The Living Years - Samhain Reflection
I listened to Mike and the Mechanics In The Living Years.
This song has always talked to me. And it has been a good shall we say starting point for my Samhain reflections. This time of not only remembering and reflecting on those who are no longer with us. But of reflection on our own personal harvest. Of plucking out that which we have held on to that is no longer good for us. Of recognising and removing the weeds that bind us so that next year we can blossom and produce a more fruitful harvest.
So I'm trimming a few bits that aren't relevant to me or that are repetitions, then framing my reflections around the verses.
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
For so long I blamed my parents, my childhood, for all of the pain I felt as an adult and as a child. Blamed them for not knowing how to cope with the world. Blamed them for not knowing how to have a "normal" relationship. Blamed them for not knowing how "good" parents behaved. Blamed them for being lonely, for being depressed, for being different.
I'm not even sure when I stopped blaming them. I know it didn't come all at once. A slow process that probably started when I realised that even when very young I was different from those around me. A sensitive child, easily hurt, but who also kept much inside and hidden. I don't suppose that I was an easy child to raise. Doesn't change the fact that they were shall we say "problematic" parents. But it does mean that my responses to them were heightened by my own sensitive nature.
Then when catastrophe hit and I found that one of my children had been sexually abused it really pulled me up with a jolt and made me realise that I had to stop letting the past define my life. That I had to sort my shit out and start being responsible for how I let the past effect me. That I could choose to let go and heal. And slowly I did just that. I hardly even recognise the person I was back then when I look back.
I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
This was so true, his biggest hope I crashed at the moment of birth (as did my sisters at their birth) I was supposed to be a boy and failed him by being a girl. I don't remember a time when I didn't realise he'd wanted a boy. No matter what I did that one failure I knew I could never erase and it was the first of a series of failures. I wasn't artistic enough. I was clever but not academic enough, when I brought home an A why wasn't it an A plus. Nothing was ever quite good enough and sometime somewhere that led me to truly believe that I wasn't good enough, that somehow there was a defect in me and that was why my parents didn't love me and always expected me to do better than I did.
Some part of me somehow bought into the story that if I tried hard enough, if I became perfect, if I did really well in something, then maybe he would be proud of me, maybe he would finally love me. And I let that shape so many decades of my life. I tried to be the perfect wife because I knew that somehow he wanted/expected me to be happy with my husband. I tried for success in my job, even though I found no fulfilment in it. When I graduated at 35 I found myself thinking that he really valued intelligence and education surely he would be proud of me now. After he did my mother told me how proud of that he was, shame he couldn't have told me while he was alive, shame I couldn't have asked him.
I finally realised that nothing I ever did would make him not expect more of me, nothing would ever make him tell me that he was proud of me, nothing would ever make him tell me that he loved me. And this realisation carried with it immense freedom. If nothing could get me the fatherly approval that I craved then I didn't need to keep chasing it. I could be me, I could do the things I wanted to do. I could seek my own approval for in the end it was going to be the one that mattered.
Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got
I have always used writing to process my thoughts and feelings. To straighten out my head before confronting an issue or trying to express my feelings. When I brought them into words somehow he always managed to shut me down, to shout over me, to make me afraid so that I could no longer frame my ideas clearly. Now I wonder was he afraid to see himself reflected in my anger and pain. I also wonder did he too suffer from the autistic spectrum traits that plague my life, or the Aspergers Syndrome that makes my daughters path harder to tread. Did he not express feelings because he did not know how to rather than because he didn't feel them. And instead of feeling anger and resentment and fear I feel sympathy mixed with some grief for the father he could have been but wasn't.
You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defence
When father and I disagreed there was no argument. He was right and I was wrong. If I did not agree then I was stupid or blind and only fit to be shouted down or hit. Normally I just quickly went silent and he took my silence as agreement. Once in my late teens I could not take the humiliation of being hit in front of my boyfriend and I struck back. I only hit him once and even now I feel ambivalence about that strike. Ashamed that I rose my hand to my parent. But glad that that day was the last time he ever hit me. He still shouted at me and called me stupid but he never raised a hand, or a shoe, or a belt, to me again. Not glad that I did it, but glad about the effect.
So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts
And the bitterness lasts so long. I moved away for over 10 years I lived about 100 miles away from my parents and the communication between us was almost nonexistent. But the hate, and the bitterness and the anger just burned away inside at me, poisoning who I was and not allowing me to move forward. To an extent I wallowed in my pain and I do feel some sympathy for my first husband as I could not have been easy to live with so wrapped up was I in feeling sorry for myself and at the same time still trying to be perfect because I believed it was the only way that anyone could accept or love me.
