My life coach suggested that I'm at a point in my life where I can work on the things I compartmentalized over the years. Since now that I'm back from war, it may be more than just those memories that are surfacing in my nightmares. I have moved into being a complete human being. Without secrets, or needs for pretense and dramatic obstacles. Lo and behold, after Thanksgiving, my father emerges.
My father was a cruel man who used half-assed military psychological techniques to gaslight and mentally abuse anyone who came around him. He tried to dominate his environment through fear and intimidation; maybe this was the only version of "respect" he has ever known. Hate to admit it, but many of my insights for what NOT to do in a relationship/friendship comes from him.
After over a decade of not speaking, we reconnect and he says that all he wants is to have his current three businesses run by his children.
He says many of his insults were meant to inspire and motivate me. I asked him about when he covered for his oldest son, my shitbag brother, being a molester and rapist. Or when my father tried to discourage and beat the idea of me running track. He lied to me, told me I wasn't good enough, that he was shocked I was even accepted. He told me this, at random, over dinner, 2 months AFTER I already had gone to state and won an MVP trophy. Both were in my backpack during his speech. I never trusted the words from an older black man after that.
Boots and fists were his ways of talking with me about my future after I turned 18. Bet that garage door still has my blood on it.
"Wall to wall counseling" is what he called it. I lost it when he tried that on my younger sister.
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Present-day. During the call with my father...I felt nothing at first, then the temperature started to rise. Remembering the times he would wake me up by stuffing ice in my mouth and underwear. Which of course made me remember the perverse interests of my shitbag older brother. Every day, we would fight about how my mother screwed him over, if only he hadn't married her, and if only I could be better at football and grades. I always hated playing football. Actually, I always was cautious of all-male environments and all masculine energy environments. My mother already showed me what is to persevere and be mentally tough, so being physically tough in a room of juveniles, gangbangers, and wannabe celebrities....just didn't appeal to me. My father was furious. Told me I was a useless nigger who would only experience negative growth.
Backstory: My father was in the Navy for 28 years. Always bragged that he worked around Seals, without becoming one. Pushed me to graduate high school early. Put me on the street, at 17, with no car, no clothes, he "lost" my cell phone, and we never spoke about the money I saved under my bed. I just bit my tongue, I didn't have time to feel sad or self-pity. I was hungry and homeless.
He told me if I ever got arrested, he will just hang up the phone. 17 was too young to work without paperwork, I couldn't get into Job Corps, halfway houses were full, and family wasn't answering the phone. I wore down my 2 pair of shoes within a month from all the walking. Gangs were getting their cheap thrills and entry kills by killing homeless people in their sleep. I swore I would never beg for change. I joined gang life in Tijuana Mexico to survive.
I slaved every day and night in Tijuana. Sold my dignity and innocence for food and ammunition. My father's insults rang in my head every time before I did something I knew would destroy something vital in myself. After a few months, I built myself up from the ground. Got a car, an apartment, guns, two girlfriends......right when I started to get good at it. My mother called.
My mother was in the Marines during my childhood. We had our falling out when I was 12 (they divorced when I was 4) and went to live with my father after. A mistake, but this is life. My mother was hard on me every day, spanked but never beat me, took me a while to realize that. After the divorce, my mother remarried and moved to NY.
When she found out what I was becoming. She reached out, encouraged me to join the Army. Got a train ticket to NY from San Diego. Didn't hug me when I arrived. And gave serious thought to me joining Aviation instead of Combat Arms. I was self-destructive and hell-bent on hurting the world, but I couldn't say no to my mother. So I joined Aviation and it turned out to be the best thing for my life, career, and education.
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I wanted to just write that down. It was bugging me and affecting the energy in a budding BDSM dynamic. Which after some thought, we both decided it wasn't a right fit. I realize that my father never had this skill. To reflect, look back on and learn from his mistakes, and to give that turn around to someone he hurt.
He would always make himself the center. As in, he loved bragging and sending threats about how much people in the family needed him. How essential yet independent he was. How much people should invest emotionally and financially into respecting him and his vision for all of our futures. I noticed that he only spoke of legacies and inheritance to me during the threat part of the conversation. I never believed one word, but it still hurt.
I can see myself actively trying to prevent doing this kind of damage to someone else. I worked for years to raise my mental and emotional awareness. To heal and discipline instead of hardening and abuse.
Obviously, I declined to join my father's new empire. He is only speaking to me now after finding out I was contracting in Iraq for the last three years.
He keeps talking over the vibe as if he owns the conversation. As if I am to submit...again. I feel that cold dark creeping through my lungs. I snapped and said some things I wish I hadn't, but I'm glad I did.
In response, of all the concepts and words available, he chose to call me a "Momma's Boy." Spoke at length about how my mother was promiscuous during her younger years. Insulted her memory, looks, and how she performed as a mother. This was not expected. Honestly, I understood every villain and hero who said they were disappointed when they saw the true state of mind in their lesser rivals.
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I started a list of the things my mother did for me. Even when I lashed out at her. Even after we had fallen out after falling out.
She took me in when I had nothing and never asked for a dime in my ENTIRE life. Bought me a jeep. Took me to England on July 4th (a huge thing for me when I joined the Army). She wasn't perfect. She had me at 19, while in the Marines, and had to grow up while raising me.
++Side note: I remember when I was small, my mother was approached by someone trying to jack the car. He had a friend. My mother threw it down. Fists, teeth, and feet. There was no clear sign that she would lose. I stood there and cheered as these men stepped back with mouths and ears bleeding. It was a rush to see her winning. To see SOMEONE, anyone winning in this world. She fell back against the car, they walked off.
