Life in Hell

What act, or combination of acts, would make you turn your back on a family member?
We all have ideas when we are watching other families from the outside, for example a beaten wife and mother. I am sure more than one of you has said “I wouldn’t stand that for a minute”, “he would be out on his ass”, or “if a man ever hit me I’d kick his butt”.
This is an overt action that is difficult to disguise or keep secret (although many women do.
What about the silent abuses that no one see’s, the comments and psychological battles that occur, are these any less abusive?
How many days, months, years would it take to get fed up?
When you have a family member that is so dishonest, so manipulative that you live you life being hyper-vigilant to all things going on around you, that you are suspicious of everything they do because chances are they are up to something.
Always having to hide any possessions of value for fear they may be stolen and pawned for cash. Normal daily things need to be rationed because this person is not pulling their weight in the family unit.
What if this person was the head of the household, and you are dependent on them? You cannot get them to move out, they have bled you dry of every dime you get because they cannot support themselves or their spouse and pets.
How can you love someone because they are an immediate family member (in this case my father), yet despise the sight of them. How can you wish someone dead but still think you need them because they are your only way out of the financial mess he has created?
For years my father and I have had an adversarial relationship, he has never been a “good father’ a “good provider” or a good example to follow.
It is my opinion that the head of the household should support the family he chose to have, not depending on them to bail him out of one financial mess after another.
Living off his wife’s family’s money and his children’s inheritances, bleeding every one around him dry, while refusing to get a job to pay his own way.
Going so far as to forge signatures of other family members to embezzle funds from family trusts and inheritances. Psychologically abusing all the other family members, stealing his children’s futures, college funds, blaming his own daughter for being raped, playing favorites between the two daughters, then later admitting he “backed the wrong horse”, because he drove that daughter to drug addiction.
Could you respect a man who went to his 15 year old daughter asking her to pay the mortgage payment on the house? Or could you look him in the eye after he doesn’t hold a job for most of his married life, depending on the money from his wife and children.
Hiding bills that are past due so severely as to have the power shut off for 2 weeks!! Could you look that man in the eye? Could you respect a man who put his family through these atrocities?
Never apologizing for the messes he makes, he just waits for one of us to find something worth pawning to pay off his debts. This is a man with no remorse, no sense of family values or a work ethic, the only things that faze him are the situations that affect him directly, and he is a sociopath in every sense of the definition:

· Glibness and Superficial Charm
· Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
· Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
· Pathological Lying
has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
· Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
· Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
· Incapacity for Love
· Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
· Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
· Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
· Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
· Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
· Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
· Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
· Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.



Other Related Qualities:
· Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
· Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
· Authoritarian
· Secretive
· Paranoid
· Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
· Conventional appearance
· Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
· Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
o Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
· Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
· Incapable of real human attachment to another
· Unable to feel remorse or guilt
· Extreme narcissism and grandiose
· May state readily that their goal is to rule the world

(The above traits are based on the psychopathy checklists of H. Cleckley and R. Hare.) - http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html

This criterion fits him to a tee, how do you live with someone like that, and still think they are going to get you out of the dire financial mess he has brought upon out family? Why do I want to keep believing that he can pull us out of this mess? And I am on disability, every dime that comes in goes directly back into the household, there is no money left over to buy basic necessities, like underwear. We have to ration our toothpaste, ration our showers, ration our food…yet he walks about like he is owed something, that this mess is all someone else’s fault and he played no part in the complete ruination of an entire family.
I have such a quandary about this man…yes he is my father – would I pick him as a friend if we were not related, an emphatic NO! I depise what he has done to my mother, and continues to do. He is all about control, he is a misogynist, yet walks around like he is the king of all he surveys, and that he is such a patient and caring person, that he as far from being a chauvinist as I am of being Marilyn Monroe.
The head games he is always playing, he waits until there are no witnesses and then he makes his move, his hurtful spiteful comments. When confronted he responds like a juvenile, pouting, going to bed without his supper…literally this is what he does.
Everyone else should give up something during this financial crunch but him.
I feel so very trapped, I feel I have no way out of this mess.
I live in a workshop in a barn on our property, it has no amenities like plumbing, or closets….it is just a rectangle shaped room that is about 400 sq ft, and no screens on the 2 windows so I can open them up and get fresh air since I currently reside with 11 cats in this cramped space. And once again, he does not see this as abnormal – after all he reside on the second floor to the house all by himself – 3 bedrooms, 6 closets and a full bathroom!
This past year he has borrowed more from lenders and friends that he has earned…we are currently awaiting a foreclosure notice on our house… He hide all the important bills like the electric bill, so we don’t know when it is going to be shut of next, and the mortgage bill, don’t don’t how long that has gone unpaid, the phone and internet bills…
The only thing I know for sure is our satellite TV because I had that shut off.
In the last eight months we have gone without power for 2+ weeks, (that’s no water either), I have had a steroid psychosis episode that resulted in 7 or 7 police offices responding to my home pointing guns at me. I now have to take anti –psychotics to avoid that from happening again. All this is the result of one man, and he walks about completely uncaring about everything that does not directly effect him. No one else’s pain and suffering even reaches his ears…its all about him, and how dare Mom and I run out of money for him to leach off of….how horrid it is that he has to work when he is 74 years old…when he has not help down a job for most of my life!! He never planned for his or Moms future, he never got life insurance for either of them, hell, he never even had a savings account!!!
He pines away for his other estranged daughter who has been a junkie since she was15 and has cause this family nothing but money and grief, you that is the one he misses….
I am the one who is here, I am the one who is keeping food on the table, I am the one who has supplied him with a car to drive since he drove his into the ground, I even pay for his auto insurance on the dead car sitting in the drive way, because it has to be insured because he used it as collateral for a personal loan to get us out of hock, which it barley scratched the surface of what we owe.
He is a bitter, mean man when he is around his ‘family’, but if an outsider is around he cons them into thinking he is the sane one and what he has to pout up with living with me and his parasitic daughter (that’s me) leeching off him and all this money he supposedly makes…when it is money borrowed, on my co signature, it is my several hundred dollar a month contribution to pay for fuel for the boiler so we can have hot water, it is me who buys the groceries and pet food…He never acknowledges any of this because he gives the impression he is entitled to it all….he lives by the adage: what mine is mine and what’s yours is mine…
How does one get out from under someone like this when you are in the same living arrangement?
I have been trying to find grants for the disabled (yes I am legally disabled), to get assistance to get my own place, but now I do not even have a drivers license since there was no money left over from my check to pay for it….and now he has complete control….
It is making me go over the edge….I just want to die and get this stupid fucking life over with!!!