Talking me off of the ledge

I have known, since I was 8 or 9, that my dad is nuts. Sorry, organizations that want to keep the word "crazy" out of the vernacular, but it's true here. He is wacko, bonkers, off his rocker.

The hard part, of course, is that his crazy always centered on me. During his psychotic breaks, he blames me for every ill ever bestowed on him - from the mailman's misdirection of mail to the fact that the radio talks to him (and tells him to do bad things). I wanted to point out the fact that the radio waves are beyond my control, but it didn't seem to make much sense when I'd be hiding in the cellar, waiting for him to come completely unglued - or show up with candy to apologize.

I don't talk about my dad much. I try not to relate the state of marriage number 1 being so completely and total tangled up with the state of relationship with dad (this would be the guy that caused me great harm). Those two men were cut from the same cloth. It just happened that both of them are fractured in all the wrong places.

The past week has been full of opportunities to hear about his impending meltdown. I knew it was coming, yet I still, as usual, had hope that it wouldn't impact me, at 41 and with a family of my own, as deeply as it has in the past. But he found a way to get to me, through the kids. And the new scars that appeared today were deep and mean and just as vicious as if I'd been 9 years old and helpless.

This man leaves me feeling helpless when he finds a happy memory of my childhood - a very rare and magical thing for me - and he finds a way to destroy it. This time, it was a place he ripped to shreds, a memory or two of happy times with a family that wasn't in crisis. I so lived for the few, rare glimpses of normalcy. I had it in my head that these two or three locales were safe from his destruction.

But nothing is safe when a madman is involved.

He made what was once a beautiful place feel dark and sinister. And he took a beautiful day of freedom that I greatly needed feel like a sham.

I still have my mountain, and all the places that he has not touched in my world. And I refuse to allow his dark agenda touch my life, or the lives of my kids, anymore. Tonight I had to have the "grampa isn't a safe person" talk. Again. But this time it's for good. I don't intend to see him again until his funeral.

Because sometimes you just have to choose to be safe, no matter how the rest of your family treats you for this decision. And the grief that will pour over me will be like a tidal wave. But I will be safe. And my children will be safe from his poison. And the world will be as it should be - it will be mine.