Things I Think About - Paternal Lessons
Those who have known me a while are aware of the fact that I've disowned my father, which is complicated and has involved a couple years worth of me consistently laying it on the line with him. Last summer, in August, a month before my sister's wedding, he and I had a verbal sparring match that lasted a good couple hours, with my mom and TJ exchanging glances as it all went down. TJ referred to that particular exchange as a drunken boxing match. My father would swing wildly at me verbally, with excuses or challenges or wild changes of topic, and I would verbally respond with a couple punches to the gut followed by one in the face.
Thing is, these conversations, like every other conversation I've had with my father for the last 25 years, lead nowhere. And I didn't start aggressively where that guy is concerned. My whole family spent a good decade or two being patient, loving, and simply waiting for things to change and for my father to recover from his suicidal/alcoholic tendencies. As far as I can tell, my mom is still stuck in that pointless loop of kindness where nothing makes a difference, and my father takes advantage of anything and everyone he can.
What started our verbal drunken boxing match last August was my father insisting to me that he'd been a good father, and that there were good times in there as well. He'd already gotten a few pokes in at me that I had let slide, but I couldn't let that particular issue rest.
So, I said "Yes, dad, I do have good memories of you as my father, but they all happened before I turned 8 years old. After that, you were never around. In fact, the only birthday gift I remember you giving me was my first CD player when I turned 16, and that only happened because mom made you take me." And my mom nodded as I said this. In fact, throughout all the twists and turns of this crazy conversation, my mom only jumped in once to correct one of the details, which still didn't change my overall point. The rest of the time she exchanged quiet, knowing glances with TJ while dad and I went round and round.
The biggest problem where my dad is concerned, and the reason I don't want him around my children or for family celebrations, is that his actions are constantly destructive. He has this amazing ability to take a day meant to celebrate a holiday or one of his children's birthdays and make the whole thing about him, while shitting on the celebratory events. It's miserable, and the bottom line is: I don't want him doing to my children what he spent my whole life doing to me, my mother and my siblings. We waited two decades for his destruction to stop, and it just didn't. I had to break that cycle, and kindness obviously didn't work, so I started calling him out.
While I cannot claim to have any relationship with my father built on shared memories or even conversations about things in my life that matter to me, I have learned from him. Not from the things he ever said or admitted to, but from decades of watching his behavior.
Lesson 1: The destructiveness of apathy.
My father is a professional at playing the victim. Bad things happen to him and he is constantly baffled or helpless to do anything about it. And he's not entirely wrong. By the time things collapse around his head, there is very little that can be done to fix it.
Thing is, his opportunity to repair the situation came a few months prior and he simply avoided the issue, rather than be bothered by work he didn't want to do. So, by the time his lack of effort caught up to him, things were in such a state that there really wasn't anything to be done to fix it anymore.
For years, I was fooled by this. I really believed the world constantly shit on him, and all the rest of us by affiliation. But as I got older, I realized, OF COURSE things like health, work and stability will fall apart if nothing is ever done to maintain. I mean, you're not going to have a healthy, thriving garden if you never weed it EVER. Of course you're going to repeatedly lose your job if you're not responsible, or you cut corners, or think you're entitled to fuck around all you want.
As an adult, I realized that a good career isn't simply stumbled upon, it is built through years of reliability and hard work. Very few of us get our start in the cherry job, only doing the work we want to do. Most of us have to grind our way through grunt work and build knowledge and expertise that lead us to better options.
If you never put effort into building the life you want, you will never succeed at achieving it. Amazing opportunities can be stumbled upon, but even these require hard work and will shrivel on the vine if met with apathy and the choice to do nothing.
Lesson 2: The destructiveness of fear.
What goes hand in hand with playing the victim is the belief that everyone is out to get you. It is easy to justify your lack of effort if you are paralyzed by angst. This may speak to my father's struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies, as well.
Now, it is easy to be afraid of the things that sometimes happen in this world, of the douchebag people out there who are willing to take advantage, of the very real trauma that people experience. I know, because I inherited a lot of that fear. I've spent years afraid of pursuing the things I cared about. I had spent my whole life being denied those things. Either due to our poverty because my dad couldn't hold down a job, or the fact that my dad liked to take an attention-whore emotional shit on most of the "good times" we tried to share as a family.
You get to a point where you're afraid to care or try, 'cause you'll simply end up disappointed or hurt again. Hell, I still have to manage my personal expectations. Disappointment still fucks me up hardcore, and I often have a love/hate relationship with hope. So, I pad my expectations. I rarely assume the best. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by the good things in life than expect them to happen and have my hopes dashed yet again.
