As part of my ongoing path to healing, there are some people to whom I wish to address. They may never read this, but I still want to say some things to them. I am going to avoid using last names, but to those of you who know, you will know to whom I am addressing.

Tammy – We met in grade 8, and we had adventures throughout high school. You were always loud, and brash. There are so many memories that I have from the 32 years of friendship that we shared. I remember you getting Raphael to apologize because the women’s bathroom was closed, and you had to use the men’s room, even though it had nothing to do with Raph. I can remember the teacher quietly requesting to give you a neck massage, during English 12, because it was the only way to keep you quiet. He thought it better to have two people not working, rather than the 8 people that you would engage in conversation. After high school, I drifted away, but I never lost track of you. When the 10 year reunion came up, I knew exactly how to contact you, and you seemed excited for us to be back in touch. When I discussed the idea of moving to England, you conspired with Cathie, and set me up on a blind date. During the blind date, you and Cathie even had me change your daughter’s diaper, on the floor in Cathie’s living room, to demonstrate to Christina that I was good husband and father material. For 32 years, we were friends. You were someone that I could turn to when things were getting tough. You were someone that I could trust to help me see the path through the forest, when I was getting lost. You were the one that then stabbed me in the back, and used my secrets against me, the moment that I needed you the most. I was at the lowest point in my entire life. My world was crumbling and falling around me. I had just attempted suicide, twice, and was planning my third attempt, and you turned on me, and made it clear that you were a ‘fair weather friend’. 32 years of friendship, flushed down the toilet. What is worse, is that you continued to pretend to be my friend, and then told my secrets to the enemy. I was hurting, and in pain, and you kicked me hard to keep me down. The only explanation that makes sense, is that you wanted my next suicide attempt to succeed. You wished me dead.

Cathie – We met in Grade 9. You met Christina in college. We lost touch after high school graduation, as I drifted away. Like so many of my high school friends, we reconnected at the 10 year reunion and the years that followed. When I was looking at moving to England, you and Tammy conspired to find me a girlfriend, as you felt that would be a great way to keep me in the Country. Ultimately, Chris and Tammy, you and Mike, Christina, and I met for a dinner as a way for Christina and I to meet. That meeting went well, and the six of us returned to your and Mike’s condo. You and Tammy convinced me to change Morgan’s diaper right there on your living room floor, because you were trying to ‘sell’ me to Christina as a great prospective boyfriend. One detail you forgot to double check upon, is that Christina had not yet broken up with her previous boyfriend when this date occurred. That became something of a pattern for her ultimately. Start up with the new guy, before being broken up with the previous guy, but more on that later. Although perhaps you did know, and did not care. Newsflash, Mike has been cheating on you for the entire time that I have known him. But as is the case with that sort of information, I could never tell you. The most common outcome when someone tells you that your partner is cheating, is that you ‘kill the messenger’. Mike would brag to Pete and I about his conquests. When (different) Tammy’s life was falling apart and she moved in with you for a while, she would comment to me about the frequent hints, suggestions, and innuendos that Mike would offer to her. When he and I were alone, he would tell me all about what he wanted to do with Christina. The guy is scum, but I guess that the two of you deserve each other.

Amanda – You are a tough one for me to truly know how to feel. You might be one of the people that I could forgive. But at the same time, you are smart enough to have been able to make your own choices, and choose your own actions. I keep hoping that you were brought into a conversation with Tammy, Cathie, and Christina, and you simply believed that what they were saying about me was true, but you never actually cared enough to find out. After 32 years of friendship, how were you able to believe the lies that were being told about me? I think that is what hurt the most, the fact that you were able to believe the lies, and never thought to ask me about what is happening. That you could just easily accept that I was cheating on and physically abusing Christina.

Diane – We met in the mid nineties, introduced by your brother, who was friends with my late brother-in-law. You fell into the category of people I just don’t think that I can trust anymore. At best, you were trying to be neutral in the situation between Christina and myself, and at worst, you were actively spying on me for her, and the sad reality is that I truly do not know. After she and I separated, you would make positive and encouraging comments to Christina, but not to me. When I was emotionally destroyed, you were not there. Your children have slowly abandoned me, and I don’t know if you even noticed when I cut you off. At one time, your family was my second family, and now we are nothing, and I don’t know if you even care.

Jonoh – Where do I even start? You were one of my best friends, my business partner, and god-father to my children. I overlooked so many problems, because that’s what one does for a friend. When we were business partners, you gave me one of your clients, because you had more work than you could handle, and I had the time. However, you insisted on keeping the pay for that job, because it was your client. I accepted that. We were both struggling, and I was trying to be supportive. When I had to hand you my client because of a family emergency, you insisted on keeping the pay for that job, because you had done all of the work, even though that was contrary to the policy you had set just a couple of months earlier. Then when it was realized that the website that you had created for my client, was so full of bugs and bad code, that I had to tear the entire thing down, and rewrite it from scratch, you refused to help, because it was my client. You still kept the money though. When your wife made a comment on Facebook insulting you, I had thought in jest, and I agreed with her, you ‘unfriended’ me. When I realized, I apologized and we moved forward. When Christina and I broke up, you ‘unfriended’ me again, you claim to try and get my attention. I reached out and tried reconciling with you once again, but your agenda seemed to be more about trying to get information out of me, and try to get me to reconcile with Christina. Even after I was telling you some of the things that she had done to me, you seemed to think that I was the one who needed to apologize and crawl back to her. Did you notice when I ‘unfriended’ you? You are the epitome of ‘fair weather friend’. Anytime I truly needed you, you were nowhere to be found. Also, you are god-father to my four children. For a Christian, isn’t that a covenant with God? When was the last time you spoke with any of them, or even checked on their well-being? I lose track regarding your beliefs, but the last time we spoke, you were back to being devout. I am god-father to two kids. I may not be Christian, but I know where both of those kids are, and how they are doing. That was a sacred promise that I made to those children, even if they were too young to remember. Half of my kids have no idea who you are, and the other half say that they cannot remember the last time that they heard from you. What I do know, is that my life is better without you in it.

Jennifer – You were more friends with Christina than you were with me, but I still thought of you as a friend. I understand why you picked Christina’s side. You are a loyal friend. You are someone that truly deserves better than the wolf in sheep’s clothing that is Christina. She is using you. That is all she does. That is all that she is capable of doing. She has no loyalty to anyone but herself, and you deserve so much better. She is preying on your naivety. I am curious whether she ever told you about her affair. I suspect she has never mentioned it. I am certain she told you that I cheated on her. She knows that I cheated, because her crack-head brother, who by his own acknowledgement was stoned on crack at the time, ‘heard’ me cheating. Apparently I then confessed the entire thing to him. It was quite the shock to me when those accusations started. All so he could regain control of his tanning salons, so he could return to draining them for money to buy more crack.

