I realize I have a very reactionary personality always on the defensive. Which some would argue is a losing side to be on and one that will ensure my own demise(I don't lose). My best writing usually tends to be done in response to something. The passion with which I write in those moments seems to escape me in moments of calm and mental clarity. Not to say my brain is in anyway distorted when ripping into a cause, just that in those moments I seem to have a singular goal of getting at whatever stirred me up. Unchallenged by my need to get it perfect, just my need to get it out and get it done. In those cases when I just need to get it out, people seem to really connect to what I write and I seem to not be as burdened with the imperfections of what I wrote.
I have about six or seven topic pieces sitting in different stages of undone with varying levels of disrepair that are very close to me and are in a way pieces of what allow me to function in some capacity every day by getting them out in my own anti-social way. The high likelihood is that no one will ever read those pieces as they have been sitting on my hard drive for months with too much self applied pressure to make them "perfect" that they will never be close to the standards I have set and in turn in my own head never worthy of being seen by another living literate soul. I write all this to say that I might not be putting it out in the way some might feel I should but I’m still putting it out in the way that I can. With each tap of my keys I come closer to salvation and mental stability. So whether done publicly or privately it’s done.
That long rambling string of sentences above was to preface what stands below. I came across a new blog today while being the nosey voyeuristic blog snoop I am that got me thinking and then in turn writing and writing and writing. One of the post was about the author's abusive father and it got me to think about my own father. Which as of late I seem to be doing more and more of. I called a friend to discuss the topic a couple of nights ago, but she was in the midst of “being busy” and wasn’t able to give me the help I needed with the matter. Below is a link to this woman’s original post and below that what I wrote to her in response to her post. I realized half way through the blackout I was having that turned what was supposed to be a two line comment of sympathy into a four paragraph vent that had way more to do with me and my own sh&t than it in any way remotely had to do with her. SO i figured why not share it with the four of you who actually read this and care to know anything about me.
HER BLOG POST
http://dimendaruff.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-journeyits-time.html
MY RESPONSE:
I don't want to come across as negative, but that seems to be the way the cookie is going to have to crumble on this one. Plain and simply - F$$K FORGIVENESS. I don’t' believe in it. They did it and it's their weight to carry. I believe in acknowledging and moving on with or without the person depending on the gravity of what they did to you by your standards of pain not anyone else’s. I remember as a child who also went to a psychologist hating how he and others since would try to minimize my issues with people based on their standards of pain. We don't know each other so I have no idea what he did to you, but with my heart I don't believe you'd refer to your father as "The Devil" if he hadn't put in overtime earning the moniker. Great; he's getting help with his addiction, but you shouldn't have to be part of his salvation just to satisfy his needs of self forgiveness. “For every action there is a reaction of equal or greater value” A scientific theory I’ve lived my life to and done very well by. So for your actions of hurting me my reaction is never forgiving you.
I can't say I had a horrible father probably by most people’s standards he was a good father, but by mine he didn't do what he needed to be my father or a husband to my mother and for that I made up my mind to never speak to him again and when I was in eighth grade he died and I decided not to attend the funeral. I thought it hypocritical to attend the funeral of a man I had cast off to then stand in the presence of those who were sincerely mourning their loss of him. Everyone thought it was the worst thing I could have ever done and I would have a life of regret about it. He did what he did and I made a decision and stuck to it. To be honest after all these many years since, I’m curious about the funeral, but I have no regret about not attending. It’s more the voyeur in me curious to have seen how people would have reacted at his funeral. Who loved him? Who would show up or not show up? How my siblings would act in the presence of the man who abandoned them while in the presence of the family who expected them to see him as the king he was to them. How many people would be crying, screaming, or attempting to jump into the hole dug for the casket? (if you couldn’t tell I have a very melodramatic family when it comes to death, first time I went to a white persons funeral it freaked me out how quit and subdued everyone was).
As I’ve gotten older I’ve developed a lot of my father’s mannerism and eccentricities beginning a couple of years after he passed that I wasn’t even aware of until brought to my attention by other members of my family – His laugh, an uncontrollable desire to cross my legs knee over knee even though not possibly because of the thickness (Code for fat) of my thighs, the way I hold a glass, and a few of the bad things as well, which have lead to my own paranoia of what type of man I’ll be/am (nature or nurture seems to be a topic always at the front of my own consciousness). Who knows what our relationship would have been like if he had lived longer. Would my curious nature have forced me to forge a closer relationship to study our commonalities? Would my disgust for his behavior change to pride of it as I became more like him in a society that tells you that men are suppose to be all those things I saw as bad while under the loving care of my mother the one most effected by his behavior. Would his openness with his bank account to me make him more of an appealing father as benefactor to my lofty ambitions and expensive taste? All I have to go on is what it was when he was alive and from that I can comfortably say is that I made a decision and choose to live with it each and every day.
P.S. Both my brother and sister secretly still hate me for not attending even though they had far worse experiences with the man than I ever ever did. Still don’t really get that, but we don’t talk about it so it just sits there taking up space in the room we’re never in together.
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