My father was 33 when he met my mother, who was 18 and just joined the military. I'm a fan of age just being a number, and people finding lasting connections across any distance/boundary. It's just that I read my mother's diaries. And combining that with what I know of military life. My father was a predator who mentally manipulated and took advantage.
My mother responded with divorce, remarrying, moving away, and getting child support. Actions that I believed were the cause of the family tearing apart. Partly because my mother NEVER spoke ill of my father. Ever. She also never told us the truth about my dad. Now, I can see how it protected the few facets of the family we had left.
At this point in my life, I like who I like. I actively practice ways to avoid falling into or starting the cycles of misery and disrespect that my father reveled in.
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Back to the moment I snapped and said things I wish I hadn't said, but don't regret. I shared how much pain and anguish he caused during those years. How I now know how much of a pervert and sick fuck him and his firstborn son are. I was calm, quiet, and cold in my words. Tone and volume would not interfere with this message getting across. Next, I explained if you're a grown man in your 30s and you get an 18-year-old pregnant, and it turns sideways. WELL FUCKING DUH.
I understand that my mother grew into a man-eating shark. Sharks are great. They mind their business, only attack when hungry or crossed....or if you look weak and bleeding. Know how you don't get bit? Stay the fuck out of the ocean that's how. MESSAGE to all the dommes/doms out here cradle robbing.
There are many things that I know about dating now, that if my father had just grown the fuck up and treated people like humans, he would have known and I could have learned/healed from. Not putting the sole blame on another for my self-development, just noting how things could have gone. It's fun to imagine right?
++realization: Having watched many young men get addicted to video games. myself included. I remembered the hours, days, and weeks of collected time that I spent angrily screaming at strangers to kill imaginary aliens on a time limit. Being stressed...but trying to enjoy it. While paying more money, time, and effort. Then filled with rage upon seeing that the methods for communication that I had fashioned and honed in one environment would not work in another. What if life and having children was my father's post-video-game life. His life before my mother was just yell at people and things got done. Even before he joined the military.
I do not want to see aspects of my father's mistreatment of women and relationships, leak into my BDSM life. Having said that, I am seeing a lot of people in the BDSM community (new and otherwise) trying to stuff as much of their life experiences, trauma, ideas, and above/beyond desires into every dynamic they come across. Without having fully healed from whatever they went through before. Or proactively try to heal that pain in another. Having admitted and learned from what is listed above. It is easier to see who has not done this kind of work and those who don't need to at this point in their life.
That may be all that's keeping them going. They may find a dynamic that lets them express and structure those energies.
Fair warning though, the other side of that fence is worth working over. The road to emotional/mental recovery is hard, daunting, painful and many times invasive/uncomfortable. I am saying it is worth it to be vulnerable, to heal from being broken, to drop the narcissism that you claim is realism, and to connect with those around who genuinely care about one's well being.
At the moment my father responded to all this by deflecting and choosing to only insult my mother. Whom he has not seen in over 30 years. I realized that there are too many things broken in him for me to actually GET anything positive from him. I saw nothing of the man I feared when I was younger. I was expecting to be outsmarted and one move behind despite my life experiences. I solved the mystery that he wasn't hiding his intellect and planning life lessons and stability for all in the future. It's just that past abusing others and earning money, my father had no other skill sets.
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I remember screaming and wrecking my house. The conversation was not what I was mad about. It was the surging amount of disappointment. Metallic bile builds up in my chest. It freezes and shatters. I feel that furnace melting the pieces down. I can not believe that THIS is what I feared. You couldn't be a good father, at least be a good enemy. My sense of honor keeps drinking and says: "I would have rather we fought and he killed me instead of this."
My inner "hero" was tearing his own eyes out. We trained for years, suppressed all those evil intentions, to ride across whole continents and conquer an old rival. Only to find that their lands were barren, there's no fucking treasure vault, and my actual enemy is just a crazy old man with a crown made of bills. Fuck.
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My life coach hugged me when I told her all this. Invited me to her place and we soaked in her hot tub. She gave me a couple of hours to destress in private. As I floated above the jetstreams and energy recovery salt mix. I felt the chain, on that anchor of madness, snap. I close my eyes and feel the smooth glide of my vessel progressing through the waters of life.
Later, I open my eyes and she is standing over me with a blunt and a smile. She hands me cold water and the blunt. Then starts to tell me how she tried kink, chooses to block out her past trauma, and focuses on healing others as her own personal therapy. She tells me how her ex cheated on her with a 15-year-old, how her friend of 20 years turned spiteful and jealous, and how her mother is slowly slipping into dementia.
I don't sit up, I just float and accept. I cannot do anything about these past events, and my coach is way above me in this regard. After this entire ordeal. I deep cleaned my house. Found myself waking up earlier. It's easier to study without hearing the past echo my resentments and most painful moments.
I've moved on, for now.
I sincerely hope everyone gets to find closure. Not the pretentious version filled with memes and "deep quotes" where one depends on time to erase the memory. No, I mean the groundwork, the progress, the struggle with madness and depression, facing the past demons and bullies, then choosing to move on. My mother taught me young that it is better to face pain and hardship instead of running from or blocking them out. I ignored her for years. Knowing I needed that anger to survive.
Fight on humans. You will not be victorious "one day" when it's "meant to be."
We can be victorious every day that we choose to break previous cycles, and build our own.