Shane – You are one of the shittiest people that I have ever had the misfortune to meet. Even your own father was telling me about the illegal things you were doing, like trying to turn his back shed into a marijuana grow op. Since marijuana was illegal, at the time, at all you managed to do was destroy his shed, which you never tried to repair, that says something about your character. You weren’t planning on growing just for your personal use either, and this was, at least, your second attempt at getting into a growing and distribution operation. When I was between jobs, you suggested that I take a gig trafficking drugs. I hope that you have been honest with Tanya about just how much you cheated on Barb. After Barb could no longer ignore your cheating any longer and dumped you, you were boasting to me about all of the women with whom you had been cheating. You were proud of your conquest list. You were proud that half the women were already married. You tried to convince me that cheating on Christina, your sister, would be a good thing. Like most drug addicts, you believed that your addiction was not as bad as other people, and that you were in control. Your own dealer approached me to try and hold an intervention for you! How many addicts have an addiction so out of control, that their dealer is worried. When your addiction got so out of control that you were about to lose your tanning salon business, your sister asked me to come to Calgary and help. I dropped everything, and I came. That cost me the consulting business that I was starting. I had just landed my first client a couple of days before I got the call requesting help. I had to pass the client to Jonoh, who bungled the job so badly that my consulting business was DOA. I then got fly to Calgary, live in a hotel for the next two months, and try to salvage what I could of your business. My daughter got to celebrate her third birthday in a strange town, with no friends, because of you. You were a self-centred asshole then, and from what I hear from the kids today, you have not changed. I don’t think you have any concept of how much I did for you during those two months. I managed your tanning salons for two months, and during that time, I had to hire all new staff, and an on-site manager, and I had to train them all myself. I wasn’t given any training on the tanning equipment myself, but I learned fast, and trained others. I had my vehicle vandalized by angry staff and customers when I had to make the hard decisions, resulting from your actions. Through it all, I managed to line up a buyer for your salon, for far more than it was worth, to try and salvage some of your mother’s money. Or did you forget that you had borrowed $200,000 from your mother to buy two salons. One of the salons I couldn’t save. The lease was ending, and there was no new location lined up, and I was in a foreign city with no time to site visit. I was too busy working open to close, seven days a week, running the salon that was still operational. I was even interviewed by the News, trying to salvage what I could from the ruins that I had been handed. I had a buyer lined up. I’d talked her from $100,000 to $120,000 in a desperate attempt to regain some of your mother’s money. You convinced your mother to turn down the offer, and over the next several years, you got your mother to invest an additional $400,000 into the one salon, and ultimately sold it for $15,000 (I think). Hindsight is wonderful. Instead of your mother accepting the offer I’d lined up, and only losing $80,000, she listened to you, and lost $585,000. Yet you claim to be the better businessman. During my time in Calgary, my instructions from your mother were to do whatever was necessary to keep you happy, until you legally transferred ownership to her. You took great advantage of that. In order to try and keep you happy, I got to buy you drugs, become an accessory to felony robbery, you took me to a strip club, and tried to ‘buy’ me a lap dance. I put the word buy in quotes, because you were going to buy me the lap dance using my money. I got to listen to you brag and boast about all of the women with whom you cheated on your fiancée. You were proud of how much you had cheated on her. You encouraged me to smoke crack with you. I watched you get kicked out of hotels, for which I then had to pay to clean up the mess. Your dealer approached me expressing concern about you, because, according to him, you were the worst addict with whom he had dealt. You cost me over $20,000 cash, and my consulting business, but you were family, so I did my best. To thank me, you attempted to destroy my marriage. Even after that, I still tried to help you. You stole from your mother, and from me, to fund your crack habit, and the closest I ever got to an apology, was your comment of “That was in the past. Get over it.” Throughout my life, I have had several friends that wound up addicted to drugs. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, those that survived, came out the other side ashamed and embarrassed for their actions and sought forgiveness from those they had wronged. I can forgive those who are remorseful. Your arrogance refused to allow you to admit that perhaps you’d made any mistakes. Your actions cost your mother hundreds of thousands of dollars, her house, and ultimately her life. I truly believe that you disappointed her to death. She saw the failure that you had become, and she simply gave up. But not before extracting a promise from Christina that the two of you would make peace with each other. She did not bother to ask my opinion on that, because to her, I was irrelevant. Recognizing and atoning for the mistakes you made during addiction is such a significant part of the healing process, that it is 3 of the 12 steps in the 12-step program:

8. Making a list of wrongs done to others and being willing to make amends for those wrongs
9. Contacting those who have been hurt, unless doing so would harm the person
10. Continuing to take personal inventory and admitting when one is wrong

3 steps in a 12-step process is 1/4 the total steps. With me, you decided to skip those steps. With me, you showed me how much I actually mattered to you. Your sister supported your treatment of me, which showed me how much I mattered to her also. The one that I truly feel sorry for, is your current wife.

Christina – My ex-wife. I am so happy that I am finally divorced from you. Words cannot truly express how wonderful it feels to know that, in this one tiny area, I won. We dated for one year, and we were married for 15 years, and it wasn’t until that very last year of marriage that I discovered the real you. Looking back, there were lots of signs, but love is blind. I justified, and made excuses for your poor behaviour. Did you know that at one point or another, all four of our kids have questioned whether you love them? Selena is able to point out actions that do, that demonstrate to her that I love her, yet she genuinely does not know whether you love her. The reality, is that you do not love her. Not in the conventional meaning of the word. To you, she is an object that can be used to make yourself look good. If that makes her happy, great, but it does not actually matter whether she enjoys herself, as long as you are perceived as being a good mother. You used to make elaborately decorated cakes for the kids, for their birthdays, but only if there was a party where other parents would be in attendance. You were not making the cake for the kid, but to look good to the other mothers. You wanted them to envy your cakes. That is why you never made a cake for me, for any of my birthdays. I never got to have a party, so there was nobody to show off your cake decorating skills. An elaborately decorated cake, made just for my enjoyment, was pointless, as you would not get the glory that you crave. You never actually cared about me, all you cared about was me making you look good. Which is why every time we had a rough patch, you made certain that I heard about how upset you were, and you were certain to remind me about how useless I was. You slowly eroded my sense of self-worth, until all that was left, was an utter dependency on you to make me feel better about myself. When you were happy with me, I was happy, but if you were upset with me, I was scum. Over the years, you spent more and more time being upset with me, until happy no longer occurred. I was miserable and dying, and too mixed up to realize that you were the problem. That is the amazing power of a narcissist. You gaslit me into believing that all of our problems were my fault. Any problem that I had with you, was all in my head. Only your problems mattered. Only what you wanted mattered. You are simply evil. Worse, now I get to watch as you mentally and emotionally abuse the children, and there is nothing that I can do about it. Sydney suffered from functional abdominal pain for 4 years, because of the stress and anxiety she had dealing with your and my relationship. Spencer suffered from rage issues, misogyny, and self-hatred, and you did not notice. Sawyer and Selena currently struggle with self-hatred, and self doubt. At least they are all starting to see you for who you truly are. You will always be their mother, but as they become adults, they are going to start reducing the frequency that they contact you, and they are going to avoid you when you contact them. I doubt that any will ever go ‘no contact’, but I do know that you are going to wind up miserable and alone, and you will blame me for what is entirely your own fault. That’s okay. I can handle your hatred.

When I first started writing this post, I thought that I was going to talk about that last year we were together. How, in a desperate attempt to salvage something, I suggested an open marriage, and how eagerly you embraced that concept. How you would send me pictures of you with other men. You sleeping with multiple men in the same night. You having threesomes in our trailer in the driveway, while the kids were asleep in their beds. Or perhaps your revelation to me of the affair that you had several years earlier, and that you genuinely did not know the father of one of the kids. You can deny that all you want, but heard the fear in your voice, when you begged me to know the results of the DNA test. It was definitely a Maury moment. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. I have never denied the mistakes that I have made. I made some massive mistakes. I made mistakes that cost us a huge amount of money. But I was not the only one who got scammed for money, but despite what you claim now, you were in full support of my ‘investment’ at the time. You were dreaming of the money we were going to receive. You were looking at new houses, new furniture, and new cars. Of course when it all turned out to be bullshit, you changed your tune, and laid the blame entirely at my feet, and claim that you were against it from the start. I do recall you sending money to multiple of your ‘boyfriends’, to help them out. Guys that you had never met, and only communicated with online. My favourite is still the guy that faked a car accident and amnesia to get out of having to meet with you, and you believed every word of it. But now I am just getting petty. This was not supposed to be about me being petty. I wanted to try and tell some of my side, from my point of view. You and your brother, Shane, just bring out the worst parts of me. I wish that I could just be done with you, and never have to think about you again, but we share four kids, and as such, we are connected for the rest of our lives. There will be graduations, weddings, and grand-children. Although, when they look at the toxicity of our relationship, the kids often say that they have no interest in having relationships or children of their own, so perhaps there won’t be that many reasons for us to interact in the decades to come.

As S2 gets older, I have had the opportunity to have several conversations lately regarding the Trolley Problem. It has been nice to be able to have mature conversations with him, and to see him slowly understanding that the world is bigger and more complex than he realized. But as I talk to him, I start seeing more real world examples of the Trolley Problem and how important it is for everyone to understand that no win situations are far more commonplace than we might realize.

The emotional damage that I suffer from, as a result of the Narcissistic Abuse that I received from my ex-wife remains a daily struggle that impacts my life constantly. I am overly eager to please, and any failure or criticism that I receive can devastate me. This causes my current partner a daily, real world Trolley Problem. Does she share with me the emotional struggles that she might have, or point out to me the mistakes that I may have made, which might send me into a downward spiral causing me to contemplate suicide, or does she hold it all in, and not have any release for her own emotions and frustrations. Everybody has good days and bad days, but when you worry that having a bad day could cause a loved one to try and hurt themselves causes an extra level of pain that nobody deserves.

In an earlier posting, I discussed a few songs that have special meaning to me. That is a tiny fragment of the list of songs that have an impact upon me. Over the years, friends and family have shared with me some of the pains and traumas that they have endured, and the knowledge haunts me, because I worry that my own children will experience similar traumas and that I am unable to protect them.

