Check Mate

     I came to an interesting discovery today.  I've always been embarrassed when people ask what I'm doing, because I don't feel like I'm doing enough.  Certainly not enough for their standards which I don't really care about so much, but neither enough for mine which I do.  I get stuck.  And I can't explain why.  I make huge progress, quite impressive really, and then come to a screeching halt.  And stay there.  And stay there.  Can't move forward, can't move back.  People sometimes think it is difficulty with everyday things that is stops me, but I believe it is really the ideas you have about life, your life filter if you will, that is sometimes flawed.  Once that is set to right everyday things are incredibly easy.  Get groceries, manage bank accounts, talk to lawyers, blah blah blah.  Pffft.
     I have been trying to take the final steps towards becoming independent from my parents.  Incredibly late, and yet in some ways decades earlier than some do.  I had one fairly simple step left to do and I stalled, for months.  Every time I would start I would panic and shut down.  As I was trying to figure out why this was so incredibly difficult, the thought popped in my head that 'my father will kill me if I try to leave him'.  It's a startling revelation, but to some alters inside my head a very true assessment and a belief I had carefully molded my life around.  No one in the family walks away from his power.  He essentially owns and controls everyone, no matter what their age or their so called 'independence'.  To break off from that would be to defy everything I knew, and if I tried it when I was young (which I did) I would actually be placing my life at risk to varying degrees (which it did).
     In addition I had grown up confusing power and need with love and respect.  If I stop allowing them to control me, I have probably just ended the strongest link of love I have known from them.  Love without power, sadly, does not seem to exist in that world.  Trying to hold on to the love I needed from them meant letting them have control, no matter how much they may abuse it.  Which is not love.  I finally had to accept this and gear up to move on.  We're not pretending anymore.  No more standstill.  I waited as long as I possibly could.  That is my show of love, that I wanted to give them every chance I could, and wait for their final decision.  They made their decision not to change, and so I made my decision to get out.  Which contrary to my upbringing is the safest thing I could do.  This is love, that I love and trust and protect myself no matter what.