The danger of fear is that it can often prevent us from trying in the first place, which takes us back to the pointless cycle of apathy. Fear is a programmed response to pain. On the basic level, it's good for us, as it reminds us not do things like touch a lit stove.
Problem is, when our fears are misplaced, all it does is shut us down and prevent us from trying in the first place. Fear is relevant, but it should never be allowed to be in charge. Or, as TJ likes to remind me, "Fear is the mind-killer."
Nothing is accomplished through fear. In fact, I like to bring myself back to this quote by Thucydides: "The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
Lesson 3: The destructiveness of secrets and lies.
This is the piece of the puzzle that ties into my father's alcoholic behavior tendencies, and is the issue I've struggled with the most. As my mom raised me with religious values, I've always been taught not to lie, though that distinction can easily descend into the grey areas of white lies, surprises, and the sometimes-kindness of omission.
But I still remember the moment I realized my father was a liar and his words could not be trusted, when I caught him in the middle of a blatant lie to my face. Helpful hint: When my father lies, he often looks shocked and baffled about a piece of information. In fact, there's a line from a song that almost makes me laugh out loud 'cause I can picture my father's face:
And then you use my cell phone
Callin' whoever that you think's at home
And when the bill comes, all of a sudden you be acting dumb
Don't know where none of these calls come from
When your mamma's number's here more than once
The biggest problem with lies is that they estrange you from the people you are lying to. It's nearly impossible to be close to someone who hides the truth from you. Whatever you do know about them isn't real, and everything else is a guessing game. I don't know about you, but I find that experience to be both exhausting and a complete waste of my time.
It's not that folks are obligated to share personal things with me, but don't lie about it. Say "no", or "I don't want to talk about that." But if you feed me a line and I figure that out, I'm just gonna assume you don't have any interest in being real with me. And with my past, I have no interest in pretend.
But the trickier issue here is secrets. You can easily keep a secret while still telling the truth. But carrying those secrets alone is a harsh thing and, just like lies, can alienate you from other people.
For me, my biggest struggle is understanding the difference between privacy and secrets. See, my whole family spent years pretending my father wasn't a suicidal alcoholic and that we were a happy, healthy, godly family. When I moved out of the house, I stopped pretending those things to myself and became alienated from my family, yet still carried those secrets.
In fact, thinking back on my 20s, those secrets are the source of my greatest pain. I wanted to protect my mother and my siblings, so I never spoke of the pain in my family to others. Or, if I did speak of it and those others started attacking my mom, I stopped talking because I didn't want to hear it.
Now, I personally believe my mother's greatest mistake was not leaving my father. I think she hurt herself and all of her children by not ending the destruction he caused to all of us. But I also know that my mother is the only reason any of us kids survived and I will never question the level of sacrifice she has put into her family. Her story is one of constant tragedy, but it will never change my love or admiration of that woman. I know the strength and sacrifice of her life, and very intimately. My mother's greatest failing is that she never realized that she both deserved and could have better.
The problem for me, is that I found myself with divided loyalties and bound by silence. So much of my life became a secret that I simply didn't know how to talk about. Even worse, I didn't know who to talk to.
See, I had become estranged from my family. During that time, I stopped talking about myself and my life with them. Awkwardly, when I moved to the Twin Cities, I also didn't know anyone or have an established circle of friends. And I quickly discovered, most people I did get to know didn't want to hear about this shit or didn't have any answers. So I bottled it up and held it to myself like a secret, isolating me further from other people.
Writing in this journal is an exercise in releasing all the secrets I've held for painfully long. I still don't typically know who to talk to, simply to purge these thoughts. I mean, I've seen a therapist, but talking to a stranger in private doesn't make it easier for me to share these things with the people who matter in my life. It almost felt like paying someone to help me continue to hide my past.
I know, to some extent, I go to the other extreme and end up laying my heart out for the world to see. But for me, there is healing in it. I'm no longer hiding me from the world. Anyone who wants to know me has access to this information, yet none of us have to waste precious social time having these tedious and painful conversations. In fact, I've had more than one male friend refer to these writings and say, "I'm not sure why I read this, I didn't need to know any of it."
And they're right. It's true. People who care about me typically don't need to know my painful history, because they've never seen me in that light in the first place. However, I need to purge these thoughts and secrets, because by holding onto them, I feel estranged from most of the rest of the world, even the people I care about.
So yeah, secrets can be just as destructive to closeness as lies are. Most people have a family they talk to about such things, but I'm still not entirely sure what the answer is when that avenue is closed to you. I can understand the need for privacy and other people's reluctance to take on more drama from a random source. But even more deeply, I know the isolation and pain that these secrets caused me.