So Don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don't give up, and don't give in
You may just be OK.
And we start to get positive. I believed that I had been damaged beyond repair by my relationship with my parents. Once I realised it did not have to be that way, that I could choose to put the past behind me, I could stitch up my own wounds, make my own future and decide for myself just who and what I was going to be my life turned around. I stopped trying to be the perfect wife and mother. (Though I do occasionally catch myself trying to be perfect and have to give myself a good talking too). I dropped out of the rat race and decided to work part time earning enough to pay my bills and have a little left over, buying for myself the time to dedicate to other things that are important to me. I stopped seeking the approval of society. I stopped trying to be monogamous and admitted that actually my true nature is polyamorous. I stopped trying to be straight and admitted my bisexuality. I stopped trying to be vanilla and explored the world of BDSM, finding that when I love I am submissive but that I am also both masochistic and sadistic.
I found me. I love me. My life is good but not perfect. My kids accept me, My lover/Master accepts me, My friends accept me, I accept me. I still have twinges of not being good enough but I'm getting there and I am indeed OK.
I wasn't there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I was there when my father died. We knew for a year or so that he was dying. When I realised that he was dying I knew that if I didn't at least try to set things straight between us that I would always regret it.
But I couldn't face bringing it up in conversation. Couldn't deal with the possible rejection face to face. What if I told him I loved him and he didn't say it back. So I wrote him a letter, a long letter talking about lots of things but focussing on our inability to communicate. And at the end I told him that despite not being able to say it in person that I loved him and I wanted him to know that.
Ok so there was a part of me that still hoped that he would find a way to tell me in return that he loved me too. Instead what I got was several visits and increasing amounts of vegetables from his garden. Mum said that he couldn't say it but that was his way of trying to show that he loved me.
When he died the death bed reconciliation was not for us. He was in a hospice and for days he had been lapsing in and out of consciousness . One day he regained consciousness when just me and my youngest son were there. He got really angry with me over something silly. He shouted at me and called me stupid and asked me why I'd even bothered to go to university if I didn't even know left from right. It was like having the old dad back, the one I hated and feared. Then he lapsed into unconsciousness and never regained it again. So his last words to me were shouting and swearing and calling me stupid. Everyone said he hadn't meant it, it was the drugs confusing him etc., etc., that didn't stop it hurting.
Luckily I had come so far down the road to being me rather than a shadow of who I thought he wanted me to be that although it hurt it did not throw me back into the well known pit of despair and depression.
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I catch his spirit in all of my children. In my eldest sons quick wittedness and ability with mathematics which passed from dad to me to him. In my eldest daughters temper so often caused by her own fear and feelings of inadequacy (I don't think she can ever know how much she helped me to understand and forgive my dad). In my younger daughters stubbornness which has helped her to overcome so many obstacles. In my youngest sons idiosyncratic use of language, in the way he can argue black is white and turn people around to agreeing with him at which point he will change his mind and argue just as convincingly that black is black.
And I love the echoes of him I hear in my children.
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
It's not too late however to admit to oneself. To see that some of the faults were yours not just his. Or to admit to oneself ad I did last year that I was still angry with him, to write out that anger, to face it fully, then to release it both physically and with a symbolic act assisted by my Bear.
Not too late to learn some lessons. To work on fixing some of the problems I have had with my relationships with my own to children. To tell them loud, clear and regularly that I love them.
To learn to listen to them, not just to talk over them, to listen and to try and hear and understand what they are saying. To offer understanding, but only to offer solutions or suggestions when they are asking for them. To stand a little back, but to be available. I am far from the perfect mother, but I am trying to be the best I can.
This song also reminds me how far I have come, but before I start to get too big headed and stumble on my own pride it also reminds me how far I have to go.
Each time I believe that I finally have laid to rest all the pain that surrounded my relationship with him and all the grief that when he died so did every chance of ever having a normal father daughter relationship with him. Then I hear this song and it tears at me and the tears well and it reminds me that I've come a long way but I still have further to go.
Though this year the tears are gentle and mellow and kind of wistful. No longer harsh and heartbroken. I am finally am getting there. I am OK.
This song has always talked to me. And it has been a good shall we say starting point for my Samhain reflections. This time of not only remembering and reflecting on those who are no longer with us. But of reflection on our own personal harvest. Of plucking out that which we have held on to that is no longer good for us. Of recognising and removing the weeds that bind us so that next year we can blossom and produce a more fruitful harvest.
