So I am about to go on holiday back to my home country, by extension my childhood home, and I decided to spend a few weeks somewhere away first to get some more time by myself away from work and having fun and to really enjoy the time off.
I know that in the past when I spent time with my parents, I basically turn into full on avoidance mode. Both of them work. Basically my mother’s games and shame tricks drain me to no avail until I get out of the house, whilst my father is getting older and quickly getting on with his life. I basically have to find excuses to be out of the house all the time or else I go crazy, which works for me when I am on holiday because then I can make best use of my time there. On their off time they basically just sit in front of the TV on their recliners and enjoy their time off from work.
A few months ago I told him that I was going to rent a truck and help throw out some stuff from the house, like the old sofa. Then my dad piped up, and for the first time ever I saw him worried about some ‘thing’ he cared about. Little did I know, he has owned that sofa for maybe forty years. And he began to explain to me how his plan was to re-furnish it with new leather, but he never got around to it. He could even mention the quote he was given to do it twenty years ago or so.
That’s when all these memories started flooding through my mind. He was an architect before I was born. He wanted to build a houseboat, and he even built a scale model of this thing that I remember playing with as a kid. And then another memory where he confessed to me plans of laying some concrete and building a garage in front of the house – also never happened. And I should mention this house was bought, it wasn’t designed and built according to any plans he might have had for a house. And before he met my mother he sculpted a statue that was taken down and very recently put back up for public display.
Last year my father was diagnosed with cancer and is currently going through radium therapy. I need to spend time with him, but he does nothing by himself. As I said he is getting older and even though he still works all week I dread the day in the future when I will get a lone phone call from my mother.
He doesn’t do anything outside work by himself. He is a kind man always spending time with my mother, always travelling with her, helping her out, etc. This means that when I do spend time with him it is always with her. In my childhood we used to bike ride together, but these days he is too out of shape for it. So I just have to figure out how to get him alone, right?
Well it isn’t as easy as that. When I have got him alone in the past basically every word that comes out of his mouth has my mother close along side it too. They are “very happy together”. They are like the same person, and in my mind he is an amazing example of how a “very happy together” marriage still will absorb the male identity into a pile of goo.
These days when I get to talk to him over the phone by himself, there comes a silence, and he brings up me being alone. I have already told him to not worry about me and that I have everything that I could possibly want, friends around me, plenty to do, am single and happy. Today he asked if I were lonely, I told him of course not I have plenty to do. I thought he was sympathising because he knows what life is like being alone. But it made no sense because I never gave any indication that I was feeling alone. Then it hit me like a lump in my stomach.
He might be feeling more alone than I could ever imagine.
I need ideas of how to get him on his own, physically and mentally, so I can have a real conversation with him before it’s too late. Suggestions, MGTOW?
tripvan 4 years ago.
