Everyone should check out this womans video/blog site. She is NYC and makes these very cool, unpretentious, honest, sweet, funny, intelligent, videos. Her name is Christine and I found her site through YouTube. So there is something worthwhile on the Web!
For some reason I am enchanted by this woman and her sense of humor and honesty. Check out her stuff…Very cool. ‘Home’ made me cry…
I have realized that I still have a great deal of anger alive and kicking in my relationship with my father. We kind of had a blow-up last week when I tried to assert some sense of independence from him. Without going into details, a subject came up and he told me that if he was over-stepping his bounds, for me to let him know. So I did, in a very adult fashion, tell him to “butt out” (his words). Then he brought up the issue again!
When I really pushed back at him, he responded as he always has when he feels that one of his children has ‘misbehaved’–he scolded me and shamed me. What a jerk! Thankfully, as an adult, I can choose whether to let him treat me like a child or not. I choose ‘not’.
The facts are simple: He is my father, and we had some good times. Although he wasn’t there a lot of the time, he tried his best, I think. Unfortunately he was also very mean, cruel, impatient, and shaming with me and those are the memories that have shaped much of our relationship. He wants desperately to connect with me, but I do not feel the same. Our relationship is close enough as it is. He left the family in 1972 and finally divorced in ’84, so in my mind, he deserted his children and wife for a life that suited his needs, not ours.
I didn’t drink because of what he did, but rather how it has made me feel. What kind of son wants to go through life knowing that he should love his father, but actually hating him at the same time? Who wants to express that conflicted emotion? Drinking was an option that provided a dense pillow against these feelings. So, four years into sobriety this iceberg is melting and the emotion is emerging. I am realizing one thing at least which is that the standards he sets for everyone in his life are unattainable. He has purposely designed this set as a way to ‘teach’ me (and others) to strive. That would be fine, except if I didn’t measure up, he would make some cruel, cutting and mean remark that would end up making me feel worthless and low.
So, Christines video of ‘Home’ made me cry, because her life is something I never experienced.
dammit….
Johnnyboy