Abuse of power - More about Nathalie´s father

Abuse of Power - More from Naty´s house

This is from my journal on July 10 2007

Telling someone, "because those are the rules" is an abuse of power.

Saying “When you are 18 you can do what you want” is an abuse of power.

Saying or implying “When you are living in my house you will follow my rules” is an abuse of power.

She (Nathaliie) wanted an explanation. (why she couldnt go to plaza artigas)

I am opposed to anything that will stop her progress. (what the father kept saying)

he said

Nathaly, I’m not stupid. You think that I don’t know anything, but I have seen it with my own eyes. They even are doing sex on the street. They are doing oral sex and sex sex. I know what happens there. Don’t act like I don’t know what is happening because I do.

At one point she said “I want to go there because you won’t me.” And she smiled.

At one point they were both trying to talk and she was saying Papa, escuchame. And he said no, you listen. And she gave in and let him talk.

She was out powered, not out reasoned.

People with more power than you give you power over other people. Those other people are called your children.

The people who give you the power are the lawmakers. The lawmakers are backed up by people who have guns and jails, and who will use physical force on you.

Aggie… Aggie is almost the perfect person. She speaks Spanish. She is smart, she is organized, she is dependable. She is caring. She is open to learning.

I want Aggie to help me. To help us. But everyone else is pushing her in the direction of the black hole. The university.

It is sucking her in just like a black hole. A huge vacuum, sucking anything in which comes near it.

At one point he was almost stomping his feet saying “Nathaly, Nathaly, Nathaly” He was saying it in this voice that said “You don’t know anything. Admit it and just accept it.”

She couldn’t see what was happening and mock him. She didn’t stomp her feet and say “Papa. Papa. Papa”

He almost never looked at her. That scares me really.

Later he told me "she gets half of my love just because she is my daughter. But the other half depends on what she does. If she does the wrong thing she loses it and I told her that."

I never asked him what he meant by progress.

I would like to but at this point I am just playing with him. Acting dumb like Columbo. To get information out of him which I can use against him to prove my case. It is unfair because he is on a totally different level. It is like if someone were asking me questions about physics, or quantum physics. Or how to fly a space ship.

Giving parents power without giving them training is like putting them inside a space ship, then blasting it off and saying “we trust you to know what to do.”

-
I asked her what she wanted to do and she said maybe psychology. I said "do your friends come to you with their problems?" She said, "yes I am always giving them advice." I told her that when they trained me to be a suicide prevention counselor they said the most important thing was not to give advice because you don’t know the people and it is not your life and the consequences won’t be yours.

She got a little defensive and said "but after you spend a lot of time with them you do get to know them so you know what is best for them."

But making them dependent on you isn’t what is best for them.

To help the world you have to look beyond your own family. Your family would love it if you spent your whole life helping them. My mother for example, would be happier if I lived next door to her and I went over and helped her move furniture around, fix her car, mow her grass, listen to her for hours on end. My mother would literally use up nearly all of my time. She is basically insatiable. It is too late now to satisfy my mother. I was fortunate to realize making my mother happy was an impossible job. Nothing I did would be good enough and she would always need more.

If it was good enough it was only temporarily good enough. She always, always needed more from me.

She manipulated me with praise more than with fear I think. She would say in an exaggerated tone, “Oh my Steven is such an angel. He came all the way back from Texas to help his old mother.”

Somewhere on my site I tell the story of “It helps make up for all your sins” or whatever she said. She was talking about helping her pick out her new car.

So that was her not so subtle way of letting me know a) it only helps make up, but it doesn’t totally make up and b) I had done a lot of bad things. According to her.