My family needs a big change of scenery
SENECA99 - Jul 6 2024 at 13:30
In many respects, I should have enough. I co-own a successful small business, so money is never an issue. I have three kids in college and we are paying their tuitions. But we have sustained so much trauma along the way, for the mental health of a few members, I have come to the conclusion that we need a very large change.
Briefly, over the past few years, two of my three kids have been diagnosed with cancer as has my wife. They are all doing well but it has taken a tremendous toll on their psyches. Our home, which was once a loving abode, is now the walls of gut retching memories. We have no intent on breaking up. We all love each other. But we are very stressed. Damaged by the past, trying to navigate futures with too much scar tissue. We have also become socially isolated in our small community for various reasons. Nothing terrible but isolated, which in a small town where everyone knows everyone and is actively involved in others' affairs, we stand out. We have become outsiders in our own small community even though we have lived here for 20 years.
I am stubborn. I have been trying to will myself and family forward. One of my children is fine with that. She would stay put no problems. The others desperately want out. They want a total new life and a nice one at that. They are hurting. It is palpable. I know that you cannot run away from your problems but they are haunted by our lifestyle.
If I were to move, they want to move considerably far. Not across the country, but far enough away where it is truly a fresh start. Not to get deep into specifics, but a move of say, 45 minutes away, wouldn't provide that truly fresh start. We would need to move at least 2+ hours away by my estimation to provide a truly fresh page. Plus the place I have in mind, we have some family and friends close by. So, some support systems there.
But I co-own a business. The business really needs me there regularly. It is not the type of business that can be run remotely or with me there only a day or two a week. Three days would probably be pushing it. Four is doable. To make this work, I would need to commute 4 hours a day, four days a week. I am a person with a lot of energy. Waking up and getting on the road before dawn to cut down on that morning commute is doable. Late day commute is probably going to be terrible no matter what I do. Can I sell my share of the company, cash out and start again somewhere else? Sure, but at my age it won't be easy. I am no longer a young man. I might just have to sell my share and then work for someone else closer to my new home. I haven't worked for someone in a long time and the thought of going from boss to employee and taking a major pay cut, isn't too appealing. But my family! They really need a big change and they want it to be geographical. I know we would bring with us a lot of our current problems because you cannot run from problems, but sometimes a fresh outlook on life can do the trick.
I am terribly confused. I am a family man, first and foremost. I want to do what's best for us. But I also understand the need for money and career. I don't want to give that up so easily and start from scratch at a late age. I am willing to try a long commute for a few years. Who knows, by then, maybe I am in a position to cash out or maybe I can open a second office close to my new home?
If anyone has any experience or advice in this area, I would be very grateful. Thank you!
When you start thinking about making the positive changes to your life, then you're already successfully achieving them. When you reckon you can commute 4 hours daily for 4 days weekly, then you have the energy to start elsewhere as well, regardless of your age.
You need to use your life experience to plan your next move; whether it's another business after you've cashed in the other one or you're gone into something completely different as long as you're happy with it. When you're happy, your family will be also. Everyone goes through stages where we all wonder about this & that & then make major changes to our lifestyle & turn around a year later & wonder what the fuss was all about. If we have our health, regardless of age, anything's possible & you should also remember, where there's a will, there's a way.
Good luck.
Hi Seneca99,
Agree with our veteran, Manalone (- always do; he's ucking brave, resilient, intelligent AND emotionally-intelligent, he is...has definitely earned his Stripes - and owned businesses, same as me) (and blushes easily, I suspect, heh-heh).
Money can't make you happy. It can only make being miserable more comfortable. (- My wiser-than-wise Dad - and I've had proof).
Oh yes you can run away from your problems if your problems have legs - which yours do - and therefore are other people's issues dumped onto you. And you can also run away to a place where you can better DEAL with those problems (or, assumptively in your case, recover from them). The physical distance ("safe at last!") gives you the same mentally, affording a better, more comprehensive view and understanding of everything that happened, which definitely speeds-up your recovery. Probably NOT so much when you move to a different country altogether because learning how everything works, basically starting from scratch in terms of learning how to function all over again and getting financially exploited like all newbie immigrants, by waiting scammers and cowboys (social predators), is pretty drip-drip traumatic itself and can just push your emotional sheets further down the To Dos in your emotional In-Trays (sense?). But you're merely moving 2 hours away so you won't have that obstacle course.
Yeah. I'm in favour of it. Sounds like you and (because you work outside of town) particularly your family, might as well be living in a Gas Chamber or prison. What a nightmare. (PLEASE tell us who these barstools are and what they've been up to? Manalone, I and other regulars (all non-quitting warrior/fighter types) might well have a menu of tacks and solutions you can employ (probably).
They've GOT to be Narcs, or toxics at least. What other type except theirs would kick a family like that when they were so seriously down? That is a giant giveaway in itself.
