15 posts tagged “family”
I have done the hard work, for years, to come to terms with having a father who sucks. For a long time, my work centered on de-trauma-ing from the years of his rages, his cruelties, his unpredictability, the overall clusterfuckstorm of his presence in my childhood. Eventually, I started working on the sadness and loss of feeling fatherless, not having a grown-man mentor, someone to ask questions, get help solving problems from, make proud, have fun with---whatever: all the stuff dads seem to do/be for people. Finally, I began to see that I was pretty fine anyway, that I'd gotten most of his better qualities and few of his worst, that I'd made relationships with a number of really excellent men, that in those relationships, I'd developed a solid role model for the way men could be, and that I could finally use that model to choose a partner who really rocks. And so forth and so on.
I've gone long stretches of time since I was 11 out of contact with my dad. I stopped visiting him when I was 12, cut off contact from 14-17, and then again, from 18-26 or so. Later, after I'd faced him and put some relationship back together, I had enough of his crap again, and cut him out for another few years. In the past 5 or so, though, I've been doing this really good job of maintaining a connection, in which I show up with a reasonably open mind, stick around if he's being good, and politely take my leave if he's not. It works pretty well and I'm proud of the way I walk this path, generally. I feel pretty sure that it will matter to me that I did this when he's gone, and I'm glad I'll be able to have spent whatever positive time together we have gotten.
But, christ, it is just so crazy-making sometimes to have a relationship with a man who is incapable or unwilling (whichever it is) to ever act like a parent. He just doesn't have the parent gene or chromosome or whatever it is. He is motivated always first and foremost and second and last, by his own self-interest and comfort, and he still lapses into big, bizarre episodes of aggression, and he still really is just an asshole by nature pretty much most of the time. No manners, to say the least.
I relate to him largely by way of detachment. I show up with zero expectations, I try really hard not to hook for good or ill. I've really grown as a result. It's a remarkable opportunity for spiritual practice.
But sometimes it just hurts. It seems impossible to truly forget that he's technically my dad, to completely let go of any expectations for father-ness, to not be hurt and sad when he's mean and shitty. To not be his daughter, basically, but to instead be a person who continues to be connected to him. And if I really weren't his daughter, I would never, ever, ever show up to be treated like this. Ever. It has been a long time since I have willingly participated in any relationship where I'm demeaned or abused or just treated with less than basic respect.
Today's one of those days when it feels like I'm living a family koan and it just hurts and makes me feel sad and I super want to hit him with a truck or at least not fucking talk to him again for a few years.
Sorry to not make a whole ton of sense, I think. Thanks fer reading. Hope all's well with all.
My dad is just such a total fucking asshole. And if anything's gonna make me feel like I've been timewarped into some whiny teenager, it's writing that sentence. Christ.
- I got the email today. It's official: I passed my Master's exam.
- In the house tonight, we had: 2 babies, 1 four year-old, and 9 adults, every single one of them, cherished.
- All the other people we love.
- The party's just ended, and all the dishes are done.
- We get to have more parties.
- I've gotten to be married to SLP for two years, last Wednesday.
- A full teaching schedule for fall: 2 Argumentative Writing sections at The Community College; 2 Research-Writing sections at My Institutions.
- A home large enough to hold all the people who were here tonight, plus most of the ones who couldn't make it.
- LMH is home from basic training and sleeping in the guest room.
- Everything else...
So SLP and I are taking over his parents' house in June. They're retiring and moving up north for some much, much deserved peace and quiet. Because they're just the kind of folks who naturally support their kids however they can, they're making a big deal about how much we're helping them out by sitting on the house for a couple years until the market comes back a bit.
I never quite get used to being married to SLP.
A couple weeks after our wedding, his godbrother tied the knot, also. SLP was best man, and my father-in-law, RP, co-officiated. I was exhausted, after all the madness (beautiful, lovely madness, to be sure) of being in the wedding spotlight myself, and it was so delightful to be just a guest, to sit in the back of the church with friends, not be at all important, and just celebrate someone else.
In his remarks, RP talked about the importance of meeting one's spouse anew, every day. He reminded us that it is essential in long-term relationships not to know your partner, but to always, always be coming to know him or her, never to relax or calcify into certainty about who s/he is, however comfortable such certainty can be. I listened from my seat in a back pew, like a child listening on the knee of a parent, like I was opening the most lovely wedding present.
As I listened, I knew RP's thinking to be right on. I was married before, to a remarkable person with remarkable problems, as a remarkable person, with remarkable problems. I became unmarried through a long, torturous process of unwillingness on both our parts to give up our certainty about who both of us were. Had we not clung to that certainty, we probably would have divorced anyway, but I wonder if we would have done so more quickly and less painfully.
I also knew it to be true because of my experience of the process of falling in love with SLP. Early on in that process, having thankfully realized I had stumbled on something very, very good, and very, very unknown to me, I was able to get that the best shot I could give this new love was intentionally reminding myself that every single day, conversation, touch, between SLP and I had never happened before. That certainty about how things would go between us would not only be very likely to be wrong, based as it would be on previous experiences I had had in relationships and not on paying close attention to the one I was actually in, but that it would also probably determine the course of this relationship. Given that unfortunately a looooooooot of that previous experience was painful and crappy, I also got that such certainty would force itself to become true--that I would self-fulfill any number of prophecies of doom.
For whatever reason, it has turned out that SLP really is unbelievably unlike my previous partners. This is not to say that many of them weren't very, very cool in many, many ways, or that they're not high-quality folks, most of them. In fact, for all I know, they're all way more like SLP than I know, because of that certainty I always lived in about love relationships not working out, about me not being deserving of love, about partners of mine not being kind, reliable, emotionally available, and so on... I don't know how real the difference is on some objective plane, and I don't really care, because in my personal subjective plane, the difference is very real, very rich, really just amazingly wonderful to come to know.
