his emotional flashbacks. I was able to verbally attack him by simply stating facts and articulating his insecurities and insufficiencies on his behalf. I would pinpoint to the things he refused to see in himself and force him to answer those questions honestly whenever he tried to dodge them. I verbalized the things he couldn’t verbalize himself and he also needs everything intellectualized for him to figure things out so what I’ve done has helped him over the years. But then, once again, it has always been all my work, not his own work. My energy, wellness and time are not infinite. By allocating so many emotional resources to him I am suffocated in other areas of my life, and all for what? Just so that he and my mom and my family could have some level of peace. Then what about my peace? What about my pursuit of fulfillment in my life, in my other relational intimacies? They have all been drained as a result of my effort to protect my parents. Nobody protects me ever and for decades I’ve always felt and believed that I’m not worthy of protection. Today I choose myself for the first time; I choose to protect myself first before I protect anyone else for the first time. I don’t believe in that voice in my head anymore. And I deserve to be protected. 

By cutting him off from my family, he is not losing his support network. On Monday when I asked him to leave my house, he refused. When I was in Sapporo I already told him to leave my house on the phone and he wouldn’t. On Monday at 5am I was going to get him a cab back to his place but it was too early so I drove him myself, on 3 hours of sleep, with an appointment at AIT to catch at 7:55am. His place is about a 70-min drive from my place. I was speeding most of the time at 6am and got him to his place within 40 minutes. On Tuesday I still went to the hospital on his behalf to see his doctor, to get his medication, and delivered the drugs to him on my own. I first tracked his location on my phone and saw that he was buying grocery in the market. I tried to chase him down but he started to ride his scooter so I couldn’t. Then I went to multiple local pharmacies to check which one has all the medication he needs and I offered to pay them to have the medication delivered to him, but none of them could do that. It was 40 degrees btw and I was really sleep deprived and solving all these problems all alone, even though he has two other sons. Then I drove to his house, knocked on his door. He was surprised to see me but wanted to shut me out right away. I offered to drive him to the nearby pharmacy that has his medication so that he could sense the way to it and he could ride the scooter there on his own. He turned me down and told me he only needed the address. I also told him that the doctor said his urine acid is lower now but if he’s still hurting from his gout, it’s still his diet. I said I’d have gout free food delivered to him every day and have someone check on him daily. He turned that down as well. I told him that in the future he’s not going to the hospital in my neighborhood. I’ll transfer him to a hospital closer to him. He said, “no. I’m blind and I can’t get there.” I said, “I will set up the government taxi for you and have a social worker accompany you. How much money do you have in your easy card? I’ll put more money in there. ” (OK the social safety net in Taiwan is really comprehensive.)

After that I drove for another 30 minutes to a non-profit to figure out the logistics of getting him long term care. In the end I’d still have to call the city government and have him evaluated first. He will get an aide who can buy him food, cook for him, pick up his meds and take him to his doctor. These resources are available for him so we can’t continue to halt our lives just to do these things. In terms of his emotional regulation, he behaves much better in front of people who he doesn’t know well, say social workers. People who are intimate with him cause too much emotional flashback for him so that he loses his ability to regulate himself. I’ve been the only one who helps him regulate himself but he can’t rely on me anymore. I want to have an intimate relationship in my life without me falling into the role of being someone’s savior or fixer again. For the first time in my life, I finally feel that I have a choice. I used to be so fatalistic and believed no one had a choice; I’ve seen the issue more clearly now. My inner strength wasn’t big enough for me to choose myself first before; I offered too much compassion to others but never myself. But now with all the inner work I’ve done, I am giving myself compassion first. Everyone should do that to themselves too.

The restraining order is for my mom and my X2B, to make sure he does not come to my house again. Legally I still have a duty to support his livelihood, so do my two brothers. He needs a new support network; whether he’s capable of letting the social workers into his life, people in his neighborhood into his life, that’s his inner work. He can continue to have superficial connections with them and that’s his work, his problem to figure out himself. What we know for sure is that our family is not a good support network for him, even though we’ve spent decades together and are biologically related. His inability to have intimacy with others is causing himself too much pain when being with us, let along the pain he’s caused his family. This is where we draw the line. The restraining order is not forever either. It lasts two years and can be renewed. The court will mandate psychological counseling and treatment. Whether he’s capable of rising up in those two years is a wild card. Maybe he’d be dead before the restraining order ends. Maybe he needs much more resources than what the government provides, then it’s not my problem anymore. He’s made multiple very irresponsible and impulsive financial choices his whole life and he has to live with the consequences on his own. Nobody will clean up the mess for him anymore. 

No, the abandoned does not deserve to be abandoned. But it depends on how much work this abandoned person has done on themselves. If they’re still shadowed by their traumas, hurting others consciously or subconsciously, then they will end up being abandoned again. I don’t like to look at this in a black or white framework, or a right or wrong framework. What they suffered as a child was wrong; what they’ve done to others when they’re older is wrong. However, it’s generational. The people who abused them when they were little were victims of abuse as well. It goes on generation after generation, until there’s finally one person who’s powerful enough to break it, or to stop having kids. Those who can’t shed their baggage surely don’t deserve their baggage, but social isolation is the consequence they have to live with if they don’t shed that baggage, for whatever reason they can’t shed it. (Most of the time it’s probably because of the financial cost, the time, the intellectual depth, the courage, their social surroundings, their neighborhood, their luck of finding a good therapist). 

So now let’s get to your deepest fear. I don’t think that will be you one day. When I see you now, I see what I saw 13 years ago, from the very first moment I met you. There’s a little boy who’s so bright and sensitive and sees the world in the most surprising way, like what a little boy always does. That little boy was forced to grow up too quickly so he’s not exactly comfortable with the structure he’s been trapped inside. He has so much humor in the way he sees things and the whole world becomes so much lighter whenever you see things through his eyes; nothing is that scary anymore. That’s a gift that’s really rare in this world. He has the wisdom and strength to do the inner work, to choose himself first, and to protect himself first. He will get there. I know so.