Sorry, gotta ‘get real’ for a sec
I will be telling a sobering story in the next few posts.
There’s no humor here; no laughing at my father the buffoon. This will be the completion of the ‘three strikes’ on daddy. It’s a tale of mental abuse and lasting damage. After this, he was not a father, he was ‘the old man.’ Not in the subtle joshing of ‘A Christmas Story’, but in the sense of a useless tyrant who thought his house was a kingdom where he could rule sadistically as his whims dictated.
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. If you or someone you know has suffered abuse (physical or mental) from a parent or loved one, please find help or help someone find help. There is no shame. It was NOT your fault. This can damage you deeply in ways that will stay inside and fester for many many years.
I emerged from this not as a child, but as an eviscerated soul limping in my personal wasteland. I may have been angry and fearful, but I was also committed to surviving. Maybe that’s one of the tragedies here–at this young age, I became an intense kid, forced into maturity before my time and in doing so, groping with feelings and issues that I could not conceive, let alone resolve.
Very few people know these things outside of my wife and therapist. Certainly not any of the boys in my neighborhood that I played with, nor any future friends from high school. A few from college and masters school probably had a good idea, but not the incident that laid rotting in my psyche. Not that you should feel honored; but this is what everyone does on the net, isn’t it? Dump their stuff out there and ‘it is what it is’. By next year, this site may not exist, but maybe–just maybe–someone who reads this will get started on a path to healing and growth into a meaningful content existence.