With those incredibly heavy and malignant monkeys on your back, one only ever has two intelligent choices on their keeping-it-real menu:
1. Walk away and never look back.
2. Stay and psychologically plaster the merchant-bankers all over the walls ("Out-Narcing the Narcissist" - google).
If either don't work beautifully then it's because the victim-target hasn't done it PROPERLY-THOROUGHLY.
It's hard as a Fighter and Non-Quitter to stomach the thought of No. 1 but you have to understand that nothing is Black & White, and in La-La Land (surrounded by Narcs and their either witting or well-meaning-but-duped "Flying Monkeys"), you're in opposites land, meaning, here, walking (or running) away is not Quitting...because it kills their sick and puny egos if you get away. So either option is Fighting rather than Flighting/Freezing/Fawning.
POOR YOU AND YOUR FAM, THOUGH - BLOODY NORA!
Question: was everything okay with the neighbours and community before the life shite rained down? I repeat: like all predators, they get you when you're down (or separated from the main herd). Positively POUNCE! Means normally you're too intimidating to take on/interfere with (intrinsic cowards, the lot of them).
Four years ago I moved from UK to Spain. Had always planned to but the Brexit deadline (end of 2020) forced me to have to move earlier. And at just-20, I had moved to Africa (which didn't work out, long term but was definitely my springboard).
Ultimately it's too difficult to have full confidence in 'prescribing' for you in any customised, targetted way without knowing precisely why you're - what - being shunned? Someone's been slandering your family, have they? Is the place toxic? Did you, say, refuse to pay a local contractor due to a bad job but suddenly you're the baddie? More info please.
If you're not ready to go into specifics then, just bear in mind that I know how to leave a ticking time-bomb just as you all skiddaddle. Which also shows you that sometimes you NEED to get your revenge, but which in context is actually ego-equalisation as would give your wife and kidlets an instant confidence boost (like a much-needed step-stool). I mean - imagine you all cheering and laughing your faces off, all re-empowered-feeling, as you and your removals company drive off! But again - need the details before I'd be prepared to coach you through that. (And bear in mind that once I have - it's like learning to dance as a kid as you stood on your dancing dad's/mum's feet - ever do that one? - ...once I have, you'll have that skill (and confidence explosion) forever, will (in La-La Land) be Titanium and officially a Narc-Slayer (knowing precisely which menu option will have THEM on the floor, potentially for years). IOW, if you can handle a Narc to point of putting them seriously out-of-action, YOU CAN DEAL WITH ANYONE AND DO ANYTHING. Including be capable of making FAR more money and generally, overall, gaining all that lost ground and then SOARING from there - in record time! You'll all have FAR more energy and motivation..a new joie de vivre. You'll see. Caged mammals, on the other hand, tend to just wither away.
Anyway, as you'll read when googling, toxics/Machievellis/Narcs use your strengths AGAINST you (i.e. manipulate the context/reality whereby your strengths count as weaknesses). Hence, your stubbornness (Tenacity actually), and Provider is, in this enforced context, keeping you and your loved-ones IN that gas chamber for longer than is healthy. But you've got to Protect before Providing is of any use.
Enough.
ENOUGH.
Okay?
They're all ill and distressed. Get them the uck out.
I repeat: You'll make the money back with your new-found sense of pride and invincibility (ALL of you!) as your pimped engines and new turbos. It's how it goes. (Proof: "Parents Split Up", Lily31, thread - multiple-Nex-victim into pheonix rising from the ashes.)
The toxics, on the other hand, whether one individual or whole nest, will be forced to turn their crosshairs onto someone else(s), for the simple reasons that they NEED to be bringing someone(s) down or psychologically slow-murdering them all the time, are COMPULSED to; it's their sick fuel tank, see. They are a known CAUSE of cancer and other stress-inflammatory diseases.
However, Out-Narcing Narcs is not difficult (been doing it my whole life, me and my hazmat suit, haha); the decision to ACT (options 1 or 2) is...because they/their illness start paralysing that adult mental skill surprisingly early on in your 'acquaintance'. (Honestly, mate, they play HAVOC with people's nervous systems then whole system...slow-killing you from the inside out). By being out-of-control seething inside for having been out-foxed (out-Narc-ed) by their PREY, they go into Narc Injury and Rage (to existential level), finally lose control, and start shooting (taking it out on) everyone and everything. You 'watch'. And then everyone knows the truth of what they are and what they're like (and suffer long-term Guilts). THEY go down the pan they were trying to push you down (google "Narcissist - Pathological Envy"). (I did that to a giant one just before I left for Spain) (kids were involved so there was no choice about it).
It's Them Or Us. No Grey areas in any La-La Land compound. It is NOT worth staying if the continued/fresh and heightened stress - and waiting for the next psychological brick through your window - makes any of them relapse! WHICH IT LIKELY WILL.
Kill it. Or kill it indirectly by abandoning it. (You're obviously a talented Provider, anyway, meaning, the Where or Where From is inconsequential. And yes, darn right you'll be capable of starting up a new branch!) Or, with me at your side - BOTH!