So I'm trimming a few bits that aren't relevant to me or that are repetitions, then framing my reflections around the verses.
Every generation
Blames the one before
And all of their frustrations
Come beating on your door
For so long I blamed my parents, my childhood, for all of the pain I felt as an adult and as a child. Blamed them for not knowing how to cope with the world. Blamed them for not knowing how to have a "normal" relationship. Blamed them for not knowing how "good" parents behaved. Blamed them for being lonely, for being depressed, for being different.
I'm not even sure when I stopped blaming them. I know it didn't come all at once. A slow process that probably started when I realised that even when very young I was different from those around me. A sensitive child, easily hurt, but who also kept much inside and hidden. I don't suppose that I was an easy child to raise. Doesn't change the fact that they were shall we say "problematic" parents. But it does mean that my responses to them were heightened by my own sensitive nature.
Then when catastrophe hit and I found that one of my children had been sexually abused it really pulled me up with a jolt and made me realise that I had to stop letting the past define my life. That I had to sort my shit out and start being responsible for how I let the past effect me. That I could choose to let go and heal. And slowly I did just that. I hardly even recognise the person I was back then when I look back.
I know that I'm a prisoner
To all my Father held so dear
I know that I'm a hostage
To all his hopes and fears
This was so true, his biggest hope I crashed at the moment of birth (as did my sisters at their birth) I was supposed to be a boy and failed him by being a girl. I don't remember a time when I didn't realise he'd wanted a boy. No matter what I did that one failure I knew I could never erase and it was the first of a series of failures. I wasn't artistic enough. I was clever but not academic enough, when I brought home an A why wasn't it an A plus. Nothing was ever quite good enough and sometime somewhere that led me to truly believe that I wasn't good enough, that somehow there was a defect in me and that was why my parents didn't love me and always expected me to do better than I did.
Some part of me somehow bought into the story that if I tried hard enough, if I became perfect, if I did really well in something, then maybe he would be proud of me, maybe he would finally love me. And I let that shape so many decades of my life. I tried to be the perfect wife because I knew that somehow he wanted/expected me to be happy with my husband. I tried for success in my job, even though I found no fulfilment in it. When I graduated at 35 I found myself thinking that he really valued intelligence and education surely he would be proud of me now. After he did my mother told me how proud of that he was, shame he couldn't have told me while he was alive, shame I couldn't have asked him.
I finally realised that nothing I ever did would make him not expect more of me, nothing would ever make him tell me that he was proud of me, nothing would ever make him tell me that he loved me. And this realisation carried with it immense freedom. If nothing could get me the fatherly approval that I craved then I didn't need to keep chasing it. I could be me, I could do the things I wanted to do. I could seek my own approval for in the end it was going to be the one that mattered.
Crumpled bits of paper
Filled with imperfect thought
Stilted conversations
I'm afraid that's all we've got
I have always used writing to process my thoughts and feelings. To straighten out my head before confronting an issue or trying to express my feelings. When I brought them into words somehow he always managed to shut me down, to shout over me, to make me afraid so that I could no longer frame my ideas clearly. Now I wonder was he afraid to see himself reflected in my anger and pain. I also wonder did he too suffer from the autistic spectrum traits that plague my life, or the Aspergers Syndrome that makes my daughters path harder to tread. Did he not express feelings because he did not know how to rather than because he didn't feel them. And instead of feeling anger and resentment and fear I feel sympathy mixed with some grief for the father he could have been but wasn't.
You say you just don't see it
He says it's perfect sense
You just can't get agreement
In this present tense
We all talk a different language
Talking in defence
When father and I disagreed there was no argument. He was right and I was wrong. If I did not agree then I was stupid or blind and only fit to be shouted down or hit. Normally I just quickly went silent and he took my silence as agreement. Once in my late teens I could not take the humiliation of being hit in front of my boyfriend and I struck back. I only hit him once and even now I feel ambivalence about that strike. Ashamed that I rose my hand to my parent. But glad that that day was the last time he ever hit me. He still shouted at me and called me stupid but he never raised a hand, or a shoe, or a belt, to me again. Not glad that I did it, but glad about the effect.
So we open up a quarrel
Between the present and the past
We only sacrifice the future
It's the bitterness that lasts
And the bitterness lasts so long. I moved away for over 10 years I lived about 100 miles away from my parents and the communication between us was almost nonexistent. But the hate, and the bitterness and the anger just burned away inside at me, poisoning who I was and not allowing me to move forward. To an extent I wallowed in my pain and I do feel some sympathy for my first husband as I could not have been easy to live with so wrapped up was I in feeling sorry for myself and at the same time still trying to be perfect because I believed it was the only way that anyone could accept or love me.