The number of females I know who have been sexually abused and raped scares me to contemplate. To think that there are that many men out there who do not understand the basic concept of “No means NO” makes me worried for my daughters’ future.

I can remember once leaving college, and as I was about to get in my car, I was approached by a woman, who deliberately stood on the opposite side of my open car door from me, and asked if I could just stay there for a moment. She was concerned that she was being followed by a small group of men, and just wanted a safe place to let them pass her. So many thoughts ran through my mind during the following minute. First was how hurt had that woman been in her past that the mere act of some guys behind her, on a public street, caused her that much concern. Second, was whether the group of males had done anything to cause this woman fear, or whether it was their mere proximity to her that worried her. Lastly was that I was happy to be able to give her the brief moment of peace that she was seeking. I made certain to keep the open car door between her and I, and made no unnecessary movements. Once the group of males had passed, she thanked me and carried on her way.

I had a female friend that, as a teenager, stopped trusting her own father. Her father had done nothing wrong, but so many of her friends had been abused by their fathers, my friend just assumed that this is what fathers did, and it caused her to fear her own father, and when would he start. Another friend told me about being sexually abused growing up, but worries about the consequences of revealing to her family that it happened and whom was her abuser. Another friend tells about the emotional abuse her husband caused her, including cheating on her, and convincing her to get an abortion.

How do we help the people who truly need it? Revealing their secrets is a fundamental betrayal of their trust, but to not tell the people that could help them also feels wrong. The severe abuses that people get to suffer, and not reveal reminds me that everyone could use therapy, but the wrong therapist can cause more harm than help. My own marriage counsellor was clearly biased and sided with my ex-wife, to the point where she called me an asshole. This caused severe enough emotional damage that it is part of what triggered my last suicide attempts. The idea that my own therapist felt I was not worthy of being helped. Yet she has a high rating on Google. We circle back to the trolley problem. The wrong help is worse than no help. But if we don’t help, we are also wrong. Recognizing that we are out of our depth and trying to coax our friends to seek help feels like the right answer, but getting help is expensive, and forcing someone to choose between feeding their kids or getting help for themselves can make those hurting feel selfish.

In the end, I circle so much that I start to spiral, and that is when I turn back to music. Songs about emotional abuse, families breaking up, love ending, losing loved ones, and dreams ending can help you to remember that you are not alone. For someone to write a song about it, means that they have experienced something similar, and if someone else has experienced similar, maybe you too can survive.

At long last, I have finally managed to find the source of the problem that has been preventing me from creating new posts here. I could get into the technical issues, but nobody really cares about the DNS issues I was having. Hopefully now I can get back to writing, and trying to release some of my personal demons…

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Since my last appearance at court, and under the advice of people whose opinion I respect, I have stopped trying to shield my children from the lies and abuse of their mother. I have always tried to keep myself neutral when talking to the children about their mother. I do not pretend to have a great track record of maintaining that neutrality, but my children could tell that I was trying.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my seven-year-old (S4) about my fight with her mother regarding trying to get the parenting time changed from the current 5-5-2-2 arrangement, to a simpler 7-7 arrangement. S4 was previously in favour of the change, but was now waffling on what she wanted. As we talked, what I discovered, was that her primary reason for wanting to maintain the 5-5-2-2 was because she is a member of the Guiding group now known as Embers (formally Brownies). She very much enjoys Embers, and her mother told her that if we switched to 7-7, she would only be able to attend Ember every two weeks, rather than weekly, because ‘Daddy won’t let her attend during his parenting time’. I explained to my daughter that what her mother had told her was a lie. I told her that not only would I allow her to attend Embers during my parenting time, I had told that to her mother last June, prior to her even being enrolled in Embers. I had also suggested to her mother, that if S4 was enrolled in the unit on the Wednesday night, rather than the group on the Tuesday night, she would be attending Embers in the same group as her best friend. When I explained all of this to S4, her eyes lit up in excitement, and without hesitation she was very clear that she wanted the 7-7 parenting time arrangement. I then asked her why she has been telling me for over a year that she does not really like Sparks and Embers, and only goes because her mother makes her, when she clearly does enjoy Sparks and Embers. She was very clear with her response, that her mother told her to lie to me. I then pointed out to her, that her mother lied to her, and taught her to lie to me.

I was talking to S3 about what he knows about his mother’s reasons for fighting the switch to 7-7, and his reaction is that his mother told him that the only reason that I want 7-7 is because I want to be able to take the children for a week vacation during the summer. What I explained to him, is that while that would be a nice side benefit of the switch, it is not the reason that I am trying to make the change. I also pointed out to him that his mother had already made an offer for a summer swap where we would trade with each other, to give each parent a single full week during the summer. I had a long conversation with him, where I tried to be clear that my motivation is what I believe to be in the kids’ best interests. What I have observed is that the four children experience different levels of stress associated with ‘swap day’. I told him that it is most pronounced in S4, and that she has even told me, on multiple occasions. That because of the radically different rules between the two houses, it can sometimes take her up to two days to adjust to ‘different house, different rules’. I pointed out to S3 that he has had challenges with that concept also. As I talked with S3, I asked him to think about how on Sunday they were at my house, and Monday they swapped. If it took S4, two days to adjust to different house, what day would she be adjusted. As he realized that she would be adjusted Wednesday morning, and that Wednesday was a swap back to my house, he realized how that could cause S4 stress. I then added that they are swapping again on Friday, and if S4 arrives at my house on Wednesday, what day is she adjusted. He realized that she adjusts, just in time to swap again. Realizing that his little sister is in a near constant state of ‘whose house am I in, and what are the rules?’, he accepted that my reason for wanting the 7-7 was not just something I wanted, but something that might actually be in the best interests of the children. The ten-year-old can figure it out, but their 49+ year old mother thinks I am being selfish with the request.

The fourteen-year-old, S2, brought up something that really makes me question what would be the correct action for me to take. It is known that their mother will be receiving an eviction notice in the next few months, but we do not know exactly when. The property owners rezoning request has been approved, and as soon as he is ready to proceed to the next step, he will be issuing her four months notice, and once she has vacated, he is demolishing the current house, and dividing the lot into two lots. For 2.5 years, mother has been receiving an amazing deal on rent, because when she took the place, it was known that it would be short term, due to the rezoning application. It was only expected to be 6-8 months, and even if she received her eviction notice the first of this month, she will have been there 3 years by the time she has to move. She currently has a five bedroom house, on a large (for the area) yard, and her monthly rent is around what people here pay for a 2 bedroom suite. Unless she gets amazingly lucky, when she moves, it is expected that she will wind up in a 3 bedroom place. S2 was suddenly mentioning that when they move, mother is planning on getting him an airbed to sleep in the living room of the suite, because he refuses to share a room with S3 and S4, however S1 refuses to share with S4. My overthinking brain starts trying to muddle through the mess. Logic says that S1 and S4 should share as they are both female, and S2 and S3 should share as they are both male. I get no say in how their mother runs her household, so if she wants to put S2 on an airbed in the living room, I cannot complain directly, but my mind starts wondering why S1 would think herself so entitled that she deserves a private room, when all of her siblings need to share, and why would mother think that it is okay to give S1 a private room, and S2 no room at all? My mind starts spinning at the stupidity of it all. The concern is that S1 would move into my house full time if not appeased at mother’s house, but that would put me in the dilemma of either supporting S1’s selfishness, or forcing S1 to live in mother’s toxic environment. The suggestion was made that if she did that, I should make S1 and S4 share a room at my house. It would only be during the 50% that S4 is here, but might make a point. When I though about it further, a deeper concern came to me. If S1 chooses to live with me, because she is happier at my house, that would give fuel to mother’s lawsuit against me for undue hardship. The only avenue she has for her claim is that my house is preferable to her house, in the children’s view, and that the children would prefer to live with me full time. If S1 came to live with me full time, because she was not happy at her mother’s house, it might add considerable weight to the lawsuit. Plus, the subsequent change to the child support amount that I pay, might cause mother to not be able to afford the 3 bedroom place, which would also add credibility to mother’s undue hardship case. Generally it is just a mess. Fortunately, S1 tells me that she would, grudgingly, accept having to share a room with S4, if necessary, but I wonder if anyone has actually told this to mother?

