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I had a parent who shared some of your father's characteristics, to a very small extent, and I shared many of your characteristics.
I hate to say it, but music, at this point in your life, is a sideshow. What really matters now is finding something practical and sustainable you can do that will enable you to live separately from your father. You need to develop confidence in your ability to take care of yourself and make reasonable decisions for yourself. You do not have the luxury of pursuing your passion as a career right now. The emotional and physical life skills need to come first.
And therapy should happen at some point. You run the risk of drifting into situations with friends, bosses and lovers who assume responsibility for everything while treating you like a child. You could also play your father's role in future relationships . It is your responsibility not to allow this to happen.
Edited to add, actually there is something you can do about your father's criticisms, once you are off on your own: tune them out. You can control what you do and how you think in the present and nothing else. A codependency group might be helpful, because it will help you draw lines between you and your father and your responsibilities and his.
With every carefully-considered, well-planned step toward independence you take outside your father's home, you will feel more competent and confident. Your father, however, will try to convince you that you are a great disappointment and that if only you followed his lead, you would be acceptable to him. There is nothing you can do about this.
Last edited by forum_browser; 01-20-2013 at 11:08 AM..
I hate to say it, but music, at this point in your life, is a sideshow. What really matters now is finding something practical and sustainable you can do that will enable you to live separately from your father. You need to develop confidence in your ability to take care of yourself and make reasonable decisions for yourself. You do not have the luxury of pursuing your passion as a career right now. The emotional and physical life skills need to come first.
There is not just one thing that either your father or you need to do...there are many things that you personally have to start accomplishing.
Getting a full time or part time job should be first on your list. The posters are right that are calling you out on your continued blaming of your father. So, your father was not the best...many people feel that way. You have to get into some counseling, or follow the very apt advice, at lease a co-dependency group...
You cannot keep allowing these issues to cripple your ability to grow into a functioning productive adult. After a certain age, as compassionate as anyone can be, blaming our parents for our own shortcomings becomes null and void. Do not continue on this path...Resist the temptation to continue to rationalize...it serves no good purpose.
Put one foot in front of the other. Go to the school in your area...apply for grants and loans for school. Get a job that you can work around your class times. Get into student housing.
If school is not what you intend to do. Then go out and start pounding the pavement, get a job, any job...then get a part time paying gig playing somewhere at night...Hone your craft...work to live and eat...Play your music to enjoy your passion.
Get into a co-dependency support group. You can succeed..Get proper counseling and let go of the past and set your sites on today and tomorrow....Good luck
I have to be brief though. I have discovered over the years that people do not care that I hate my fther to this day. I have discovered that people also do not want to hear what kind of a crappy father he was. Or is now.
I moved 2000 miles away from him, and that does not stop him from calling on the phone and saying and doing things which still angerr me. People do not care.
When I talk about this, as you are, I need an outlet, because I do not want to burden my wife and kids with this, and I do not want them picking up on bad habits as myself, brother and sister have done because of our father.
BEST THING I can do now is totally ignore him, Do my own thing in life, which I do, and try daily to forget him. The last one is the hardest for me.
I have to be brief though. I have discovered over the years that people do not care that I hate my fther to this day. I have discovered that people also do not want to hear what kind of a crappy father he was. Or is now.
I moved 2000 miles away from him, and that does not stop him from calling on the phone and saying and doing things which still angerr me. People do not care.
When I talk about this, as you are, I need an outlet, because I do not want to burden my wife and kids with this, and I do not want them picking up on bad habits as myself, brother and sister have done because of our father.
BEST THING I can do now is totally ignore him, Do my own thing in life, which I do, and try daily to forget him. The last one is the hardest for me.
Just live your life....just be.
Get an unlisted phone number that you do not give to him. If your relatives give him the phone number, change it again and don't give it to them either.
I have to be brief though. I have discovered over the years that people do not care that I hate my fther to this day. I have discovered that people also do not want to hear what kind of a crappy father he was. Or is now.
I moved 2000 miles away from him, and that does not stop him from calling on the phone and saying and doing things which still angerr me. People do not care.
When I talk about this, as you are, I need an outlet, because I do not want to burden my wife and kids with this, and I do not want them picking up on bad habits as myself, brother and sister have done because of our father.
BEST THING I can do now is totally ignore him, Do my own thing in life, which I do, and try daily to forget him. The last one is the hardest for me.