While I still wish my mom would leave my dad and be released from her own unending pain, I am grateful for the lessons my father failed to teach me through any meaningful interaction, but successfully taught by example. It was a painful way to learn, but I am staunchly determined to break the cycle.
Thing is, these conversations, like every other conversation I've had with my father for the last 25 years, lead nowhere. And I didn't start aggressively where that guy is concerned. My whole family spent a good decade or two being patient, loving, and simply waiting for things to change and for my father to recover from his suicidal/alcoholic tendencies. As far as I can tell, my mom is still stuck in that pointless loop of kindness where nothing makes a difference, and my father takes advantage of anything and everyone he can.
What started our verbal drunken boxing match last August was my father insisting to me that he'd been a good father, and that there were good times in there as well. He'd already gotten a few pokes in at me that I had let slide, but I couldn't let that particular issue rest.
So, I said "Yes, dad, I do have good memories of you as my father, but they all happened before I turned 8 years old. After that, you were never around. In fact, the only birthday gift I remember you giving me was my first CD player when I turned 16, and that only happened because mom made you take me." And my mom nodded as I said this. In fact, throughout all the twists and turns of this crazy conversation, my mom only jumped in once to correct one of the details, which still didn't change my overall point. The rest of the time she exchanged quiet, knowing glances with TJ while dad and I went round and round.
The biggest problem where my dad is concerned, and the reason I don't want him around my children or for family celebrations, is that his actions are constantly destructive. He has this amazing ability to take a day meant to celebrate a holiday or one of his children's birthdays and make the whole thing about him, while shitting on the celebratory events. It's miserable, and the bottom line is: I don't want him doing to my children what he spent my whole life doing to me, my mother and my siblings. We waited two decades for his destruction to stop, and it just didn't. I had to break that cycle, and kindness obviously didn't work, so I started calling him out.
While I cannot claim to have any relationship with my father built on shared memories or even conversations about things in my life that matter to me, I have learned from him. Not from the things he ever said or admitted to, but from decades of watching his behavior.
Lesson 1: The destructiveness of apathy.
My father is a professional at playing the victim. Bad things happen to him and he is constantly baffled or helpless to do anything about it. And he's not entirely wrong. By the time things collapse around his head, there is very little that can be done to fix it.
Thing is, his opportunity to repair the situation came a few months prior and he simply avoided the issue, rather than be bothered by work he didn't want to do. So, by the time his lack of effort caught up to him, things were in such a state that there really wasn't anything to be done to fix it anymore.
For years, I was fooled by this. I really believed the world constantly shit on him, and all the rest of us by affiliation. But as I got older, I realized, OF COURSE things like health, work and stability will fall apart if nothing is ever done to maintain. I mean, you're not going to have a healthy, thriving garden if you never weed it EVER. Of course you're going to repeatedly lose your job if you're not responsible, or you cut corners, or think you're entitled to fuck around all you want.
As an adult, I realized that a good career isn't simply stumbled upon, it is built through years of reliability and hard work. Very few of us get our start in the cherry job, only doing the work we want to do. Most of us have to grind our way through grunt work and build knowledge and expertise that lead us to better options.
If you never put effort into building the life you want, you will never succeed at achieving it. Amazing opportunities can be stumbled upon, but even these require hard work and will shrivel on the vine if met with apathy and the choice to do nothing.
Lesson 2: The destructiveness of fear.
What goes hand in hand with playing the victim is the belief that everyone is out to get you. It is easy to justify your lack of effort if you are paralyzed by angst. This may speak to my father's struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies, as well.
Now, it is easy to be afraid of the things that sometimes happen in this world, of the douchebag people out there who are willing to take advantage, of the very real trauma that people experience. I know, because I inherited a lot of that fear. I've spent years afraid of pursuing the things I cared about. I had spent my whole life being denied those things. Either due to our poverty because my dad couldn't hold down a job, or the fact that my dad liked to take an attention-whore emotional shit on most of the "good times" we tried to share as a family.
You get to a point where you're afraid to care or try, 'cause you'll simply end up disappointed or hurt again. Hell, I still have to manage my personal expectations. Disappointment still fucks me up hardcore, and I often have a love/hate relationship with hope. So, I pad my expectations. I rarely assume the best. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised by the good things in life than expect them to happen and have my hopes dashed yet again.
The danger of fear is that it can often prevent us from trying in the first place, which takes us back to the pointless cycle of apathy. Fear is a programmed response to pain. On the basic level, it's good for us, as it reminds us not do things like touch a lit stove.
