![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Multiple Choice
May. 14th, 2013 12:28 pmLet's talk daddy issues. Or impending family drama. Or me worrying too much, which is possible.
So. My father. We have a complicated relationship, further complicated by the fact that I don't think he knows it's that complicated, because I don't talk to him about how much I want to strangle him some(most) of the time. Y'all know that if I trust someone, I don't have any issue telling them that our relationship is in danger-- and if I don't trust someone, I already consider that relationship in perpetual danger and clam up. I have a good long list of people I trust these days! Even my mom, which took some time. Trust and I have come to an accord, wherein a I don't afford it to folk as readily as some might, but it doesn't live in a lightless box, never to be handed out at all.
But . . . not my dad. He has this little problem with conditional love and threatening to take it away if you don't prescribe to his agenda, you see. Not fertile ground for trust seedlings. Largely, I've worked through all that stuff, and I'm at a good place where I can deal with that, and I am good at maintaining the relationship we have and it's occasional benefits without letting it fuck up the rest of my life or my relations with other people. Compartmentalizing with the best of them. He has no idea I feel this way because, well, I don't trust him enough to hand over a wrapped package of Muh Feels. Not particularly keen on giving emotional gifts to folks if there's the dimmest possibility of them putting said gift into the shredder. This system works! I vent to other people when I want to shake him, I visit occasionally, we spend holidays together and I follow him on facebook. Fine and dandy.
Until something goes wrong, of course.
Dad's nose for business is one of the worst I have ever seen. This is one of those "I'll never tell him" things because he is convinced that he's knows how people tick and if they just acted the way they were supposed to he'd be fine. Note the issue, there: his business ventures fail, not because you moved your store 25 minutes out of Bloomington and expected people to still come, but because people weren't loyal enough. His festivals fail not because he is trying to throw them in rural Indiana, without backing from local businesses, courting a population that is infamously flighty-- but because people aren't supportive enough. It isn't his fault when, two years after a series of these failed festivals, he tries *again* (with no changes) expecting things to be different, and they flop. Other people aren't (insert thing to blame here). HE is doing all he can.
It also isn't his fault that his property isn't worth very much any more, after he let it grow over, built his own wizard shack without a power or water or septic hookup, and based his financial decisions around the assumption that this state of affairs was worth as much as a regular house (that's the tyranny of the local zoning and assessment offices). Nor is it his fault that his music career hasn't taken off (the industry is terrible, no one if paying for things anymore, too many kids are trying to be musicians, my music is too deep for the masses [SERIOUSLY]).
And he can't leverage his knowledge into a business helping install solar or waste water systems because of X, Y, Z, and he won't try art, and he can't sell things at the farmer's market, and . . . you so get the point.
Basically he is 30,000 dollars in the hole and is going to lose the land if he can't get it by next year.
Now. Whose fault is this? Let's have a quiz.
A. Yours, for deciding when you were 18 you were never going to get a job for someone else and only run your own business.
B. Yours, for trying the same failed financial venture over and over.
C. Yours, for refusing to learn business techniques that might help because you don't want to sell out or you think you know enough.
D. Yours, for spending a self confessed 15,000 dollars in music equipment because you were bored/lonely/going to become a famous musician.
E. Yours, for not doing the research to understand land values and the impact of your lifestyle choices on property worth.
F. Yours for choosing ALL OF YOUR CHOICESZ SKREEEEECHCHCHSAUKHDFKJSBF.
G. All of the above.
H. A 6000 dollar student loan you co-signed for your daughter, your only contribution to her college education (which she has paid continuously but isn't finished paying off yet).
I. Everyone else, for not being supportive enough.
Choose two if needed.
****
We are only at the "Hey, can you take out a loan to cover this loan" stage. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Maybe I do not have enough faith in him. But I would put a significant amount of money down on the certainty that, if he loses this property, H and G are going to be the answers. And I don't know what to do.
I'm still scared of him, of course. I have done really well at working through this idea that, if I'm emotionally honest with people, they will withdraw their love. The stumper is: he *will* withdraw it. It's not a fear, it's a guarantee-- he's threatened it, *he's done it*. Let's not forget, I have two other sisters out there whom he left. They've expressed anger at him over this, and his response is to quite literally tell them to fuck off and stop talking to them.
So if it comes to this, what do I do? Tell him he's being an asshole for blaming me for his financial woes and sink our relationship, or stay quiet, roll my eyes, and let him flail over there? Which do I want? Being honest for once is reeeaaal tempting, but in the way a big red button is tempting. Very, mm, arsonist-cathartic.
Don't know. For now, I will wait and see what happens. I suggested he try a Kickstarter to work up the funds, but of course it won't work and he isn't going to try, so.