Just live your life....just be.
Except the OP's father is still supporting him financially. You have a wife and children, and ostensibly a job. That's the difference and that's why the majority of the advice to the OP was to find a way to be self supporting. Then, if his father was truly so awful, he could move or not answer the phone or whatever.
Oh, I understood it. I guess you'll have to trust me on that.
And I noticed your response ignored my comments on having passion for your craft and being willing to do whatever it takes to be a success.
But you're welcome.
I'm coming back to this a bit late, so you may or may not read this, but... I don't want any point to go unaddressed.
At the risk of sounding sad-sack-ish, the honest truth is that I have no passion. I'm always hearing people tell me about what it is that gets them "up in the morning". For some, it's teaching. For others, it's engineering. For some, it's not a job so much as a goal. I simply don't have such strong feelings towards anything. I don't say this as an excuse, or to gain sympathy, I say this because I generally believe in being truthful.
With regards to doing whatever it takes to be a success... it all relates. Frankly, I don't know how to define success. From what I can gather, those who describe themselves as being successful essentially always have internal motivation; they achieve some goal because it's what they wanted, everything else be damned. The only motivation I can ever really find is external... the desire to assert myself as independent from a particular influence. The two big problems are 1) Every time I try to accomplish this, it's always met with another move to keep me boxed in. And 2) Assuming I succeed? My only real motivation in life is to get away from my only real sourceof motivation. Succeeding in asserting said independence would leave me with literally no other identifiable goal beyond simply scraping by some meager, meaningless existence.
Listen. I don't say this to sound "woe-is-me", although I'm fully aware that's precisely how it comes out. I say this because it's simply where I am mentally. Most of the people I know (small sample, I know) are at least partially dictated by their emotions. Success is consequently defined as being whatever stimulates the desired emotional state. Some people are happy being well-off financially, while others are happy having a simple job/life so long as it fulfills their passion. When I was younger, I was stripped of much of my emotional capacity, leaving me a hot ball of anger for several years. That anger carried me through high school, and was pretty much the only thing that provided me the ability to graduate. Since that time, that once hot ball of anger has gradually cooled to a cold ball of resentment. I no longer have the anger to propel me from one life, nor the prospect of eventual fulfillment to pull me toward another. I'm listless. Indifferent. A ship subject to the sea and the wind. A battery with no charge. You get the idea.
Again, I'm not fishing for pity. I'm just saying that this is where I am right now. It reads as bleak, depressed, distraught, while the actual emotion behind the words is utter ambivalence. I will say that I probably shouldn't have formed my OP the way I did, as --upon reflection-- it drew too much attention to the history, whereas my immediate concern was the audition at hand. I was looking less for broad commentary on my personal relations, and more for advice on how to handle the immediate situation. I sought only to provide backgound information for the purpose of minimizing the number of posts which presented ideas, opinions, or rationale which had already been argued to death between my father and myself. I didn't fully realize how far into the rabbit hole I was going, and that's my fault.
In any case, the responses I got --all of them-- were exceedingly helpful. In the end, I still could have come up with a better solution to the immediate situation, but I also know that I could have done a lot worse, if I hadn't sought the views expressed here.
Thanks to all. It's been enlightening. This thread may --at your discretion-- be considered sufficiently resolved.
My advice,as harsh as it sounds,, is to man up. As a person that was ABUSED by their father (mentally, physically, emotionally) and severely neglected I cant take your problems seriously. At all. You're boohoooing and blaming all of your laziness and failures on your father. A father that sounds to me like he cares about you but is disengaged and not a foofy mushy kind of guy.
You need to get a job. Now. You cant hold a job because of your attitude. You have a very immature spoiler wimpy attitude. I will say you seem well spoken so you're obviously not stupid.
You also need to see a doctor. You sound as if you may also have a type of depression or bipolar type disorder.
OP - I don't think there's a single thing anyone on a message board can say that you'll accept. You seem pretty determined to talk your way out of everything.
Were I you, I'd see a doctor and get checked out just to make sure there's nothing physical going on. Then I'd see a therapist. A good therapist won't let you get away with all the excuse making and justification and help you find out what you need to do to get your life in order. Meanwhile, the worst thing you can do is sit around jobless. You need to start figuring out you are an adult. Adults do adult things. Like get up every morning and do something productive that will pay the bills. Again, good luck.
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