My counsellor keeps encouraging me to write a book about my journey with Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome (NAS). She tells me that a first-person perspective, especially with the victim being male, is a needed piece for survivors and therapists. The primary challenge I have with such an activity is that NAS leaves me with such huge levels of self-doubt that it is hard for me to put words to paper to try and articulate the emotions with which I continue to struggle.

My ex-wife continues to be controlling and manipulative in every aspect that she can find. I am currently facing yet another lawsuit and trial, because she is incapable of recognizing that the needs of the children are different from her own needs. British Columbia has a child support recalculation service, which will calculate how much child support should be paid, and by whom. Last year I engaged this service, and was pleasantly surprised that they determined that based upon my income, and her income, they reduced my monthly support payment by $155 / month. I knew that she had received a raise during the year, and I had not, so I was hoping for a small reduction in my payments, but the reduction I received was far larger than I had anticipated. My ex-wife is taking me to court, claiming that the housing subsidy she receives from a local women’s shelter should not be counted as part of her income, and is also claiming Undue Hardship, because she is having difficulties making ends meet every month. Her primary argument is that my household is a two-income household, and she is a single mother, therefore I should be paying her more. Unfortunately, something that she seems to have forgotten is that because my fiancé did not give birth to the children, she is not financially responsible for them. Also, due to the economy, and inflation, life is expensive, and most people are having a challenge making ends meet.

We found ourselves in court a month ago, for a Family Management Conference (FMC), and the judge was very quick to question my ex’s lawyer as to the rationale behind the claim that the housing subsidy not be counted as income. It was entertaining listening to the lawyer dance around the issue, and avoid giving any type of logical answer. Ultimately the judge moved the question to a formal trial. During an FMC, the judge is merely trying to mediate a deal between the parties, and is not supposed to give a ruling.

During all of this, I have been trying to change the parenting time arrangement from our current 2-2-5-5 cycle, to a simpler 7-7 cycle. Their mother and I have not been able to agree on a formal parenting time agreement since we separated. The current schedule was arrange during a 6.5 hour 4-way meeting three years ago, and was agreed to as a desperate attempt to have some arrangement. At the time, we agreed to review the schedule after 90 days, and that was in addition to the separation agreement stating we need to review any parenting time arrangements every six months. It has now been 3 years, and their mother refuses to discuss changes because she claims that the current arrangement is working ‘for everybody’. The closest I got to getting her to discuss altering the arrangement to 7-7, was her giving me the reasons why changing was not in the best interests of the kids, yet all of her reasons circled back to what she wanted.

Her two biggest reasons for why it was not in the best interests of the kids, was that the 7-year-old was going to be enrolling in Embers (formally Brownies) in the Fall, and the meetings fall on Tuesday evenings. The current system gives her every Tuesday evening, and if we moved to 7-7, then the 7-year-old would only be able to attend every other week. I agreed that this was not in the child’s best interest, and offered for mother to pick up the child on ‘my’ Tuesday and transport the child to and from Embers, dropper her off to my house after. I did not receive any response to my offer. I also suggested that if we switched to the 7-7 arrangement, the child could be enrolled in the Wednesday evening (currently my parenting day) Embers unit, which is where the child’s best friend attends. It was approximately seven months ago that I made this offer, and just last week, whilst talking to the 7-year-old, she told me that she did not want to switch to 7-7, because her mother had told her that if we switched, I would not permit her to attend Embers during my parenting time, and she really wanted to attend Embers. When I told her what I had offered her mother many months ago, the child was visibly angry and confused. She realized that her mother had both lied to her, and manipulated her, and was very upset about it. When she realized that the opportunity had been available for her to attend with her best friend, she became quite angry at mother having deliberately cheated her of that opportunity. When I asked her about why she had previously always insisted to me that Embers was not something she really enjoyed, and she was now telling me how important Embers is to her, her reaction was a very simple, “Mother asked me to lie to you”. I was then forced to point out to the 7-year-old, who has in recent months received several weeks of grounding due to lying, that her mother had lied to her, and additionally, her mother had encouraged her to lie to me.

The other primary reason their mother has for fighting 7-7, is that it would severely interfere with the 10-year-old attending daycare. While the boy used to attend daycare full time, I pulled him out, during my parenting time, mid last year, for several reasons. Primarily it was a financial decision. I was needing to cut my costs, and paying $210 / month for the boy to attend daycare for 2.5 hours a day, 2-3 days a week, just wasn’t financially logical. Also, I was noticing that his emotional development seemed to be stunted, and was concerned that much of the way he is treated and viewed, might subconsciously encourage him to act younger than his actual age. I hoped that by giving him greater responsibility, I might be able to get him to grow up a bit. Lastly, by his age, it did not make sense to me for him to still be attending daycare. He was 9.5 years old, and I worked from home. Since that time, the daycare has updated their policies, and indicated that all children, once they complete their grade 5 year in elementary school, would become ineligible to attend the daycare, after the complete of the summer. Their mother insists that the boy attending daycare is absolutely necessary, and has told the children that she will be attempting to get a special exemption for the boy to continue in daycare after the completion of 5th grade. The only stated reason that I have heard as to why daycare is necessary for the boy, is because his mother is unable to control his screen time usage when he is at home, unsupervised. The boy is currently happy attending daycare, because he loves to hang out with his friends. When I pointed out that by end of Summer this year, all of his friends will no longer be attending, he was very quick to say that he did not want to attend either. In regard to monitoring the child’s screen time usage, my suggestion is that their mother utilize a screen time monitoring application. We use one in my household, and the annual subscription is ~$90/year.

For a quick mathematical recap, my ex-wife is claiming undue hardship, because the child support payment she receives was reduced by $155/month. In these economically challenging times, that can be a significant amount of money. However, if she were to pull the 10-year-old out of daycare, she would gain ~$210/month. Net gain of $55/month. The screen time monitoring software is $90/year. That subscription would be covered by 2 months of her net gain, leaving her ten months of net gain, totaling ~$550/year. I haven’t even gotten into her monthly food budget. Her monthly food and supplies budget for her house of 5, is ~$300/month greater than the budget for my household of 6. If she cut back by $250/month, that would be an additional savings of $3000/year. A narcissist is almost incapable of accepting that they might be responsible for something, or that they might be the one that is wrong.

Most of what I have written today does not even deal with the stress and anxiety issues that can result from NAS and C-PTSD. For those not familiar with C-PTSD, it stands for Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since the disorder of PTSD was first diagnosed many years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists have realized that there is a distinct difference caused by the original cause of the disorder. PTSD is primarily caused by a singular traumatic incident. If a person is violently assaulted, it can cause a traumatic effect on the individual’s emotional state. However, if the trauma is less significant, but last for a longer period of time, the traumatic effect on the individual’s emotional state is very different, which is where C-PTSD is diagnosed. For myself, 15 years of mental and emotional abuse left a deep trauma, that is very slow from which to recover. While no single incident of abuse was significant, the damage done by the cumulative effect is similar to water erosion. A single drop of water on a stone causes no noticeable damage. But if that single drop continues, constantly, for many years, the damage to the stone becomes very noticeable. Perhaps someday I will have the emotional strength to truly start writing about my journey.

As I struggle through my own personal journey of healing, I have found that listening to music can elicit some powerful emotions, and actually being able to experience emotions can be therapeutic. For so long, I had to shut off my emotions, and just exist in survival mode.

I just discovered a new song that is absolutely brutal emotionally, in a good way, as it really draws me back to my darkest days, and reminds me of what the people left behind after suicide go through. I was fortunate to see the last act on Canada’s Got Talent. Being the last performance of the episode, I knew it would be a ‘Golden Buzzer’ performance, so I took the time to watch, and I am very happy that I did. The song “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi, is heartbreaking to hear, and the performance of the arial artists really brings the pain into reality.

That reminder of the pain and trauma the people left behind have to deal with, is one of the things that keeps me pushing forward, hoping for that ‘light at the end of the tunnel’. Some days I think I can see a light, but it seems so far away. My counsellor reminds me that regardless of how far away the light seems, the fact that I can see it, means I am travelling in the correct direction.

Anther song, that everyone knows, but nobody truly understands is one of the first singles released by Phil Collins. His song “In the Air Tonight” is famous for the everybody breaking into “air drums”, but the lyrics are haunting and confusing. There is a story about how Phil saw someone drowning, and that was part of the inspiration for this song, but the story complete fiction.

