Over the past month or so, there have been numerous references made to a plan. At one point, I nearly burst out laughing from tension when I was accused of changing the plan. I'm glad I didn't because it would have been highly inappropriate at that time. The original plan was to get some sleep late on a Saturday morning/early on a Saturday afternoon. I hadn't thought ahead any further than that because any regular reader of this blog knows that I know better than to make plans while in greater than usual pain.
When the flood took out the ceiling and all, my plan was kept simple. Find out what I needed to do and do it without involving my parents. The first hitch in this plan came when the first returned phone call went to my father and not me. His instructions seemed to indicate his willingness to let me handle it so I pretended like I didn't know he was informed. Honestly, it made me feel better at the time. Someone else had informed him so I couldn't be accused of running for help at the slightest problem and yet I wasn't keeping anything from him.
The plan was more or less a joke for about a week. First, I was traumatized beyond the ability to do more than pet my cats. As I started to recover a little, there was a rash of freak tornado producing thunderstorms in Delaware. My insurance adjuster was busy with other disasters. When someone got back to me, all they did was throw false alarms my way. I had no information to use. There was an hour of joy when the false alarms were cleared away but then the insurance adjuster hit me with the true bad news. My father was involving himself and his only motive seemed to be anger.
Let's back up a day or two. Melissa and I sat down to a meal after she got home (to the hotel which felt more like home each day) from work which is something that almost never happens. The meal was prepared, eaten, cleaned up and everything was put away less than an hour later. This was how we wanted to live at our actual home but it just never worked out that way. We dreamed out loud to each other about how a smaller place would allow us to live like that. She had gotten some good news at work and we started to think about how to get from Point A (where we are now) to Point B (an actual condo). Somehow, this became known as the Plan because I am capable of thinking in terms of years.
While we dreamed, we started thinking of practical things. How can someone who falls as much as I do live in a two story house with the kitchen on the first floor and the shower on the second? I can't consolidate and give up a floor no matter how much sense it makes in the abstract. This was not something I had been thinking about for a long time. The spate of bad weather since early Spring followed by the flooding crisis followed by the potential eviction crisis had me in what I hope is a temporary - if absurdly long - run of worse than usual health.
When my fight or flight response kicked in, I cared very little about long term plans. All I wanted was to get away from my tormentor. Of course, I got used to the abuse again. The urgency of flight faded compared to practical matters and I settled down to try holding out here until some of my patented luck and/or wonderful friends/connections kicked in. I figured the key would be avoiding too much contact with my father before we had our escape planned. That's when he made his famous (in my own mind) call telling me that he planned to continue calling to hurry me along. I responded by eating crow but he wasn't done yet.
Finally, I got upset enough to take it out on Melissa. I love the moral support and love but when are you going to start taking some of these calls for me? She agreed to take the next one and so she did. Just sitting in the background, I twitched so much that I tumbled off our bed to the floor where I remained because the room was spinning so bad. Melissa got off the phone and explained the current plan to me and I took about two minutes to say yes. That was only because I couldn't believe my ears. I called my father back the next day I could expect him to get the message at work. I have no long distance so he left work as my only means of contacting him when he moved without telling me.
The amazing thing is how little of what I say gets processed. It's not just me because Melissa's fear of getting a call at work saying I'm hurt or worse got turned into the calls she was getting. How she had gotten calls about me falling to my death is beyond me but it explains a little. Most sentences can be warped beyond recognition if you transpose a few words. I have an old friend who suffered from hearing dyslexia so it is possible.
This is a basic explanation of how a dream and a nightmare got combined to form a plan. I left out details mostly so that I could finish before the spinning room makes me nauseous. The plan is to be done with him now. I don't need any parting shots and he's scarred me for the rest of my life already. Let's just walk away from each other now. He told me the third cat was the last straw. I refrained from making a reply in that moment about decades of abuse. It's time to entrench the border, set up the landmines and leave each other alone.
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