My old nemesis visited this morning

The old familiar panic visited me this morning as I was sorting my baby's laundry. The voice that says I can't live without my father, that I am doomed to be miserable the rest of my life because he has rejected me. The terror of being abandoned. Right there in the laundry room...I wanted to head directly under the covers for the rest of the day.

And then all this work I've been doing the last few years kicked in...I recognized this feeling, this panic, this guilt, and the fear and urge to blame myself, the desire to punish myself...and it led me back to the experience that brought me to Breakthrough...and then I remembered how I believed I would die without this person, and how I didn't die, and how things turned out just fine in the end. It was like someone threw cold water in my face. Things aren't going to turn out just fine with my father, but I don't need him, either. I don't need any man. I want my husband's support. I want the company of male friends. I would like to have my father in my life and in my daughter's, in the best of all worlds. But I don't NEED. I can survive, quite well, without.

I am no victim. 

The point of what his wife did--following my blog until the opportune moment, then exposing it to my father, was an attempt to victimize. Manipulate and victimize. For revenge. Yes, I was caught off guard. Yes, it stings. But if she thought she was doing permanent, major damage to me, that was a faulty assumption. I think she believed I needed him in my life and she had the power to take away something essential. I think it says more about the kind of person she is and her disregard for her spouse's well being than about anything else. She must not have considered that my father was the one making overtures, that he wanted to meet his granddaughter, that he wanted us in his life. So, by introducing poison to him(not to me, as my writings are my own and I am proud of them), she destroyed his hope. What does that say about her? Something not at all flattering.

This life I have been given has made me stronger than I ever thought possible.