The reality is that Phil was going through an ugly divorce, and he wrote this song while trying to deal with his own pain. Even Phil says that he does not know what most of the lyrics mean. Some of the symbolism and metaphors he uses make sense, when one understands the pain from which the song was written. When I think about my ex-wife, the line “Well, if you told me you were drowning, I would not lend a hand” makes perfect sense to me. “I can feel it coming in the air tonight” also rings true for me, as I knew that I would have to end the marriage for years, before I finally found the ‘courage’ to do it. I say courage sarcastically, because I genuinely believed that suicide was the better path. It was only thanks to the love and courage of some friends and family that got me through those darkest of days.

Even the extremely overplayed song “Let It Go” by Idina Menzel from Frozen holds some powerful messages. Elsa lived in fear that people might discover her power, and had been taught by her parents to hide the truth at all costs. When she slips and people get a glimpse of what she can do, she runs away, believing that she can just hide herself away. So much of the song addresses the concept of being forbidden from being who you truly are, which is a reality that a huge percentage of people experience daily. The line “Conceal, don’t feel, don’t let them know. Well, now they know” is how I felt for the majority of my marriage. Don’t allow anyone, including my ex-wife, to know how I truly felt. I had to bury my emotions for fear that someone would discover the truth. Now I am working towards the line “I’m never going back, the past is in the past”. Demi Lovato’s version includes the line “I know I left a life behind, but I’m too relieved to grieve”, which is a concept that people struggling to escape oppressive lives can relate.

Garth Brooks has many amazing songs. “Standing Outside the Fire” from his In Pieces album is about trying to balance the pain of experiencing life, with the safety of staying on the sidelines, but missing the experiences. “Life is not tried, it is merely survived, If you’re standing outside the fire” speaks to the constant struggle of risking yourself, which exposes yourself to pain vs playing it safe, and never being able to truly experience happiness.

The next song I want to talk about is “Story of My Life” by One Direction from their Midnight Memories album. A surprisingly mature song from a group not known for their serious songs. This song explores the realization that no matter how hard you might try in a relationship, the relationship might still end. “Written in these walls are the stories that I can’t explain / I leave my heart open / But it stays right here / Empty for days / She told me in the morning / She don’t feel the same about us in her bones / Seems to me that when I die / These words will be written on my stone.” If you try too hard you may push your partner away because you are perceived as too clingy, and if you give too much space, you may be perceived as not caring. The “Story of My Life” is about the endless cycle of giving the relationship your all, and watching it fail despite your best efforts, only to have to start a new relationship, and watch the cycle repeat itself. This song is has a strong parallel to Garth Brooks’ “Standing Outside the Fire”. If you don’t try, you can protect your heart, but you will not be ‘living’, but by trying, you may find great joy, but you expose yourself to the pain of failure.

Through music I discover that I am not alone. It helps me to grasp some of the emotions with which I struggle. The people who know me often struggle to try and help me, or to even understand me. Despite the unconditional love and support that they provide me, they often cannot understand the weight of the emotions that I carry. I would love to be able to set that weight aside, but that is not how emotions work. I am able to experience joy and happiness, but the concept of ‘being happy’ is almost a foreign concept to me. Those around me sometimes see it is a failure on their part that they cannot make me happy.

I look back on my marriage, and I think it akin to being a POW subjected to daily emotional and psychological abuse. After 15 years of that level of torture, it sometimes seems impossible to believe that I might ever be able to come back to the person that I used to be. She and I have been separated for four years, but I am still learning new and horrifying aspects to Her personality. What’s worse, is that upon a closer inspection, I realize that this new aspect to Her personality was always there, I simply made excuses in my head to justify Her actions, so that I could live with it.

There has been a lot of darkness in my life, and I have not been able to process all of it, before the next piece of darkness hits me. It is through music that I am finding solace. I am not alone in my experiences. There are people out there who understand. Being able to create a song that expresses that pain and vulnerability can become a light for those of us travelling down the dark tunnels.

I found something that I had started writing over four years ago, that I thought better belonged here, rather than hiding in my Dropbox.

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The month of May is known as mental health awareness month, but I think that we should be discussing mental illness year-round. I have struggled with depression for the majority of my adult life, and I take a large amount of medication to try to help me combat the depression. These medications have side effects, not all of which am I aware. Through it all, I keep trying to follow the Cub motto and do my best.

Since I left Agassiz in 1998, my employment situation, for the most part, has not been enjoyable. I have had two of the companies I worked for close down, which left me out of work for a while. I have had bosses that:

• Threatened to commit suicide at least once a week, sometimes suggesting it should be a group suicide of the staff.
• Would scream obscenities at the staff.
• Threw a microwave oven across the room, which flew past employees, because he was angry.
• Nobody respected, and whose instructions were ignored, which caused massive disrespect amongst all of the staff.
• When I was returning to work after my doctor put me on LTD for severe migraines, the boss thought it was a great idea to have me test all of the audio equipment.
• Was unconcerned about staff safety when there were bears wandering the property.
• Fired me (not officially) for not being a millennial

In the past 20 years, I have had one job that I truly enjoyed, but I kept working and stuffing down my emotions because that was what my family needed. Through sicknesses, deaths, depression, financial struggles, and everything else that comes with a marriage, I stayed strong, and I kept stuffing down my emotions, because that was what was needed of me. All the while, my depression deepened, and my stress levels rose. On the outside, people saw me as happy, but on the inside, I felt like I was dying. Nobody around me noticed my struggles, and I became very good at hiding my pain. When I did try to talk to people, I would typically get platitudes, and often simple derision. I allowed the negativity I was receiving to worsen my depression. It is the classic trap of the depressed, to allow other people to make you feel worse. You feel powerless to fight back.

After my last work contract ended, almost two years ago now, I became very depressed. As the months passed, and I could not find work, my depression grew. My medication levels were raised over recommended maximums, as my doctors struggled to combat my negative emotions. At this point, I had been trying for many years to get my partner to notice me and my struggles, but she had her attention elsewhere, and I felt alone, trapped in misery of my own creation. As the year progressed, I realized what I needed to do. My partner and I had been fighting constantly for years. Everything that either of us could find to criticize, we seized upon, and I realized that my children’s’ emotional health was suffering as a result. I made a difficult decision, which surprisingly gave me some comfort. It was time to end the marriage. I needed to accept responsibility for the mistakes that I had made, and try to end things gracefully. Shortly before Christmas, I went to speak with a lawyer to try and determine my options. Her biggest piece of advice was to wait until the new year, so I did not ruin my kids’ Christmas. I heeded her advice.

In January, as I was getting ready to head back to the lawyer, the idea of me going to school presented itself. It made logical sense for me to be living downtown while I was in school, as the commute on transit would have been exhausting. Because while I could take the train in the morning, in the evenings when I would be returning, the train would not be running, and I would be using transit. When I was in school for 12 – 14 hour days, another 3 – 4 hours of commute each day, would not leave any time for me to do homework, or to get enough sleep to be able to function well the following day. With FaceTime every night, I could still say goodnight to my children each night, and I would be able to walk to and from school each day.

At the beginning of February, I began my first course. It was a 10 week bootcamp teaching web development. 10 weeks, 6 days per week, 12 hour days. It was exhausting, and I would be headed home to my partner and the kids every Saturday night, and back to the condo Sunday night. I tried my best to stay positive. It was very challenging, but I made it through. Of the 10 people that started the course with me, only 7 people made it to the end. While I was at school, I discovered things about myself and about my partner, that made me question the truth about our relationship, and I made suggestions to her about how I thought our relationship would need to evolve, if we were to have any hope of the relationship working.

May 1^st, I started my second course. This was the big one. 12 months of 12 hour days, 5 days a week. It was the course I had dreamed about taking. It was the course that would teach me the skills that I have always wanted. My partner and I had been talking about me taking this course for the entirety of our marriage. I started the course excited to finally be attending. The program is divided into six eight week terms. The first term was tough. The hours were growing longer, and the deadlines we were being given seemed inadequate. I was putting in more than 12 hour days, and dealing with several stereotypical millennial classmates. There were a couple of great classmates, that I got along with quite well, but the stress levels were very high. I found myself getting extremely stressed during the week of class, and then I would come home to my partner and children, and the stress in the house was also super high. I found myself some weekends, just hiding in bed, unable to function because my stress levels were unmanageable, and I could not find a way to release my stress. Combine that with my depression, and you get a very toxic combination. My temper was getting shorter, and my kids were sometimes wondering why I even came home on the weekend, when all I would do is hide in bed. I was not dealing with my own issues, and this is my fault. I own that.

