So, what do I do now? (spoken with angst)

Maybe I should explain the question, and maybe explain the angst too.

As you may have read in my 'Family' can hurt like Hell, and sooo complicated! blog post, my childhood was pretty damned sucky.  As I approached the latter third of my life under parental care, I was transferred from my mother’s custody to my father’s.  The culture shock was extreme!  I came from a home where my mother began each day with her glass of whiskey and drank all day, where my physical beatings were routine and harsh (I have x-ray proof!), where she climbed the employment ladder by extending sexual favors to her employers, where marriage was viewed by her the way most view dating (6 marriages in all), where her aversion to religious matters was equaled only by her profound hostility toward her parents (her mother most specifically), where I frequently was alone fending for myself.  I went to a home where there were no vices save the doting my father and his wife poured upon each other, where the only physical pain experienced was from hard work or corporal punishment (through to my 15th year), where employment and work were seen as holy activities “as unto the Lord”, where marriage was viewed as sacred and permanent “till death”, where religion was embraced with fervor and enthusiasm as though it were the very center of life, where parents were honored and loved regardless of how ‘inconvenient’ it might prove to be, where family did things together and everyone contributed to something bigger than themselves.  You may rightfully assume the transition was not easy.

So you may be assured that life, at best was ‘lumpy’ for me from the beginning on.

My relationship with my father has been either hot or cold from the beginning as well.  I cannot speak for his experience of the relationship, but I would guess that I was way more challenging than any child should be and that this ‘challenging’ boy was no doubt equally as frustrating.  I was unable or unwilling or both to fully wrap myself around what my father has always known to be true and right; and my inconsistent reaction to such standards and ideologies resulted in responses from him (or lack of response) that always felt to me like judgment.  And since I have had it physically beaten in me from early on by my mother that I was hate-worthy, any feelings I experienced (not just past-tense) as judgment were simply confirmation of an innate sense of self-loathing and worthlessness – that of course hurts like a hell worse than Hell.  So, as I was skillfully taught by my mother, the best way to avoid such pain is to push the ‘offender’ far away.  This, I believe, has been interpreted by my father as not dealing with what needs to be dealt with – a serious form of irresponsibility.  Let me know when you see a vicious cycle of pain and disappointment developing in this story-line.

Ahhh, but there is another level of complication to all this!  You see, my biggest problem in my relationship with my father is that I love him; and there is this deep dull ache for such a personality to have an active place in my life.  That sucks pretty bad, huh?  To make matters worse, I believe that almost universally, victims victimize (a statement worthy of tattooing somewhere where it will remind each of us of its truthfulness!).  So in a victim’s pain and emptiness and sense of profound loss, they tend to hurt and harm others along their path.  My father and his wife and my three half-sisters were no exception.  And I am sure my father has deep wishes and wants for his son; and the reality of my choices throughout most all of my life have no doubt been very grievous in their assault against such wishes and wants.  So the tension and pain of bi-polar emotions is probably just as profound and hurtful and frustrating for him as for me.

So I have solved this ‘problem’, throughout the bulk of my children’s lives, by carefully maintaining distance and almost silence between myself and my father and his family.  It kept the pain almost manageable.  Yet here I am in a situation which you may have read about in my blog posting

My precious girls in quite the similar position with my own daughters!  And my precious Judy mentioned the other night as we once again discussed the ugliness of my situation with my girls that maybe they have learned how to deal with their father from how I modeled it with my father.  THAT is horrifying!

So there you have it.

I have tried to survive and protect myself from what has been pain only to me; and in doing so have created in the hearts of my children the very problem that I have been.  What the hell do I do about that?  How do I cure this mess?  What hope do I have of making this all right?  Well, I do see a couple of obvious things that seem to stand out to me (Yes, if something is obvious enough, even I can see it).  Let me outline what I see:

  ·  I need to model the correct behavior.  Specifically, I need to demonstrate that I am serious about developing the best I can of a relationship with my own father.  And I can’t do it just for my daughters!  It has to be real and sincere.  I have been making ‘baby steps’ in that direction over the last 18 months, but I need to get more serious about it.
  ·  I need to extend a more aggressive effort toward my oldest sister and her family.  Again, I have taken ‘baby steps’, but I need to truly put my heart into it.  And again and with all such situations, it can only be motivated by my heart for them, not as a way to convince my daughters of anything; it has to be sincere.
  ·  I have two other sisters which I have kept at arm’s length; I need to do what I can about those families also.

Beyond that, I just am not sure!  I know I need to increase the frequency of my emails to my daughters, no matter how heart-wrenching it is that I almost never get a response.  I need to keep trying with them.  But I may well also be missing a lot of other elements or opportunities.  If you, my reader and/or my friend, see possibilities, please email or comment.  I would really appreciate any and all input in this area.

Also, if you may be heading down a road that may lead to estrangements with those you love – for whatever reasons – please consider my story and the pain that lives in me daily regarding it.  Maybe your path, though it may feel safe in the moment, is really destined for a bigger fire-pit than you can handle.  Consider if your path may lead to similar results even if you have trouble seeing the end result.  It seems our choices in issues we do not see as having anything to do with our children nonetheless do impact how they see the world and how they feel comfortable conducting themselves in it.

Lastly, as you no doubt read in my My precious girls blog posting, this is not the issue that has resulted in the estrangement between myself and my daughters.  This is one of the ingredients in the ‘cocktail’ that makes up the reason.  And I am still trying to repair where I know I did go wrong, and discover where I do not yet know where I went wrong. 

C'est la vie