until you get it right.
I've often said that my first fear as the parent of a boy is that the boy will grow up to be like my brothers.
Justifiably - my brothers are piss-poor role models. And as much as you might want to argue "nurture", sometimes Nature has the trump card. (Schizophrenia, for example. You can't teach that away.)
But anyway.
I'm coming to realize that, more generally, I am afraid that my son will grow up to be like men I have loved.
Brilliant. Passionate... obstinate. Marginal. Careless and cruel.
So far, these things don't seem so far outside the realm of possibilities.* I mean, I know he's only four- er, five. It takes time to develop the skills and traits... the maturity... to counter the crasser impulses of ego.
And, on the other hand, his father has the good stuff and none of the hurtful (well, he is obstinate, but served alone that's annoying at best, not fatal, and on the flip-side he is my bedrock). So there's another side of Nature here, and nurture too- the battle is far from lost.
But back to the first hand, I can tell you that this child sitting next to me, watching Sesame Street, is the same being that kept me awake with his angry howling the first night of his life. He's just got longer pajamas and a bigger vocabulary. (I exaggerate. But also I don't.)
And I know - oh, I know - some people never overcome these things. They just wear longer pjs and use bigger words when they break your heart.
It's a harrowing thought.
Also, it's an exhausting thought. And this is what I'm getting at, with this post:
When you have a friend or a lover or a brother, even (or their female counterparts, this is not limited to men, it's just my frame of reference) who hurts you, you ultimately have a choice. You can give and you can tolerate and you can explain and you can justify and you can love and you can forgive and you can teach and you can exemplify and you can do whatever it takes to make it work with that person for as long as you are willing and able, but in the end it is not your job to change someone else. It is not your burden, if you don't want it to be. This is not your child. Who they are is not your fault.
We are responsible for ourselves, ultimately, and sometimes the only thing you can do to protect yourself from hurt is to just... walk away.
But... if my child turns out to be a prick, well. That is my fault. Even if it's not... it is. Innit.
When I think of all that I have given of myself, how much I have tried and how hard I have fought for people that I love, and when I think of how much further I have to push it past the point of breaking because this time it is my child... it guts me. I want to curl up and weep, smoke myself into oblivion, get in my car and drive to the ocean, throw myself from a bridge, find a cabin in the woods and write existential poetry...
I won't. Fuck no. This is one man I will never give up on.
But -
what if I look at him one day and he's forty and he's beating his wife and kids, or he's penniless and loveless and bitter, what if he hates me, what if he's behind bars, what if he's dead.
It happens.
I know. What if is a big, dark puddle of ick. It's an exercise in self-torture. I should just let it go.
I'm just... you know.
I'm just saying.
*and, really, karmically, wouldn't it just make sense? That's a rhetorical question, don't mind me.
Justifiably - my brothers are piss-poor role models. And as much as you might want to argue "nurture", sometimes Nature has the trump card. (Schizophrenia, for example. You can't teach that away.)
But anyway.
I'm coming to realize that, more generally, I am afraid that my son will grow up to be like men I have loved.
Brilliant. Passionate... obstinate. Marginal. Careless and cruel.
So far, these things don't seem so far outside the realm of possibilities.* I mean, I know he's only four- er, five. It takes time to develop the skills and traits... the maturity... to counter the crasser impulses of ego.
And, on the other hand, his father has the good stuff and none of the hurtful (well, he is obstinate, but served alone that's annoying at best, not fatal, and on the flip-side he is my bedrock). So there's another side of Nature here, and nurture too- the battle is far from lost.
But back to the first hand, I can tell you that this child sitting next to me, watching Sesame Street, is the same being that kept me awake with his angry howling the first night of his life. He's just got longer pajamas and a bigger vocabulary. (I exaggerate. But also I don't.)
And I know - oh, I know - some people never overcome these things. They just wear longer pjs and use bigger words when they break your heart.
It's a harrowing thought.
Also, it's an exhausting thought. And this is what I'm getting at, with this post:
When you have a friend or a lover or a brother, even (or their female counterparts, this is not limited to men, it's just my frame of reference) who hurts you, you ultimately have a choice. You can give and you can tolerate and you can explain and you can justify and you can love and you can forgive and you can teach and you can exemplify and you can do whatever it takes to make it work with that person for as long as you are willing and able, but in the end it is not your job to change someone else. It is not your burden, if you don't want it to be. This is not your child. Who they are is not your fault.
We are responsible for ourselves, ultimately, and sometimes the only thing you can do to protect yourself from hurt is to just... walk away.
But... if my child turns out to be a prick, well. That is my fault. Even if it's not... it is. Innit.
When I think of all that I have given of myself, how much I have tried and how hard I have fought for people that I love, and when I think of how much further I have to push it past the point of breaking because this time it is my child... it guts me. I want to curl up and weep, smoke myself into oblivion, get in my car and drive to the ocean, throw myself from a bridge, find a cabin in the woods and write existential poetry...
I won't. Fuck no. This is one man I will never give up on.
But -
what if I look at him one day and he's forty and he's beating his wife and kids, or he's penniless and loveless and bitter, what if he hates me, what if he's behind bars, what if he's dead.
It happens.
I know. What if is a big, dark puddle of ick. It's an exercise in self-torture. I should just let it go.
I'm just... you know.
I'm just saying.
*and, really, karmically, wouldn't it just make sense? That's a rhetorical question, don't mind me.