By this time, my partner and I had started seeing a marriage councillor. I started therapy hopeful that she could help us, but not very optimistic at the chances of success. My partner openly acknowledged that she had not noticed any problems in the relationship, until I was leaving for school. In my mind I was angry that she had not noticed me desperately trying for many years prior to that. So with my stress levels rising at school, at home, and at therapy, I found myself unsure where my true place lay. My mind started crumbling. As term two was coming to an end, towards the end of August, my mind finally broke. I suffered a nervous breakdown, also known as an emotional breakdown. I literally lay in bed for three days crying. I only got up to go to the bathroom.

After three days, I finally crawled out of the bedroom in my condo, to take stock of my life. I knew that there was no way for me to continue school in my current mental state, but after all of the sacrifices that my family had made to allow me to be there, how could I even think about quitting? My partner had told me several times per week, for 7 months, that our family’s entire future rested upon my being successful at school. If I quit school, I destroyed my family, but if I did not quit school, I doomed myself. In desperation, I attempted suicide. In one night, I took a week’s worth of insulin, and went to bed, hoping to never wake up. (I would learn later, that overdosing on insulin will not kill you, it will more likely just cause permanent physical damage and disabilities, but I did not know that at the time.) I awoke the next morning feeling very dizzy and disoriented. It took a while for me to figure out what was happening. I was still alive, and my blood sugar was dangerously low. I made the decision that quitting school, and facing the consequences would be better than being dead. I sent the emails to the school, letting them know that I was withdrawing from the program. I then let my partner know what I had decided, and tried to explain why this was happening.

After her first, very understandable, negative reaction, I tried to explain my mental state, my breakdown, and my attempted suicide. Her reaction was still extremely negative. I did not detect any understanding or compassion coming from her. This went on for several more days, as I packed my apartment getting ready to move out. Every time that I would speak with her, I would hear what a failure and a letdown I was to her. I moved back to the house, and tried to let my mind heal. I asked her to give me one week free of her complaints of my failure, she agreed, but was unable to follow through. I found myself attempting suicide again. Same method and same result. Talking with my sister helped, and my sister, knowing the marital problems I was having, told me that what I needed to do, was move out of the shared bedroom, and into a different room. It was clear to both her and me that the marriage was over, and could not be recovered. Wanting to try and keep what peace in the house I could, I told my sister that I could not do that to my family. Because I had told her what I had done, she told me that suicide by insulin overdose does not work. Her doctor had told her, when she had mused to her doctor about the same method. My sister, looking out for the welfare of her baby brother, did not accept my refusal to move rooms, and quietly started making the arrangements for a team of friends to come in and help make it happen, over my objections.

A week after she had first suggested it, she told me that it was happening, less than 24 hours before it was going to happen. By this point, I agreed that it had to happen. Since insulin was not going to work, I was trying to determine whether jumping out my second story window, onto the cement patio below would do the trick, or whether I would only sustain injuries. So, when my sister told me it was going to happen, I decided, for my health and sanity, that I would let her do what was necessary. I also decided that it would be easier to get forgiveness than permission, and that I was no longer worried about getting forgiveness, so I chose not to inform my partner that it was happening. It was known she was going to be out all day, which is why my sister had chosen that date. My sister arrived, and we sat the kids down, and explained to them that daddy was sick, and he needs his own room to get better. So we moved all of the 2 year old’s stuff out of her room, and moved me into that room. We then moved the 2 year old into the room out of which I had just moved. And I prepared to face the consequences of my actions.

I explained to my partner what had happened, and why. She was shocked and angry. She felt that she had been so supportive of my recovery. I told her then about my attempts at suicide, and my continued thoughts on that subject. She was shocked, as she had no idea, and she promised to try and give me space. Starting that very same night, she made certain to give me guilt because the 2 year old was having trouble going to sleep. That first night, I brought the 2 year old, and her mattress back into my room for the night, because I agreed that making the 2 year suffer was not what I had intended. The next night, we tried again, having the 2 year old in her mother’s bedroom. We kept trying for many days, with varied success, until I relented, and just moved my little one back into my room, her old room. So I wound up in the smallest bedroom in the house, sharing with a two year old, while my partner continued to sleep in the largest bedroom, by herself. It was my choice, and I was happy with my choice.

As the weeks passed, I made many attempts to try and discuss with my partner the situation. She kept saying that my living in the other bedroom was temporary, but I tried explaining that this was our new normal. Every day, she would make a point of reminding me that I had failed the family, and wasted all of our money. After a month, she finally agreed that separation and divorce was what was best for us. At this point, her complaints about me expanded to include how I had let her down specifically, and that she wanted to replace me with someone that could actually support her. Her accusations hurt, but I tried not to complain back at her. I often failed, and I would tell her all of the supposed slights that I felt. She would accuse me of acting like a victim, and walk away. The next step, I knew, would be to break the news to our children.

The children are smart. I knew that our secret would leak out to them at some point, and I wanted to just sit them down and tell them what was happening. The news would be devastating to them, but at least then they could start the healing process. My partner wanted to wait on telling the children until we could afford therapy for them. Neither of us had any idea when that might occur. One evening, while I was talking to my son, the topic strayed into a logical segue into the topic of his mother and my relationship. It had not been my intention to send the conversation there, but here we were. I could have changed the subject at that moment, but I decided that I did not want to wait anymore. So he and I discussed his mother and I separating, with the intention of divorce. He handled it amazingly well. Even saying that he was not surprised. He had seen this coming for a long time. I told him to make certain that he did not let it slip to his older sister, but I promised him that I would not make him keep that secret for long. As soon as my partner came home, I told her what I had done. She accused me of many things, and complained that she had wanted to be there when the kids were told. Her complaints were fair. I had taken an action regarding our kids, without her agreement. I had been making several decisions that affected the family without her agreement. It was my decision to leave school, my decision to move out of her room, my decision that we should separate, and now my decision that the kids be told.

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That’s as far as I had gotten when I first started writing it. I re-read this now, and so many of those feelings come back to me, and some have never truly left me.

What ultimately broke me, was a two similar incidents that happened a day apart. My ex-wife and I were seeing a marriage counsellor, who had insisted that we needed to do the private, in addition to the couples therapy for her to be able to help us. Even during the therapy, I frequently felt that she was clearly siding with my wife, and was not remaining neutral. Since giving up on that therapist, I have learned that her entire technique is completely flawed. She would focus on everything that we had done wrong in the past, and not actually try to help us find common ground, or find ways to heal and strengthen our relationship. Towards the end of August, my marriage counsellor, during a private session, told me that I am an asshole. No suggestion of how to change, she just straight up told me that I am an asshole.

That was a Sunday. The following day, at school, I was called into the school counsellor’s office to be chewed out for mistreating the absolutely god-awful teacher they had given us. When I say god-awful, this is a professional programmer, teaching computer programmer, who taught us that there is no need to ever do any indenting when coding. That is a meaningless phrase to any non-programmers, but ask any programmer and you will be receive looks of absolute shock and horror at the idea of not indenting when coding. Not indenting when coding is akin to never using any punctuation when writing. So I am called into the school counsellor’s office, and during her chewing me out, she tells me that I am an asshole. Two different, unrelated, counsellors in two days both told me that I was an asshole. That was the moment that I broke. I left her office, went home, and stopped being able to function.

There are days that are harder than others. There are days that I want the end to come soon, and some days when I am able to dream about the future. Most days are somewhere in between. Today is a day where I don’t really know where on the scale it lands. As the day progresses, my mood, and my migraine get worse.

My daughter is in the school play, and I am excited to go see the performance tonight, but at the same time I know that going to the performance will require a confrontation with my daughter’s mother. There is a Reddit commonly referred to as AITA, in this case I don’t even need to ask the question. The real question is how big of an asshole will I need to be. The cast will come out after the performance for the required meet and greet, and if I allow my daughter’s mother to have time to socialize, eventually I will have to step in and stop it, as I will need to get her home. The more time I allow, the bigger the asshole I will have to be. It comes back to my favourite Trolley Problem, there are no good options, just the game of trying to find the least bad option. Everything with my ex-wife comes back to the Trolley Problem. This is a woman who, literally, told a Supreme Court Judge, that she felt she was being “blackmailed” into taking the deal I was offering. The deal that even her own lawyer felt was generous. When dealing with a narcissist, there is no way to compromise, you are either an asshole, or you are a victim. Because for the narcissist everything is win or lose. There is no middle ground.

