my dad

Growing up my dad made me believe my mom was drug addict, my uncles and aunts were alcoholics and losers and my grandparents wanted to turn me into a girl. He used lies and manipulation to dismantle my tenuous relationship with my mother and simply did not allow me to see my mom's side of the family. Ever. I was convinced that everyone was out to get my dad and he was the only one on earth who truly loved me or knew what my best interests were. Secluded. Segregated. Isolated. Family I thought loved me did not, they were liars trying to take me from him. Friends I thought liked me, did not, they were using me.

All the while this was happening, he was also making me sure I knew what a failure I was. How stupid I was. How I was embarrassing. How much better he was than me. What a total failure I was. I was bound to end up in prison or dead in a ditch. I was just like his brother Gary, that was one of his favorite lines. According to my dad his brother Gary was an abusive drunken loser ex-convict and I was exactly like him. Now, I doubt any of my dad's descriptions of my uncle Gary were true, but as a kid, I believed my dad always.

When I would get home from school I just prayed I could make it from the front door to my bedroom without being stopped in the hallway by my dad for giving him "a look". He didn't like the way I looked at him often, and the wrong look could end up badly for me. Apparently some of my looks meant I thought I was tough. I wasn't.

When he wasn't emotionally, verbally or physically abusing me, he simply wasn't there. Girlfriends and step moms were always more present than he was. He always had something else to do or somewhere else to be.

Once I became a teen, he added saboteur to the list of my horrible, horrible traits and I was clearly trying to destroy his family, which now didn't include me. At 13 I had joined the list of the others out to get him, my little brother and his wife/girlfriend of the moment.

Luckily, at 18 years old, he threw me out of the house, and we were done. There have been brief periods of time in my adult life where he has been present, but all ended poorly and I refuse to give him another chance.

My dad never did anything an actual father would do aside from teach me by example of what NOT to do.

He only gained custody of my brother and I to "win". He didn't want us, and once he had us, we were an annoyance to him, his life and most of all to his wives.

I am constantly putting out in public forums statements about how much I hate him so that there's no chance he'll decide to come back around and if I ever am stupid enough to seek him out, he won't talk to me because he's seen my public declarations of hatred towards him. I have built in my own failsafes against my possible future sentimentalities.

Father's Day always reminds me, I didn't have a dad, I had a captor.

My Big Fancy Leaking Problems

It's been a long time since I last wrote here, or anywhere. A lot has happened.

My 5-year old daughter was found to have a large mass inside of her skull. She underwent extensive inter-cranial surgery, survived, and is now 100% deaf in her left ear. THAT is for another post though.

My lifelong best friend is here visiting from California (where he's lived the last 15 years) and when he's here, I always see a lot of people I knew when I was growing up. In addition I'm making some changes with my company and career. Unrelated events, but combined together, even the issue with my daughter, they polarize something for me, something that as usual, depresses me.

I've been spending my life crying and trying to clean up spilled milk, and ignored the continually leaking milk bottle. I've been trying to put out all of these little fires that always reignite and never been very successful at permanently snuffing them out. I think a lot of people do this, seeing people I've known since I was 5 (I'm 41 now) and seeing how their lives have gone solidifies this belief and makes me really look at all of this bullshit.

I, we all, have one or two real problems. Just a couple issues, personality/character flaws, emotional/mental issues and those one or two real problems are the mother of all of the other little bullshit problems that I (we) spend most of each day trying to fix. Trying to solve. Trying to move on from only to see them reappear in some other vaguely similar form because we never really ever try to fix the leaking milk bottle.

I know that accepting and acknowledging what these issues are and realizing where they were born is important, but not as important as actually coming up with a plan to solve them, and thereby, hopefully, solving A LOT of the day-to-day bullshit problems that spin out of the original big bad mother-fucker problem.

I'm realizing what my real problems are. I think number one is I'm scared shitless. I know I speak my mind probably more than anyone you've met. I realize I act like I don't care about upsetting people or ruining relationships and usually come across as not being very afraid of the consequences of my verbal explosions. What I'm scared shitless of is being a disappointment. I don't even know for sure of who I'm afraid of disappointing. My kids? My wife? Me? I don't know. But that fear of fucking up and letting "whoever" down keeps me paralyzed to some degree. I don't act. I talk. A LOT. I talk a good game then do nothing then I talk some more. I've really become excellent at talking BECAUSE it has kept me from having to actually take a risk and take a leap. 

I used to think my inaction was born out of my fear of losing everything and everyone around me. I used to think since my dad and mom split up virtually the moment I was born and  my mom left me at 12 year old and my dad threw me out at 18 and because he went through a parade of step-mom's who all left, that I had some abandonment issues that spilled over into my psyche and created this huge fear of loss inside of me. But I was wrong. Although all of that could have contributed to my problems, the reality is that my psycho father also taught, maybe "trained" me is a better word choice, "trained me" to be alone and be ok being alone. He trained me that no matter what happens, I can walk away and be ok. I don't like knowing I have that ability inside of me, but I know I have it. I know tomorrow if it all went sideways, I could survive with nothing and with no one. Deep down inside of me, in an old, old portion of my brain, I know I'm not even afraid of it. In fact, I expect that to happen someday. Which leads me to me other BIG problem.

I'm going to fuck it all up. I'm tempting the fates every day to see if I can bring on the big fall, I'm doing it intentionally. Again, I think I know why I do a lot of it, I learned it from watching my con-man dad. I don't think I could exist without secrets in my life. I don't think I could exist being honest. I don't think I could exist without the potential for all of it to possibly come to light and pull the world down crashing around me. The shit I do, the problems I volunteer to bring into my life, they're ridiculous. The stuff I get myself into knowing it would be harmful to me if ever it was exposed, they're pointless. They really don't benefit me and only really stand to harm me and my way of life. I don't need to have the secrets I keep. I intentionally do this. I do this because I'm  a nutjob who needs these problems. I don't need problems. 

So. I'm scared and yet I'm constantly creating potential problems that I know if  ever got out, would maybe possibly ruin me. I think EVERY other problem I have in my life comes out of these two issues. I think I've identified my base, root of the problem shit. So what? 

I don't know how to stop doing either of those things. I mean, I "know how" but for whatever reason, can't. I see my friends, my wife, people around me, I know they all have their one or two problems too that literally control their lives. In some instances that ruin their lives. I know all of our complicated and messy lives would be better without these core problems leaving their crumbs all over. I want to stop. I want to change. I want to...poop. Sorry I gotta run....