Problem is, when our fears are misplaced, all it does is shut us down and prevent us from trying in the first place. Fear is relevant, but it should never be allowed to be in charge. Or, as TJ likes to remind me, "Fear is the mind-killer."
Nothing is accomplished through fear. In fact, I like to bring myself back to this quote by Thucydides: "The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
Lesson 3: The destructiveness of secrets and lies.
This is the piece of the puzzle that ties into my father's alcoholic behavior tendencies, and is the issue I've struggled with the most. As my mom raised me with religious values, I've always been taught not to lie, though that distinction can easily descend into the grey areas of white lies, surprises, and the sometimes-kindness of omission.
But I still remember the moment I realized my father was a liar and his words could not be trusted, when I caught him in the middle of a blatant lie to my face. Helpful hint: When my father lies, he often looks shocked and baffled about a piece of information. In fact, there's a line from a song that almost makes me laugh out loud 'cause I can picture my father's face:
And then you use my cell phone
Callin' whoever that you think's at home
And when the bill comes, all of a sudden you be acting dumb
Don't know where none of these calls come from
When your mamma's number's here more than once
The biggest problem with lies is that they estrange you from the people you are lying to. It's nearly impossible to be close to someone who hides the truth from you. Whatever you do know about them isn't real, and everything else is a guessing game. I don't know about you, but I find that experience to be both exhausting and a complete waste of my time.
It's not that folks are obligated to share personal things with me, but don't lie about it. Say "no", or "I don't want to talk about that." But if you feed me a line and I figure that out, I'm just gonna assume you don't have any interest in being real with me. And with my past, I have no interest in pretend.
But the trickier issue here is secrets. You can easily keep a secret while still telling the truth. But carrying those secrets alone is a harsh thing and, just like lies, can alienate you from other people.
For me, my biggest struggle is understanding the difference between privacy and secrets. See, my whole family spent years pretending my father wasn't a suicidal alcoholic and that we were a happy, healthy, godly family. When I moved out of the house, I stopped pretending those things to myself and became alienated from my family, yet still carried those secrets.
In fact, thinking back on my 20s, those secrets are the source of my greatest pain. I wanted to protect my mother and my siblings, so I never spoke of the pain in my family to others. Or, if I did speak of it and those others started attacking my mom, I stopped talking because I didn't want to hear it.
Now, I personally believe my mother's greatest mistake was not leaving my father. I think she hurt herself and all of her children by not ending the destruction he caused to all of us. But I also know that my mother is the only reason any of us kids survived and I will never question the level of sacrifice she has put into her family. Her story is one of constant tragedy, but it will never change my love or admiration of that woman. I know the strength and sacrifice of her life, and very intimately. My mother's greatest failing is that she never realized that she both deserved and could have better.
The problem for me, is that I found myself with divided loyalties and bound by silence. So much of my life became a secret that I simply didn't know how to talk about. Even worse, I didn't know who to talk to.
See, I had become estranged from my family. During that time, I stopped talking about myself and my life with them. Awkwardly, when I moved to the Twin Cities, I also didn't know anyone or have an established circle of friends. And I quickly discovered, most people I did get to know didn't want to hear about this shit or didn't have any answers. So I bottled it up and held it to myself like a secret, isolating me further from other people.
Writing in this journal is an exercise in releasing all the secrets I've held for painfully long. I still don't typically know who to talk to, simply to purge these thoughts. I mean, I've seen a therapist, but talking to a stranger in private doesn't make it easier for me to share these things with the people who matter in my life. It almost felt like paying someone to help me continue to hide my past.
I know, to some extent, I go to the other extreme and end up laying my heart out for the world to see. But for me, there is healing in it. I'm no longer hiding me from the world. Anyone who wants to know me has access to this information, yet none of us have to waste precious social time having these tedious and painful conversations. In fact, I've had more than one male friend refer to these writings and say, "I'm not sure why I read this, I didn't need to know any of it."
And they're right. It's true. People who care about me typically don't need to know my painful history, because they've never seen me in that light in the first place. However, I need to purge these thoughts and secrets, because by holding onto them, I feel estranged from most of the rest of the world, even the people I care about.
So yeah, secrets can be just as destructive to closeness as lies are. Most people have a family they talk to about such things, but I'm still not entirely sure what the answer is when that avenue is closed to you. I can understand the need for privacy and other people's reluctance to take on more drama from a random source. But even more deeply, I know the isolation and pain that these secrets caused me.
While I still wish my mom would leave my dad and be released from her own unending pain, I am grateful for the lessons my father failed to teach me through any meaningful interaction, but successfully taught by example. It was a painful way to learn, but I am staunchly determined to break the cycle.