Friday, August 29, 2014
Last night I watched an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims on the USA channel. Lately I have been feeling that I ought to refrain from watching television altogether. But then I will watch an episode of a crime show like I did last night and be reminded, yet again, of how dysfunctional my family of origin was.
The episode featured a highly disturbed young boy who would mistreat his sister but then blame others for his behavior. At one point he withdrew a knife from under his bedding and engaged in a standoff with his mother. At another moment in the episode the father virtually screamed at his son about the necessity of taking responsibility for his actions. As I was watching that particular scene I couldn't help but think of my father. I have felt for a very long time that my father has a very limited capacity to comprehend the impact of his actions on others. To this day it seems he still cannot comprehend how devastating it was to me when he was nearly murdered when I was eight years old...and by his own wife no less. Earlier in my adulthood I had tried to 'take the high road', be a compassionate, kind, understanding man and forgive my father for the numerous ways he had failed me when I was a child.
But then last year happened. In the midst of feeling profoundly distressed and truly physically ill I reached out to my father in the hope of receiving some emotional support at a time when I felt overwhelmed and consumed with grief. I was consumed with grief in response to my visit to Germany in May, 2013 in which I saw my biological mother for the first time in eleven years. I reached out to father in the hope of receiving the type of loving attention a boy will ideally receive from his father...when he is still a boy. I was, yet again, very disappointed. All I wanted was for my very own father to talk to me for a mere ten or fifteen minutes. I needed him to be present to my grief. But yet again, just as in my childhood, he could not and would not meet my most basic need for attention. Last summer I finally realized that I had to let go of any hope I had left that my father would ever give me the type of attention I need.
By the end of the episode of Law & Order the boy had trapped a child friend in a closet, drown his friend's pet in the bathtub of the adjacent bathroom and fought with a detective after first holding a gun on the detective. Now imagine what could have happened if all the people who had been a part of this deeply disturbed boy's life had paid attention to the blatant signs that something was seriously wrong with him. How could the sequence of events that ultimately unfolded have been prevented or at least mitigated if the adults in this boy's world had paid better attention?
Though I am steadily working through my grief, much of which is a natural result of my decision to sever ties with my own paternal family because of their own failure to understand how much I was being harmed when I was a kid, I still find myself feeling positively consumed by it on occasion. The frequency of those moments in which I feel myself within an abyss of darkness is thankfully diminishing. But I still feel sad that my father's near death was apparently not a sufficiently shocking enough incident for his own siblings and parents to pause and wonder if perhaps there was something deeply wrong with him. The horrific and climactic end of my father's second marriage is over thirty years in the past now. And yet I am still working out the pain I experienced now...in the year 2014.
I wish the adults who were available to me when I was a child had paid more attention to me. If they had I might not still be working through the harm it caused to me now.
Maybe if I disclose to my aunts and uncles that my very vision and experience of the world is so radically different now precisely because I have gone through effective therapy they will finally truly listen to me. Maybe if they read every single entry of my blog they would finally begin to understand how I felt when I was a kid. But that seems to be a tall order. Some people are determined to live in denial no matter the cost...to themselves and to those they profess to love.
It feels a bit strange to experience a profound awakening at the age of forty. When my birthday arrives next month and I turn forty-one I will have achieved something my father never achieved. I will have lived to the age of forty-one without ever having my own spouse attempt to murder me.
I am doing a lot better than my parents ever did in their lives. It's my dream that the next year of my life that dawns on my birthday will be the best one yet!
Last night I watched an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims on the USA channel. Lately I have been feeling that I ought to refrain from watching television altogether. But then I will watch an episode of a crime show like I did last night and be reminded, yet again, of how dysfunctional my family of origin was.
The episode featured a highly disturbed young boy who would mistreat his sister but then blame others for his behavior. At one point he withdrew a knife from under his bedding and engaged in a standoff with his mother. At another moment in the episode the father virtually screamed at his son about the necessity of taking responsibility for his actions. As I was watching that particular scene I couldn't help but think of my father. I have felt for a very long time that my father has a very limited capacity to comprehend the impact of his actions on others. To this day it seems he still cannot comprehend how devastating it was to me when he was nearly murdered when I was eight years old...and by his own wife no less. Earlier in my adulthood I had tried to 'take the high road', be a compassionate, kind, understanding man and forgive my father for the numerous ways he had failed me when I was a child.
But then last year happened. In the midst of feeling profoundly distressed and truly physically ill I reached out to my father in the hope of receiving some emotional support at a time when I felt overwhelmed and consumed with grief. I was consumed with grief in response to my visit to Germany in May, 2013 in which I saw my biological mother for the first time in eleven years. I reached out to father in the hope of receiving the type of loving attention a boy will ideally receive from his father...when he is still a boy. I was, yet again, very disappointed. All I wanted was for my very own father to talk to me for a mere ten or fifteen minutes. I needed him to be present to my grief. But yet again, just as in my childhood, he could not and would not meet my most basic need for attention. Last summer I finally realized that I had to let go of any hope I had left that my father would ever give me the type of attention I need.
By the end of the episode of Law & Order the boy had trapped a child friend in a closet, drown his friend's pet in the bathtub of the adjacent bathroom and fought with a detective after first holding a gun on the detective. Now imagine what could have happened if all the people who had been a part of this deeply disturbed boy's life had paid attention to the blatant signs that something was seriously wrong with him. How could the sequence of events that ultimately unfolded have been prevented or at least mitigated if the adults in this boy's world had paid better attention?
Though I am steadily working through my grief, much of which is a natural result of my decision to sever ties with my own paternal family because of their own failure to understand how much I was being harmed when I was a kid, I still find myself feeling positively consumed by it on occasion. The frequency of those moments in which I feel myself within an abyss of darkness is thankfully diminishing. But I still feel sad that my father's near death was apparently not a sufficiently shocking enough incident for his own siblings and parents to pause and wonder if perhaps there was something deeply wrong with him. The horrific and climactic end of my father's second marriage is over thirty years in the past now. And yet I am still working out the pain I experienced now...in the year 2014.
I wish the adults who were available to me when I was a child had paid more attention to me. If they had I might not still be working through the harm it caused to me now.
Maybe if I disclose to my aunts and uncles that my very vision and experience of the world is so radically different now precisely because I have gone through effective therapy they will finally truly listen to me. Maybe if they read every single entry of my blog they would finally begin to understand how I felt when I was a kid. But that seems to be a tall order. Some people are determined to live in denial no matter the cost...to themselves and to those they profess to love.
It feels a bit strange to experience a profound awakening at the age of forty. When my birthday arrives next month and I turn forty-one I will have achieved something my father never achieved. I will have lived to the age of forty-one without ever having my own spouse attempt to murder me.
I am doing a lot better than my parents ever did in their lives. It's my dream that the next year of my life that dawns on my birthday will be the best one yet!
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