I don't know.
So. My father. We have a complicated relationship, further complicated by the fact that I don't think he knows it's that complicated, because I don't talk to him about how much I want to strangle him some(most) of the time. Y'all know that if I trust someone, I don't have any issue telling them that our relationship is in danger-- and if I don't trust someone, I already consider that relationship in perpetual danger and clam up. I have a good long list of people I trust these days! Even my mom, which took some time. Trust and I have come to an accord, wherein a I don't afford it to folk as readily as some might, but it doesn't live in a lightless box, never to be handed out at all.
But . . . not my dad. He has this little problem with conditional love and threatening to take it away if you don't prescribe to his agenda, you see. Not fertile ground for trust seedlings. Largely, I've worked through all that stuff, and I'm at a good place where I can deal with that, and I am good at maintaining the relationship we have and it's occasional benefits without letting it fuck up the rest of my life or my relations with other people. Compartmentalizing with the best of them. He has no idea I feel this way because, well, I don't trust him enough to hand over a wrapped package of Muh Feels. Not particularly keen on giving emotional gifts to folks if there's the dimmest possibility of them putting said gift into the shredder. This system works! I vent to other people when I want to shake him, I visit occasionally, we spend holidays together and I follow him on facebook. Fine and dandy.
Until something goes wrong, of course.
Dad's nose for business is one of the worst I have ever seen. This is one of those "I'll never tell him" things because he is convinced that he's knows how people tick and if they just acted the way they were supposed to he'd be fine. Note the issue, there: his business ventures fail, not because you moved your store 25 minutes out of Bloomington and expected people to still come, but because people weren't loyal enough. His festivals fail not because he is trying to throw them in rural Indiana, without backing from local businesses, courting a population that is infamously flighty-- but because people aren't supportive enough. It isn't his fault when, two years after a series of these failed festivals, he tries *again* (with no changes) expecting things to be different, and they flop. Other people aren't (insert thing to blame here). HE is doing all he can.
It also isn't his fault that his property isn't worth very much any more, after he let it grow over, built his own wizard shack without a power or water or septic hookup, and based his financial decisions around the assumption that this state of affairs was worth as much as a regular house (that's the tyranny of the local zoning and assessment offices). Nor is it his fault that his music career hasn't taken off (the industry is terrible, no one if paying for things anymore, too many kids are trying to be musicians, my music is too deep for the masses [SERIOUSLY]).
And he can't leverage his knowledge into a business helping install solar or waste water systems because of X, Y, Z, and he won't try art, and he can't sell things at the farmer's market, and . . . you so get the point.
Basically he is 30,000 dollars in the hole and is going to lose the land if he can't get it by next year.
Now. Whose fault is this? Let's have a quiz.
A. Yours, for deciding when you were 18 you were never going to get a job for someone else and only run your own business.
B. Yours, for trying the same failed financial venture over and over.
C. Yours, for refusing to learn business techniques that might help because you don't want to sell out or you think you know enough.
D. Yours, for spending a self confessed 15,000 dollars in music equipment because you were bored/lonely/going to become a famous musician.
E. Yours, for not doing the research to understand land values and the impact of your lifestyle choices on property worth.
F. Yours for choosing ALL OF YOUR CHOICESZ SKREEEEECHCHCHSAUKHDFKJSBF.
G. All of the above.
H. A 6000 dollar student loan you co-signed for your daughter, your only contribution to her college education (which she has paid continuously but isn't finished paying off yet).
I. Everyone else, for not being supportive enough.
Choose two if needed.
****
We are only at the "Hey, can you take out a loan to cover this loan" stage. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Maybe I do not have enough faith in him. But I would put a significant amount of money down on the certainty that, if he loses this property, H and G are going to be the answers. And I don't know what to do.
I'm still scared of him, of course. I have done really well at working through this idea that, if I'm emotionally honest with people, they will withdraw their love. The stumper is: he *will* withdraw it. It's not a fear, it's a guarantee-- he's threatened it, *he's done it*. Let's not forget, I have two other sisters out there whom he left. They've expressed anger at him over this, and his response is to quite literally tell them to fuck off and stop talking to them.
So if it comes to this, what do I do? Tell him he's being an asshole for blaming me for his financial woes and sink our relationship, or stay quiet, roll my eyes, and let him flail over there? Which do I want? Being honest for once is reeeaaal tempting, but in the way a big red button is tempting. Very, mm, arsonist-cathartic.
Don't know. For now, I will wait and see what happens. I suggested he try a Kickstarter to work up the funds, but of course it won't work and he isn't going to try, so.
I don't know.
