omg charlotte! wth IS that guy? you win the unrelated prize.. awesome. i am very much liking this unrelated image thing.. very cute Perna? no jokes?

the smiles and laughs are good guys.. thank you i am very much a believer in the "you may as well laugh as cry" idea.. and besides, crying gives me a headache for the rest of the day.

i had told H straight out "i cant do this anymore" and i was so very proud. T said "i'm very impressed.. that takes a hell of a lot of strength in the best of circumstances, and given the abuse you have been through and how you struggle with this... *very* strong.. just excellent... I'm proud of you." i wanted to burst into tears when i heard that.. kind of happy tears and sad tears... he is proud of me..

now i see i still have to force this issue.. and i dont know how... there are some complicating factors that i cant post here, but basically i dont want to be crule, mean or hurtful to him.. i just want to be ok, to stop suffering over this.

he was planning on coming to visit again......
he thot he should come to my grad in april...
i had to explicitly tell him he cant call me like he had been doing, because he was factoring in LD calls to me in his budget

what do i DO? do i get mean? yell?

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Having said that I hope you can be kind and compassionate without slipping into a position where you sacrifice yourself. I hope you can remember that you deserve to be treated with respect and kindness too. I hope you are frequently visiting your Rights thread and reading each one of them over and over again. While you are helping him, insist that he help himself too and treat you like a human being.

.....you are reading this thread and saying yeah...yeah...yeah I know all this crap McKell.

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no mckell.. i was reading it and i was thinking "right. ok. that is what i am supposed to do." i was grateful you were saying it.. and reminding me to read the right thread again. That is exactly why i started this thread.. because when H is here... i am different, i don't remember and it doesn't occur to me. i had T leave messages because i just cant seem to see what i need to do, cant think clearly, the most simple ideas vanish. Reminding me is GOOD.

and yeah... being kind without sacrificing myself.. very hard to do.. so hard. Hard to just not fall into the role of subserviant..

but there is one thing that i thought of this morning that i hadn't before... T & i, before H got here... we talked about how to keep me being ok, not collapsing.. and that at least has not happened.. One of the things needed was to keep H from getting angry.. i have to still think in survival mode some. So if i push really hard while he is here, then he might start in and i have two more days with him. i have been standing my ground, but i know i wouldn't if he got mad.. so i need to remember that. Maybe being too firm would put me in a bad position, worse than now. So confused.