To stick with a theme that has run through my last few posts, here is a recent addition to the songs that have some deep emotional feelings for me. P!nk described the feeling of losing a parent like “a suitcase you will be unpacking for the rest of your life”. Her new song “When I Get There” from her Trustfall album is about the pain of losing a parent, and while I have yet to lose a parent, my partner recently lost one of her parents, and while I have lost many friends, I cannot relate to the pain of losing a parent. With my father turning 81 this year, I suspect that I may be experiencing that pain sooner rather than later, but there is no real way of predicting whether he has six months or 20 more years left in him. My mother is only 29, which is really weird considering my age, but with her it is the same thing, there is no real way of knowing when the end will come.

As relationships grow, evolve, and change, they can go through many changes. I remember when we decided that we were ready to expand our family, and that we wanted to have children. We were able to get pregnant very easily, and she had a very easy pregnancy. Creed wrote a song called “With Arms Wide Open” on their Human Clay album that accurately tells of the emotions a father goes through when learning that his partner is pregnant, and he is going to become a father.

With lyrics including:

“Well, I just heard the news today
It seems my life is going to change”…

“Well, I don’t know if I’m ready
To be the man I have to be”…

“I’ll show you love, I’ll show you everything”

It speaks to the complete life altering event that is taking place. I have told people many times, that being a father is harder than I ever imagined it would be, but also more rewarding than I ever dreamed it could be. My kids come first. Everything I do, I try to keep a basic thought in the forefront of my mind, and that is the question of what is in my children’s best interest. I allowed myself to suffer abuse and torment, because I thought that staying with their mother, was what was best for them.

Eventually I realized that staying with their mother, was only best for the kids, if their mother and I were happy. The constant fighting, was more damaging to the kids, than their mother and I separating. My daughter’s stress and anxiety manifested as Functional Abdominal Pain, and that constant stomach pain stopped her from attending school for almost three years. This lack of attendance was supported by her mother, and my concerns and objections were ignored. Her brother’s stress and anxiety manifested as anger, and rage. He developed a mistrust and hatred of women. I got phone calls from the school because of how he would disrespect the teacher, or the mother’s volunteering during field trips. When I started to see signs in the next youngest, of stress and anxiety, I knew that I had failed as a father and as a parent. Coupled with some other issues in my life, I decided that what was best for everyone, is if I was no longer around, and I attempted suicide.

My attempt was unsuccessful, but nobody even noticed that I had tried, which reinforced to me that nobody would miss me when I was gone, so I tried again. Again I was unsuccessful. I tried talking to my wife, and all she did was berate me for being such a selfish piece of shit, which again reinforced my belief that the world would be better without me in it. Fortunately, as my life was crumbling around me, I called my sister, essentially to say goodbye. She begged me to come live with her, but I did not want to be a burden on her, and I wanted to be able to say goodbye to my kids, so I made up a reason and declined. My sister knew that my next suicide attempt was only a few days away, and that I had a plan for attempt three, that would likely work, so she worked as fast as she could to come to my rescue.

My sister made arrangements with some friends, both hers and mine, and then tricked my wife into being out of the house for the day. She then descended upon the house, and moved me out of the master bedroom, into the baby’s room, and moved the baby into the master bedroom. She put a key lock on my new bedroom door, and made me promise that I would not make any attempt to kill myself for at least another week. She then everyone, except my mother and my best friend, off to a friend’s house, so that the remaining three of us could confront my wife upon her return home.

That confrontation went about as well as I expected. To their faces, my wife assured my mother and my friend of how concerned she was about me, and how she had not realized how serious the situation with my mental health had become. She said all the right things, and made all of the right promises. And she is such a gifted liar, that I could see the calm reassurance spreading over my mother and my friend’s faces as they believed that perhaps things would be okay.

Then my wife asked if she could have a private conversation with me. Believing that things would be okay, my mother and my friend agreed, so my wife and I went to a different room, where my wife proceeded to verbally tear me apart for embarrassing her. I took the verbal abuse, as I was fairly used to it, and we came back into the room. One look at the expressions on my mother and friend’s faces and I knew that they had heard everything she had just said to me, and it was at that moment that I finally realized that I am not a piece of worthless shit, but perhaps, just perhaps, I might have value.

I realized that as painful as it would be for the kids, the only way any of us could start to heal, was to “rip off the bandage” and declare the marriage over. P!nk’s song “Family Portrait” from her Missundaztood album tells the story of the family breaking up, with the parents’ brutal fighting, from the perspective of the child.

With lyrics including:

“It ain’t easy growing up in World War III” …

“In our family portrait
We look pretty happy
Let’s play pretend, let’s act like it comes naturally”

The lyrics are gut-wrenching. Especially knowing that I was part of doing that very thing to my own children. The very people that I had promised myself that I would do anything to protect, I was actively hurting. The realization that my decision to stay together “for the kids” was the very thing that was hurting the kids, very nearly sent me to attempt number three, even though I had promised my sister that I would not.

When we choose an action, we choose all the consequences that go with that action. I have made a lot of bad choices, and taken a lot of bad actions during my life, and I get to live with that. Knowing some of the pain that I have caused my children, is some of the hardest issues with which I get to live.

Over the years, my kids have come to me with some hard questions, and I have tried to respond to those questions honestly, whilst trying to remember that they will have to understand and live with the answers. When my son, who was maybe seven at the time, asked me “why does mommy love grandma more than she loves me?” and before I could even start to respond, his nine year old sister followed up with “yeah, why is that?”¹, it was quite the gut-punch. I had known for years where everyone landed on their mother’s importance hierarchy, with her mother being at the top of the list, the four kids were roughly tied for second place, and I ranked after the kids, and was considered more of an interchangeable part. She wanted someone in the role of husband and father, but did not really care whether that someone was me. But trying to find the words to explain to a couple of kids that their mother loves them, and while it might appear that their grandmother was more important, they were mistaken in their impression was extremely challenging, especially when I knew that what I was telling them was a complete lie. They were completely correct, their mother really did care more about their grandmother than she did about them.

Since then, the questions that they have come to me with have gotten harder, as they are getting older and understanding more. Lately, that seven year old, who is by now a teenager, and I have been discussing the Trolley Problem, and how so much of life can wind up being about trying to pick the least objectionable option. When he came to me a couple of weeks ago, asking ‘Why don’t you just settle with Mommy? Why are you taking her to court?”¹, even though the words were coming out of his mouth, I knew who was asking me the question. Trying to find the right words to explain things to him, in a way that he can understand, but also knowing that everything will likely be repeated, the best he can remember, back to his mother. I tried to explain to him, that I have tried settling with his mother, and that she ignores the terms of the settlements, every chance she gets, and that the only way I can make the terms stick, is if they are legally binding. I got to revisit this very issue, about two weeks later, when I discovered that his mother, according to his younger brother, regularly comes to visit the younger two children at school, on my parenting days, which is in direct violation to the terms of a settlement we reached a year ago.

Every time that one of my kids comes to me with a question, I know that they are struggling with an issue of their own, and regardless of how big or small the issue might appear to me, the issue is big to them. I have so many emotional and psychological issues of my own, that I see the same issues in my kids. Whether these issues are truly there, or whether I am projecting my fears onto normal childhood issues causes me to spiral. Is my child a cry-baby who needs to grow up, or is it signs of C-PTSD?

Slowly I have been working on finding myself again. My favourite empowerment song is “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten from her album Fight Song. Rachel wrote the song about her struggle in the music industry, and her personal search for a decision whether to continue to struggle or whether to give up and try a different path. Multiple lyrics ring out to me:

“Starting right now I’ll be strong” …

“And I don’t really care if nobody else believes
‘Cause I’ve still got a lot of fight left in me” …

“Losing friends and I’m chasing sleep”

Doing what I believed to be the right thing, even though it cost me money, time, friends, and almost everything else, but I’m continuing down a path, with an end goal even I cannot see.

I created a family, and then I got to rip that family apart, because I knew that as brutal as it was, it what was best for the children. Every day remains a struggle, but I have the love and support of the people that truly care about me. One of the hardest parts was the discovery of which of my friends, truly were my friends. The people that will stand beside me through thick and thin. There have been some incredibly hard and painful lessons along the way, But I keep fighting.

¹ I do not remember the exact phrasing, but this is as close as I can recall

Lately I’ve been thinking about how powerful music can be. The right song can uplift your mood, help you to feel better, evoke memories, or stop and make you think. There are many songs that I will listen to depending upon my mood.