Against RP's advice, and my own reasonable amount of common sense, I have nonetheless developed some certainty about who SLP is. SLP is innately good, inherently kind, genetically sweet. He has the most generously, bravely loving nature of anyone I have ever known. He is tolerant; he is forgiving; he is extraordinarily willing to go along with all sorts of goofball lines of thinking, to try new flavors, perspectives, positions. ;) He not only has a job, but a work ethic like the Ant--no Grasshopper, he. He is a gracious lover, a loyal friend. He can certainly be an ass, and he will definitely call me on my shit, thank god, but, miracle of miracles, he is never, ever mean.
Last night, I was smoking a cigarette. (This is not that odd; I smoke way more than I should, because obviously, I shouldn't smoke at all. SLP and I have been cutting down lately, and there's a box of Nicorette on the kitchen counter, waiting for the day we're ready to try quitting again.) SLP was sitting at the other desk in the office, working on something.
"Have you been coughing still, lately?" he asked.
"Not really. I mean I've got a bit of a smoker's cough in the mornings, which is gross, but other than that...." I trailed off, a bit defensive, "I haven't been smoking anywhere near as much."
"Ok, good," he said, "I wasn't picking on you; I just worry. You were really coughing a lot there for a while. It makes me worry. You know it's your job to live as long as you can." And he went off in search of another document he'd left in the living room.
I sat at the computer, becoming aware that I was coming to know him again. "SLP worries about me," I thought, "He worries about me." Another first, as far as I know. Honestly, I can't remember another lover who worried about me, about my health. I've always been the one who worried about them. How remarkable, how odd, how lovely, to have a partner who pays attention to my body, who keeps a job he doesn't overwhelmingly like at least in part to make sure that I have health insurance, who starts cutting down on smoking because I've been coughing lately, and he wants to make sure I don't get sick.
This morning, my luck runneth over.
GE's new girl-baby has arrived, and mother, new-person, and father are all well and happy--smiling, smiling, smiling, glee!
GE's having a baby! I'm off to visit!
Sweeeet.
In case you're new to this blog, you may not know that I spend entirely too many, too-long 'study breaks' taking online quizzes. During one of these 'research sessions' the other day, I discovered that I am, of all things, a vampire. Well it turns out that SLP is a werewolf, and apparently werewolves and vampires "play well with" each other. Not only is it now guaranteed that we are going to stay happily married no matter how many fights we have about money, but this means my husband really does read my blog. I'm a very lucky girl.
:)
You Are a Werewolf |
 You're unpredictable, moody, and downright freaky. You seem sweet and harmless, until you snap. Then you're a total monster. Very few people can predict if you're going to be Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. But for you, all your transformations seem perfectly natural. Your greatest power: Your ability to tap into nature Your greatest weakness: Lack of self control You play well with: Vampires |
If you could get everyone in the world to change their behavior in one way, what would you have them do differently?
Submitted by Ross.
I know it's common practice to refer to ex-marriages as failures, but I've never been able to wrap my mind around that read. I ran off with my ex-husband when I was 18 and we divorced when I was 27--it is impossible for me conceive of nine years of my life as a failure. Our marriage split more or less down the middle--the first 4.5 years were pretty much good, and the second half was much less pretty-much good. Even then, though, when we were fighting more and more, when we were doing each other more damage than good, even those years were also full of rich, rich fun. And I have always maintained that X raised me as much as my parents did--he was the one who taught me to drive, how to play the guitar, how to find delight and joy in the most mundane details of shit-wage jobs.
X, whether a good husband for me or no, was (is, I imagine) a brilliant guy, with a sharp ethical sense. From him, I borrow my answer to this lovely QotD:
If I could get everyone in the world to change their behavior in just one way, I'd wave my wand and make everyone more attentive to the simple practices of common courtesy. As X noted after transplanting up to my snotty, small-apple hometown in Michigan, where people, emulating the Big Apple they want so badly to be living in, hardly make eye contact with one another when they pass each other on the street, much less say hello, it just might be in common courtesy that the revolution will be won.
Acknowledging another human being on the sidewalk, holding the door for the stranger with his arms full of bags, passing the time it takes for your credit card to run by asking about the cashier's day--all of these gestures require noticing the humanity of the people we share space with. Life is busy, busy, busy, and it is entirely too easy to reduce our co-travelers to obstacles between where-we-are and where-we're-going, between what-we-have and what-we-want/deserve.
Moreover, courtesy can actually prevent damage. Driving courteously, for instance, by leaving a couple car-lengths between yourself and the driver ahead of you, can help you avoid both an accident and the subsequent traffic jam. Choosing a reasonable speed, say 60 mph, reduces the likelihood of accidents, improves traffic flow, and dramatically increases your fuel economy. Courtesy saves lives, time, and the damned environment.
Courtesy can go a long way toward reducing the damage done at home, as well. When I was little, it was a going family joke that we were all wayyyyyy more polite to the dog than we were to each other. That was the kind of joke that was funny because it wasn't funny. We really did say "excuse me," "please," and "thank you," to Star more than to anyone else. That's fucked, if you ask me.
Who knows? If X and I had extended his campaign to save the world to our own home, I'm pretty sure we would still have divorced. We were simply too young and too fucked-up when we hooked up to grow productively together over decades. But had we privileged courtesy in relating to one another more, I think we would have had a much better chance of still knowing and liking one another now, some years after our split.
Who would you trust with your life?
I like this one.
SLP, most excellent husband. Not only do I fully believe that he'd do whatev, to the point of putting himself in harm's way to keep his closest safe, I think he'd be pretty likely to do the same for those he doesn't know, without thinking. He's a mensch +.
