Hi Rommell. Hugs to you. With your son, focus on the now, and not on what has gone before. You know what he needs now and that's what you're going to provide him was.
Mommy, my therapist rocks; seriously rocks. There are no candles, we're in a calm room in a hospital without any hippy stuff in it, talking about things clinically and logically. That's not to say it's not hard. The previous two weeks have been excruciating while we examined what my pain felt like; half an hour of me holding myself in that pain and describing it. Useful, but knackering - it knocked me out until about Sunday. This week's was a lot easier, and it was more reflection than feeling.
Anyhow;
Should I be angry with him, or feel sorry for him?
Feel what you feel. There is no right or wrong.
For what it's worth, I feel both for Dad. I am angry with him, and I'm getting a lot better at being angry with him and not angry with me. In that sense, the anger is good. I've spent so long blaming myself, wanting to shake the child I was for not being good enough for him. It's been hugely destructive. All the mis-channelled anger has been firing out left right and centre, and non of it going to Dad who I still have an overwhelming instinct to protect.
So in that sense, the anger is healthy.
But I also have started to feel sorry for him. Well, not so much him, but the whole 'narc' group. This is a bunch of people who are incapable of feeling happy unless it's at the expense of other people. Their only point of reference to feel good is to make someone else feel bad. To suck all the joy and strength from other people. Even with the hypochondria thing; their ability to feel happy relies on other people feeling sorry for them, and ideally, being made uncomfortable. They require the balance of power in a relationship to be tipped their way, and all their transactions are based on this. They can't feel joy if other people are feeling joy and can't relate to pain unless they've had it worse.
When you think of it in that light; how sad an existence is that? Not being happy for someone else? Not being comfortable and proud about yourself so having to bring everyone else down?
I have narc tendencies I know, but I think the thing that keeps me out of this group is that; I feel happy when other people feel happy. It does not shake my sense of being. It doesn't spark destructive jealousy. I'm working on the other narc attributes (hypochondria being one, needing to be brilliant and going all out for that is another. I'm a praise-whore; I don't feel like I exist if people aren't praising me constantly. It's exhausting, to be honest and needs resolution.) I suppose that's the other thing about me; I am aware that these characteristics exist in me, and I want to do something about them. The narc cannot see their own weaknesses.
So in that sense, I'm a lot better off than Dad. I have the capacity for happiness and love, and I have the capacity to change.