So details, por favor, Non-Snore Senor?
However, regardless - as you say, a change IS as good as a rest, and if the rot is now in your very, once-cosy, cave walls by now then a new house and loction is imperative. Just get the UCK OUT OF THERE WHILE YOU STILL CAN (and I am not sensationalising or over-dramatising that loss of capability, this sh*t is real...and you KNOW that because for the first time in a long time, I'm betting - YOU NEED SOMEONE'S HELP THUS CAME HERE - case closed...because normal people you clearly can single-handedly deal with (see how that works?). But I do need more evidence, as I say).
Question: Did it/they CAUSE the Cancers or at least pose as a slow-burning contributory exacerbator/causal factor all along, perhaps, just under your awareness(es) for years until things came out from under-the-table, finally, onto the top? That's usually how it goes (google "Narc Playbook" and opt for biz websites too).
PS: we're international so unless you provided your name and address, you're not so much a needle in a haystack as a quantum particle, Virtual at that. (You'd be surprised how many family and biz men are going or once went through your same nightmare.) Feel free to spill to your heart's content. If you do let slip anything potentially identificatory, I'll tell you and have the pertinent words/sentances edited out of post toute suite for you.
PPS: Does this (not verbatim as there are myriad variations) meme chime with you?
'Narcs want you to believe that your REACTION to their abuse is the whole problem, rather than the abuse itself.'
(Google "Narc Victim - Reactive Abuse", ak-legally a, justifiable Self-Defense. And - 'Narc - Plausible Deniability'.)
They light a fire or plant a bomb surreptitiously under the table where only you can see so that you'll react above the table where everyone else can see (or be told) ONLY your reaction, not what started it, whereupon the Malignant-thus-Abusive Narc points at your *seeming* overreaction and yells, 'See - see?? He and his whole family are MAAAAD!...' and, if they're a Covert - '...and I didn't even do anything, boo-hoo, they're picking on meeee!'. And they're bloody good actors because, for starters, they've had to spend their entire lives non-stop acting some or other really decent, big-hearted, dynamic, character type that's nothing like them! But a lot like you (funny, that) (google Narc Love Bombing - Mirroring).
(You never know...This new-found 'torchlight' might make you want to take another, closer look into the career 'photo album' including secret narcs you've unwittingly even hired (then had to fire). Bet it will.)
Another thing: Can you start getting them out of the entire area at the weekends? Picturesque camping-site stays? Visiting the distant rellies? B&B somewhere gorgeous (and strike a deal for making it every weekend?). Anything.
To kick-off their recovery, your entire fam members need decent pockets of non-contact with their abuser and abuser's territory. Psych version of fresh, oxygen-rich air packed with vits and minerals.
Beaches are incredible, natural therapy, btw. Doctors used to actually prescribe beach stays, doncha know. Otherwise - green countryside packed with trees...woods with lake... Green-green-green. If it can calm down ADHDs, it'll certainly be a tonic for your family.
And somewhere with a games-room featuring something like Ping-Pong where you can all have fun together as a family. (Remember Fun?...no, probably not.)
Plan, Stan?
That would be my immediate, interim move, anyway.
...Unless I've misunderstood and the abuse has been passive, as in, Neglect?
I mean - you try keeping ME away from a once-friendly neighbour's house, knowing they're going through that or only that they had going through SOMETHING as they've suddenly stopped socializing and fallen off the grid! PFF - wouldn't happen. I'd be leaving hot suppers on their doorstep every night with supportive messages of there being more where that came from if they wanted - or anonymously if they struggled with pride - AT LEAST!
Therapists and help forums are for when sh*t hits your fan but at a time when you don't have any genuine, involved and helpful, friends (rocks) around you (and/or it painfully transpires, never did).
So no excuses. Your community should have played Mohammad to the Mountain, not left you all alone to cope with something that uncharacteristically huge.
But if they're Coverts ('oops, didn't see you hanging off the cliff there, no really I didn't, heh'...your Fair-Weathereds-From-Hell...the opposite of Good-Samaritans) then you still need to get out for pockets in the run-up to for-good, but the mere abandonment - in the process or immediate run-up making it subtly as in cleverly-smoothly obvious to all that you are (shock-horror!) getting as far from "Wonderful Them" as possible (because they're so disgustingly inhumane thus intolerable) will do.
...twenty whole ucking years of investment. SHAME ON THEM!!!
(The more I think and all-angles extrapolate about the situation you were just left in, the more angry I'm getting on your behalf. GRRRRR....)
(Sorry I got carried away on the slightly wrong track there. The incredibly hot, steaminess today (had it from the cloud cover AND the ground-up thanks to a pelt-down yesterday) didn't help so I'll watch that, start to switch again to nighttime posting only now that we're in July and Hades aka August looms.)
PS: An hour away would do it, surely?