Lycanthropy: A Tempest in my Soul
I'm experiencing a crisis of self. I'm aware of two factors. The first is that an increasing awareness of social justice issues is imploding my whole view of the world, and my place in it. The second is that Aly and I had a talk about the timing of children, which has forced me to realize how unready I am to be Dad, and how conflicted I feel about that label and all of its variants. Ostensibly this is about the Dad thing, but they're closely intertwined.
I have always seen humans as struggling between Good and Evil. I've imagined that this must be the same for others as it is for me, but I've begun to doubt that, to wonder if perhaps these storms rage in me with uncommon vigor. Do you agonize about these things?
I know how to be the monster, and the kind of immediate gratification it can yield. I was taught by the best. It pulls at me from time to time, that impulse to disregard others. It loses against the loftiness of my conscience, but wins over my flayed emotions with ease. Cartoonish devils that appear on people's shoulders with cute little tails and pitchforks might illustrate the trivial urge to steal a piece of pie, but the dark, whispering figure on my shoulder is a psychopath, and my Dad.
Technically a "malignant narcissist", and one that I loved and admired, hated and despised - all with such intensity that at any moment I can feel one of these things about him, but not both. Switching back and forth is easy, but I cannot resolve them. I had more than one parent, but really, there was just Him. I'm checkered inside.
I cosplay Sirius Black, but truly, I am Lupin. His Lycanthopy is a metaphor for abuse: a disease which renders us fearful of hurting our loved ones, of losing control of our actions and our selves; a disease which is communciable to those we wound when transformed. Isolation to some Shrieking Shack is a common response, but at the heart of this is the desperate need to be loved, so it is no solution. Love, which I do not feel I deserve but will pursue anyway by any means at any cost to anyone, and how DARE you...
And there it is. I'm still a little boy, crying for attention and refusing to eat my vegetables or clean my room. A boy in a man's body, with a man's power in the world. And my father? He was a fucking child, too. You can't parent like that. I want to be an adult for my babies, and I haven't learned how.