Some lessons are tough.

 

 Some lessons are tough.

Every Christmas I face the knowledge that things didn't go well with my family.

If I missed that last night my father called to remind me of what being hated is.

No one walked in my shoes exactly, and many wear worse I know, but I can certainly take this to inform my own actions.

No concern over my safety teaching believe me.
No -"I've been worried hearing of this shooting, are you safe? Well?"

He's not involved in feeling anything like that.

No inquiry into how my days are passing.

No love for our past days.

Just a ball of raging blame.

It's doubly saddening because of the fact he has so much back pain, and also because his actions a long time ago set up circumstances that did a lot of harm to those in his then family.

These are the tough lessons personally.

I discovered once again that when faced with something utterly unfair, and believe me I'm as flawed as any human,  and that is aimed at me, I cannot break down and speak well to it.

So I know that.

I discovered once again that I really go on for my kids.

One called immediately after this by some miracle because somehow she knew.

And that was as important as all the rest of this in terms of a lesson.

My father never felt that the things I did had any value.

My talents were ones he felt useless, and he wasn't interested in what I had to say.

He was so involved with rage too that his lens was incredibly distorted.

And a truth is not something he really has he gathers pieces.

Broken pieces.

Unfortunately this bleeds into all of the family.

I'm sure my lenses are crappy too.

But I know he's got a lot of things wrong.

I do care about him and I tried to take care of my mother for 53 years.

I know that I failed by going into art and then teaching in his eyes -and not a "science field" as he directed. I'm now 53. I've not got the health to deal with it. It makes me sick. But the degree of hate he has isn't explained by this.

I don't think I'll ever understand that hatred.

I know that he has inflicted a lot of pain because he never even remotely got a hold of his temper. I know he gave some help with money (and he held his $ to hurt as much as he gave to help), I grew up, but that he justified things no one can.

By telling a story that was not true.

I know I avoided him and fled out here and then couldn't really afford to see him.

And now I don't know how to handle it. 

I just don't know what to say.

I lose the guy that grew flowers or that was smart and taught classes or that had good in him in these fogs of his raging.

Other than that it just devolves into what I remember and how it felt.

Somewhere along in my life I read a Buddhist monk talking about abuse. He said essentially that if terribly harmed one could act on it by working with others. He used the example directly-if abused as a child maybe the most constructive thing to do would be to work with children as a teacher. I came to that intuitively, not through a highly thought out plan. I just felt a strong importance in helping young people into good lives. And I knew what it was like to get hit, to be told I was an idiot, to crawl on the ground or to throw myself in front of a little brother to stop a belt with my body.

I knew things we were never supposed to say aloud.

That was essentially one of the reasons for his call-how dare I talk to someone in our hometown he doesn't like and fail to call him.

I don't even know.

I just couldn't call, that is all, nothing else.

He's getting older, I have to face the loss of both parents, it is not an easy time for me.

And a friend would understand.

I've always been the one required to call him.

For six months I just couldn't.

He wasn't the only one, there were a few others I could no longer deal with- one took away my happiness, others I could not think of what to say, or I lost a way through it.

I wasn't feeling anger or resentment, or that things would ever be different or anything.

Longing for that is gone.

I knew I could not help his pain.

That was on my mind and I understood it better through my own journey through cancers, pain, back injury, syringomyelia and just ill health.

I know I was never someone he wanted.

I've accepted that too.

I didn't think on and on about the past anymore.

I knew that I felt avoidance and that all the patterns of our family dynamics seemed injurious to all of us.

I just didn't do anything.

He, like a few others, have given me the feedback that I'm wrong to write, wrong to speak, wrong in what I do, wrong.

That silence from me is the only thing that can be tolerated.

And that even my thoughts are wrong.

Or as he put it what kind of stupid idiot is ever on the internet.