So Don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate
It may have a new perspective
On a different day
And if you don't give up, and don't give in
You may just be OK.
And we start to get positive. I believed that I had been damaged beyond repair by my relationship with my parents. Once I realised it did not have to be that way, that I could choose to put the past behind me, I could stitch up my own wounds, make my own future and decide for myself just who and what I was going to be my life turned around. I stopped trying to be the perfect wife and mother. (Though I do occasionally catch myself trying to be perfect and have to give myself a good talking too). I dropped out of the rat race and decided to work part time earning enough to pay my bills and have a little left over, buying for myself the time to dedicate to other things that are important to me. I stopped seeking the approval of society. I stopped trying to be monogamous and admitted that actually my true nature is polyamorous. I stopped trying to be straight and admitted my bisexuality. I stopped trying to be vanilla and explored the world of BDSM, finding that when I love I am submissive but that I am also both masochistic and sadistic.
I found me. I love me. My life is good but not perfect. My kids accept me, My lover/Master accepts me, My friends accept me, I accept me. I still have twinges of not being good enough but I'm getting there and I am indeed OK.
I wasn't there that morning
When my Father passed away
I didn't get to tell him
All the things I had to say
I was there when my father died. We knew for a year or so that he was dying. When I realised that he was dying I knew that if I didn't at least try to set things straight between us that I would always regret it.
But I couldn't face bringing it up in conversation. Couldn't deal with the possible rejection face to face. What if I told him I loved him and he didn't say it back. So I wrote him a letter, a long letter talking about lots of things but focussing on our inability to communicate. And at the end I told him that despite not being able to say it in person that I loved him and I wanted him to know that.
Ok so there was a part of me that still hoped that he would find a way to tell me in return that he loved me too. Instead what I got was several visits and increasing amounts of vegetables from his garden. Mum said that he couldn't say it but that was his way of trying to show that he loved me.
When he died the death bed reconciliation was not for us. He was in a hospice and for days he had been lapsing in and out of consciousness . One day he regained consciousness when just me and my youngest son were there. He got really angry with me over something silly. He shouted at me and called me stupid and asked me why I'd even bothered to go to university if I didn't even know left from right. It was like having the old dad back, the one I hated and feared. Then he lapsed into unconsciousness and never regained it again. So his last words to me were shouting and swearing and calling me stupid. Everyone said he hadn't meant it, it was the drugs confusing him etc., etc., that didn't stop it hurting.
Luckily I had come so far down the road to being me rather than a shadow of who I thought he wanted me to be that although it hurt it did not throw me back into the well known pit of despair and depression.
I think I caught his spirit
Later that same year
I'm sure I heard his echo
In my baby's new born tears
I catch his spirit in all of my children. In my eldest sons quick wittedness and ability with mathematics which passed from dad to me to him. In my eldest daughters temper so often caused by her own fear and feelings of inadequacy (I don't think she can ever know how much she helped me to understand and forgive my dad). In my younger daughters stubbornness which has helped her to overcome so many obstacles. In my youngest sons idiosyncratic use of language, in the way he can argue black is white and turn people around to agreeing with him at which point he will change his mind and argue just as convincingly that black is black.
And I love the echoes of him I hear in my children.
Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear
It's too late when we die
To admit we don't see eye to eye
It's not too late however to admit to oneself. To see that some of the faults were yours not just his. Or to admit to oneself ad I did last year that I was still angry with him, to write out that anger, to face it fully, then to release it both physically and with a symbolic act assisted by my Bear.
Not too late to learn some lessons. To work on fixing some of the problems I have had with my relationships with my own to children. To tell them loud, clear and regularly that I love them.
To learn to listen to them, not just to talk over them, to listen and to try and hear and understand what they are saying. To offer understanding, but only to offer solutions or suggestions when they are asking for them. To stand a little back, but to be available. I am far from the perfect mother, but I am trying to be the best I can.
This song also reminds me how far I have come, but before I start to get too big headed and stumble on my own pride it also reminds me how far I have to go.
Each time I believe that I finally have laid to rest all the pain that surrounded my relationship with him and all the grief that when he died so did every chance of ever having a normal father daughter relationship with him. Then I hear this song and it tears at me and the tears well and it reminds me that I've come a long way but I still have further to go.
Though this year the tears are gentle and mellow and kind of wistful. No longer harsh and heartbroken. I am finally am getting there. I am OK.