“Blood on Blood” by Bon Jovi from their New Jersey album tells the story of three best friends who grew up, and grew apart. The lines towards the end:

“Through the years and miles between us
It’s been a long and lonely ride
But if I got a call in the dead of the night
I’d be right by your side”

Remind us that a true friend does not have to be someone to whom you speak every day, or even every week. A true friend is someone who is there for you no matter what.

“The Dance” by Garth Brooks from his Garth Brooks album holds a double meaning. It relates to the end of a relationship. That ending can be either due to the ending of a romantic relationship, or an ending due to death. The dance is a metaphor for the relationship, and the lines:

“And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance”

Remind us that it does not matter why the relationship ends, it hurts. But to not partake in a relationship, for fear of the hurt that comes when it ends, means that you are avoiding life.

Kelly Clarkson is another artist who has written several songs that are incredibly moving. Her song “Piece by Piece” from her album Piece by Piece tells her story about being abandoned by her father, and her struggles through the years to come to piece with that abandonment, and then finally finding a source of healing when she met her husband and had her first child. And while her relationship with her husband did not succeed, it does not change the fundamental message of her song. The amount of long term emotional damage that a parent can inflict on a child

“He never walks away
He never asks for money
He takes care of me
He loves me
Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and a father could stay”

Her absolutely gut-wrenching live performance on American Idol moves me to tears every time I see it.

The last song that I want to talk about is “Don’t Close Your Eyes’ by Kix from their Blow my Fuse album. Although this song was from Kix’s fourth album, and they released more albums after this one, the band qualifies as a One Hit Wonder, as this was their only song to break into the charts. This song deals with the subject of suicide, and takes the point of view of the person on the receiving end of a phone call from a friend who is looking to end their life. The lyrics deliberately leave it ambiguous as to whether the friend lived or died in the end:

“Hold on hold on tight
I’ll make everything all right
Wake up don’t go asleep
I’ll pray the lord
Your soul to keep”

With the phrasing of “I’ll pray the lord / Your soul to keep” the listener is left to wonder whether or not the friend is still alive by the ending of the song. As someone who has been on both sides of that type of phone call, it rips my soul to pieces every time I hear the song because of the emotional memories that it evokes. Having lost friends and family to every type of death: old age, disease, accident, suicide, and murder, I realized recently that I have been to more funerals for friends, than weddings for friends. When you receive that phone call, and I hope that you never do, you get to live a trolley problem, do I stay on the phone and try and help my friend, or do I hang up and call 911 to get my friend the help he truly needs, but knowing that if I hang up, I may cause him to act faster/harder. I have had friends and family take pills, sit on train tracks, jump in front of trucks, cut their wrists, and shoot themselves in the head. Some lived, some died. I have also had to call my friends and be the one on the other side of that phone call. Fortunately I am still here. I have had to severely narrow my list of friends, and I try to focus on my family, but some days are harder than others.

Recently I was officially diagnosed with both Epilepsy and C-PTSD, and whilst I believe that the Epilepsy is false, and the seizures are actually caused by my stress and anxiety levels it is yet another emotional burden that I get to carry. Music is a place to which I can escape, and find solace that there are others who are suffering the same types of emotional burdens that I carry. Thankfully I have some friends and family that help me to carry my load, but some days that load is more than I can carry alone.

To my friends, I will always be there for you. It does not matter whether we have spoken recently or whether it has been decades since we last spoke. If you are my friend, I will be there when you need me. In the last couple of years, there was a Facebook challenge to find your oldest friend, and I tracked down Lori to where she is living in New Zealand. I had not spoken to her in 45 years, but she is still my friend. As Bon Jovi said:

“Through the years and miles between us
It’s been a long and lonely ride
But if I got a call in the dead of the night
I’d be right by your side”

Everyday is its own challenge and none of us can get through without the help and support of friends. For those that you call friend, just remember what being a friend truly means.

As a parting song, Kelly Clarkson, singing Garth Brook’s “The Dance” as a tribute to Garth Brooks, is an excellent example of how the same song can evoke both the same and different emotions, at the same time, depending upon the mood of the person listening, in addition to the person who is singing.

I don’t share every post that I write. It depends upon my mood while I am writing, and how I am feeling about life. My emotions are all over the place. Every minute of every day I struggle to maintain control. Nobody realizes how much I struggle. Nobody knows, because I never tell anyone. I have sometimes tried to express how I feel about myself, and I typically receive platitudes from people telling me to feel better about myself.

After being emotionally and mentally abused, for 15 years, by the person whom I loved and trusted the most in the world, I am no longer able to trust myself. I suffer from constant anxiety, to the point where I am now having seizures. As an added bonus, because I am having seizures, I am no longer allowed to drive. Anytime, I get even the slightest amount of criticism, my self hatred goes into overload. Every single day I contemplate committing suicide, and I have to convince myself not to. A good day is when I only think about suicide once. Most days the idea of killing myself pops into my head at least five times. I see myself as a useless failure. I genuinely believe that I cannot do anything correctly, and that the world would be better off without me. I have to constantly remind myself that if I was gone, my kids would be forced to live with their mother 100% of the time.

The last time that my kids lived with their mother 100%, after two and a half weeks, my older daughter ran away from mother to come live with me 100%, and after three and a half months, I got a call from the elementary school letting me know that my older son was in the counsellor’s office. What they told me in the phone call was that my son had come into the office saying that if he ever had to live with his mother again, he would kill himself. The part that still haunts me was their final statement on that subject, “and we believe him”. He had just turned ten years old, and was seriously contemplating suicide. Since Her house was already being investigated by MCFD (Ministry of Children and Family Development), it was easy to get the social worker to back up my emergency claim for 100% custody of my son. As I tried to push for greater access to my younger two children, their mother insisted that she would need greater access to our older boy, before she would allow me greater access to our younger children. I then got to make the wonderful choice between seeing my younger children and putting my older son at serious risk of self-harm.

For those of you thinking that I need to see a therapist, I have been talking to one for two and a half years now, and yes, she has helped me immensely. I used to have a voice in my head, that sounded exactly like my ex-wife, whom my therapist and I named Lilith. Lilith criticized everything I did, said, or thought, and constantly reminded me what a worthless piece of shit I am. In two and a half years, Lilith’s voice has gone from a non-stop deafening roar, to a voice that is normally barely louder than a whisper. Sadly, Lilith’s voice has mostly been replaced by my own internal dialogue telling me that I am a worthless waste of space, I cannot keep my house tidy enough, I do not do enough chores around the house, I do not cook the food well enough, I am lousy at my job, and I have no friends. It was exceptionally hard to actually talk to and trust a therapist, after my previous one told me that I am an asshole.

When people that you trust turn on you and tell you that you are a terrible person, it can be incredibly difficult to get over it. My therapist told me that I am an asshole, and the following day, the counsellor at the school I was attending told me that I am an asshole. I was making the mistake of standing up for myself, and people in positions of authority do not like to be disagreed with. It was around this time that my wife told me that she’d had an affair, and I realized that I was going to have to get one of my children DNA tested. The marriage counsellor sided with her. Apparently it was my fault that my wife was not faithful. In my severe depression, which became so severe it lead to suicide attempts, I fell victim to a scammer, and I still hate myself for being so gullible. When I told my wife that we were separating, she proceeded to reach out to my friends and tell them all of the terrible things that I had done. She made up quite a few things, and the majority of my friends believed her. People tell me today how ‘if those people could turn on you so easily, they were never truly your friends’, but that does not help with the emotional damage the betrayals caused. Multiple people with whom I had been friends for over 30 years, turned away from me, without even asking for my version of the story. They simply believed that I had been cheating on and beating my wife. While I agree that I do not need friends like that, it makes it virtually impossible to trust anyone new. There was exactly one person who came to me, to find out my side of the story, and that was my neighbour. Several other neighbours simply stopped talking to me. Four years later, and the secretary at the kids’ elementary school will still not talk to me. There was one friend whom, at the time, I thought was reaching out to hear my side, but I discovered later that she was repeating what I was saying, back to my wife, to aid my wife in honing her story to more effectively paint me as a villain.

My therapist has started telling me about Depressive Personality Disorder as a possible answer to some of the struggles that I am having. She is also trying to convince me that it is okay for me to ask for time to myself. The current system is having severely negative effects on my physical, emotional, and mental health, so perhaps it is worth considering. It is times like this where my logical side and my emotional side get into conflict, which in turn triggers more anxiety and stress. Logically I know that taking time for myself makes sense, but emotionally I feel that taking time for myself makes me a selfish asshole.