You know, Father’s Day is just about upon us again and it leads my thoughts in a specific direction...
I don’t have a father anymore. I’m at that point in life where I’m old enough that I’ve got the whole dead parent thing going on and my old man has been dead now for over five years. It’s a curious thing too in a way because even though he’s gone he still looms large in my life.
He looms large perhaps in the destruction that was left in his wake.
My ‘father’ was not a nice man. As a matter of fact he was a despicable, selfish, petty tyrant who spent much of his time doing his level best to berate me and put me down in every way possible. When I was younger, this never really made a lot of sense to me but as I got older I grew to understand that the compulsion that led him to behave in such a manner was deeply rooted in his own insecurity and self loathing.
Outwardly, to people who knew him in only a very superficial or limited way, he was gregarious and genial but. most of this mien was stemmed in his long term abuse of alcohol. I can actually remember going to AA meetings at around the age of 9 or 10, being dragged along as part of my ‘quality time’ with my father when he had visitation after my parents divorce (roll that over in your head if you will for a moment... as an adult it really astonishes me that a parent would expose a child to that world).
But really when you get right down to it, who your parents are, the people they are, is really a bit of a crap shoot. There are no guarantees on whether you’ll have good parents or bad.
Truthfully, I’m not looking for pity here, this is more along the lines of statement of fact. It’s just this holiday brings me back to thinking about a man who has passed and what if anything his legacy is. There are a lot of broken bodies in my father’s wake. Women he had relationships with, children he neglected, it’s really quite fascinating.
I spent a lot of time trying to prove to my father I wasn’t the person he made me out to be. The problem was, I never was, not even close because, the horrid animal he tried to paint me as whenever we had contact was nothing more than a reflection of him as a person. And I have to admit I find it quite unsettling when I do see parallels in my life in comparison to his. The irony here is, all those malicious things he imagined I might be capable of, they were only the things he could do, the evil he could visit on people.
I can’t bring myself to blame him anymore - to blame him for being the man he was. I have never understood how he could turn out so incredibly damaged and my uncle (his older brother) could set an example for me that I carry in my heart to this day. I can’t blame him especially now that it has been a half decade since he passed and in that time I’ve just had to pick up the pieces of a life where I spent a good portion of time doing things, caring for someone, who showed no appreciation other than to demean and berate me.
So today, on this day celebrating fathers, I’ll think back on the past a bit. I’ll ask the same questions about why things were the way they were but I won’t linger or dwell on it any more than I already have here.
I’m sure my experience was not unique, I know it wasn’t for a fact as a recent conversation relayed another person’s pain and hurt, damage that was still carried around and evident in the person by a distant and emotionally lacking parent even though the age of child and parent would make one think any conflict would have been resolved long ago.
But that’s not the way things work. The damage of harsh words, coldness, or absence of approval can last a lifetime. There are a lot of the walking wounded in this world and each of them carries that burden in silence often, shackled to those chains, hauling it around until they free themselves. Until they realize there wasn’t a single thing they could do to repair the damage in their parent they simply won’t be free.
And as far as honoring goes... yes, if someone merits it, by all means but Father’s Day is not a right and celebrating tyrants, dictators or monsters is just foolish. Instead it’s better to bury them and like the past just leave them behind for a better tomorrow.
I don’t have a father anymore. I’m at that point in life where I’m old enough that I’ve got the whole dead parent thing going on and my old man has been dead now for over five years. It’s a curious thing too in a way because even though he’s gone he still looms large in my life.
He looms large perhaps in the destruction that was left in his wake.
My ‘father’ was not a nice man. As a matter of fact he was a despicable, selfish, petty tyrant who spent much of his time doing his level best to berate me and put me down in every way possible. When I was younger, this never really made a lot of sense to me but as I got older I grew to understand that the compulsion that led him to behave in such a manner was deeply rooted in his own insecurity and self loathing.
Outwardly, to people who knew him in only a very superficial or limited way, he was gregarious and genial but. most of this mien was stemmed in his long term abuse of alcohol. I can actually remember going to AA meetings at around the age of 9 or 10, being dragged along as part of my ‘quality time’ with my father when he had visitation after my parents divorce (roll that over in your head if you will for a moment... as an adult it really astonishes me that a parent would expose a child to that world).
But really when you get right down to it, who your parents are, the people they are, is really a bit of a crap shoot. There are no guarantees on whether you’ll have good parents or bad.
Truthfully, I’m not looking for pity here, this is more along the lines of statement of fact. It’s just this holiday brings me back to thinking about a man who has passed and what if anything his legacy is. There are a lot of broken bodies in my father’s wake. Women he had relationships with, children he neglected, it’s really quite fascinating.
I spent a lot of time trying to prove to my father I wasn’t the person he made me out to be. The problem was, I never was, not even close because, the horrid animal he tried to paint me as whenever we had contact was nothing more than a reflection of him as a person. And I have to admit I find it quite unsettling when I do see parallels in my life in comparison to his. The irony here is, all those malicious things he imagined I might be capable of, they were only the things he could do, the evil he could visit on people.
I can’t bring myself to blame him anymore - to blame him for being the man he was. I have never understood how he could turn out so incredibly damaged and my uncle (his older brother) could set an example for me that I carry in my heart to this day. I can’t blame him especially now that it has been a half decade since he passed and in that time I’ve just had to pick up the pieces of a life where I spent a good portion of time doing things, caring for someone, who showed no appreciation other than to demean and berate me.
So today, on this day celebrating fathers, I’ll think back on the past a bit. I’ll ask the same questions about why things were the way they were but I won’t linger or dwell on it any more than I already have here.
I’m sure my experience was not unique, I know it wasn’t for a fact as a recent conversation relayed another person’s pain and hurt, damage that was still carried around and evident in the person by a distant and emotionally lacking parent even though the age of child and parent would make one think any conflict would have been resolved long ago.
But that’s not the way things work. The damage of harsh words, coldness, or absence of approval can last a lifetime. There are a lot of the walking wounded in this world and each of them carries that burden in silence often, shackled to those chains, hauling it around until they free themselves. Until they realize there wasn’t a single thing they could do to repair the damage in their parent they simply won’t be free.
And as far as honoring goes... yes, if someone merits it, by all means but Father’s Day is not a right and celebrating tyrants, dictators or monsters is just foolish. Instead it’s better to bury them and like the past just leave them behind for a better tomorrow.
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