Recently, I had a pretty tough therapy session, and having it days before writing my article, it doesn’t take too much deductive reasoning to guess what I wrote the article about. I was angry. Now, try to imagine that I have been reticent with regard to my parents for many years. Decades actually. I probably mentioned this before, but I used to ridicule people who were stuck in that place where they still hated their parents. Not that I adored mine. I was just indifferent and quiet about it.
But when I finally broke down at age 51 and sought out help with my issues, I was completely tired of myself. 90% of my relationships since I was 17 never made it beyond three months. Now, I suppose if I was a reactionary fool that possessed little insight into my behaviors and motivations, I could’ve gone on deluding myself into believing that it was always the other person’s fault. But I have more than a little insight. I knew it was me.
But that’s as much as I knew. Now, I know a lot more. Now, I know that my disorganized attachment style comes from a childhood that becomes more and more inexplicable the more I examine it.
After I wrote that article, a family member of mine wanted to remind me that parents are not given an instruction book.
The funny thing is that I grew up hearing this all the time. I would bring something up about why one child was treated one way and the two others treated so embarrassingly different. Instruction booklet was the stock defense. So, to have to run up against the same thing so many years later, once again sent me off into a complicated space.
As an angry teen, I may have said, “No one gave me an instruction booklet on how not to murder the next door neighbors, so sorry about your loss.” I never shied away from a touch of the dramatic. Overblown or not, the point is not obscured. It’s a shit excuse. It doesn’t take much more than asking oneself, “How would what I am doing make me feel if the roles were reversed?” You don’t need to be as self reflective as Socrates to ask yourself a question like that.
Regardless, what’s done is done and now the challenge is “Will I ever be healed enough to learn to love and stand by another person through good and bad or will I just have to deal with being alone until I am dead?” Again, that may sound dramatic, but it’s not such a remote possibility. I’ll be 54 in April and I’ve lived a very precarious life. I may survive to see 80; but, then again, if I were to drop dead tomorrow, I doubt Ulster County would waste the money on an autopsy. In other words, no one would be shocked.
No one gave me an instruction booklet on how to process emotions without controlled substances.
I really don’t fault this relative. It’s probably common to stand up for one’s siblings when they’re no longer here to defend themselves. I say probably because my relationships with my siblings was yet another area that failed to escape the wholesale damage of my childhood.
I don’t speak to either of them, nor do I care to.
The challenge is that I don’t have the ability to spend an hour in therapy every week and then put it all away until the next week. I may be helping myself with this process in the long run, but I am also pulling up painful memories that were buried for dozens of years. Needless to say, I generally have to endure the discomfort for days afterward.
I shouldn’t have to explain this, but as a writer, the best you can do is open up about the hard stuff. I have heard on countless occasions that I have inspired others to do the same with their struggles. That is really what we’re supposed to be doing with our craft. I am way too old to spend any time sparing the feelings of others at the cost of burning alive inside.
There are days I want so desperately to know what a healthy loving intimate relationship is like. There are days when I feel cheated and empty and alone and disconnected from every single person on earth.
You know what would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic? Many people like me were born to teenagers because at one point, a man slid further down the draft list if they were married and had a family. Now if you’ve ever given the dude at Wendy’s a ten dollar bill and a quarter and they look at you like you asked them to explain string theory, you know what I’m getting at. THIS is who is responsible for little human lives?
Is it any wonder that the prison population from 1940 to 1980 went from 250,000 to 500,000 and from 1980 to 1990 went from 500,000 to 1,500,000. But maybe that’s just a coincidence.
(And just as an aside, I can predict that this was just the beginning. All the children being born to teenagers after those fantastic anti-abortion laws were passed—mark my words—by 2040 we’ll have six million imprisoned. This works out great for the government, too. Since prison is such an important growth industry, it helps if you can create your own natural resources.)
What’s the takeaway? There is more than one. It’s stupid for children to have children and two, it becomes more than that when a government leaves its citizens no other choice but to start families in 12th grade. That’s no less than criminal.
To be responsible for this disaster and address it by caging up the rotten fruit of your efforts, well I’m still trying to find a word that’s strong enough.
I feel you, buddy. You know, as a friend, and fellow "survivor", anytime you want to bounce things off someone, feel free to call or visit. Also, if it's any consolation, after I just couldn't take anymore of my bullshit ("it's just a flesh wound"), I finally surrendered and got my life together at age 57. So you still got time! The best is yet to come...
I love your style, Billy. Writing style, how you introspect, etc. I hear you, the 'there was no manual' excuse is the most lame thing I've ever heard from a parent or caregiver. I say I never hated my parents as an adult, but when I was a kid, I wished they'd disappear. They didn't, but I did realize early on that they were so afraid of getting it wrong with me, that they got it all wrong. I can laugh about it now.