Living anothers life
I was thinking today, while sitting on the bus and feeling trapped and desperate, that I've been living my fathers life for a long time.
This sense of desperation to GET AWAY, to run somewhere that isn't here... it's followed me around since I was a child. And I remember seeing it in my father. I remember recognizing his frustration and rage for exactly what it was, a futile banging at the glass of his life. I think the first time I saw it clearly I was 12, and I had just watched him and my mother get into a fight. He slammed his way out the door, grabbing his car keys off the table, and she sat down and cried. Half of me sympathized with her, and I did my best to comfort her with a pat on the back. But the other half of me realized he was running away from so much more than a fight. And I empathized with him. I started to want to run away myself, though I didn't know what from. I didn't have the pressures he did, the 5 hungry children, the emotionally immature wife, the religion that demanded perfect obedience and an idea of masculinity that sat ill on my fathers shoulders.
But what pressures I did have, I learned to run away from. Because that's what he did. He retreated inside himself, to his study, and when it got bad enough, he took the car and went away for hours.
As an adult, I can see my own patterns of running away. I can see myself recreating his reality in small, with cats instead of children, emotionally abusive and manipulative relationships instead of a wife. A job I hate that I don't actually have to stay in to keep a family afloat. Surrounding myself with people who don't really understand me, so I can play the martyr and stay encased in my shell...
Seeing my own patterns, my unwillingness to have children, to settle down in one place, with one person... I realize that I don't want to feel compelled to run away from things that really matter. At the same time, I don't want to not be able to run away. I can't STAND not feeling free. It makes me sick inside, with fear and rage and a desperate desire to chew off my own leg to get away. Of course, I don't respect this need to run, and deliberately force myself to stay, to deal with the shit situations I create for myself.
Martyrdom and therapy, all in one. Convenient.
I sat at the bus stop this afternoon, soaking in the sun and staring up at the crows playing in the tops of the pines. And I chanted over and over "Only your decisions created your cage. Only your decisions can free you." It didn't help much. I still felt panicky and trapped, sitting on a bus I couldn't stop and turn around.
But it did help some. And realizing that I was living someone elses life for them, trying to recreate it and this time do it right, that helped too.
Of course, realizing that your father desperately wanted to run away, from his life, from his responsibilities, from you... that's not exactly healthy. Seeing yourself as a burden and anchor from such a young age, being unable to STOP seeing the desire in a parent to walk and keep on walking, it fucks you up. Less so than if he'd done it. And I respect his ability to rein in his needs, to have forced himself, at the cost of much of who he was and what would have made him happy, to stick with his family and create a world for them.
But I don't even want to have to give up so much of who I am just to maintain some little self respect. I'm sorry he did. I'm sorry for him, that he was compelled to get married so young, to have children so young, with a woman who he loved but didn't understand, who didn't understand him.
I need to realize that being sorry for him doesn't have to consume my own reality. I don't have to recreate his pain and make it all better. I can't. So why do I try?
This sense of desperation to GET AWAY, to run somewhere that isn't here... it's followed me around since I was a child. And I remember seeing it in my father. I remember recognizing his frustration and rage for exactly what it was, a futile banging at the glass of his life. I think the first time I saw it clearly I was 12, and I had just watched him and my mother get into a fight. He slammed his way out the door, grabbing his car keys off the table, and she sat down and cried. Half of me sympathized with her, and I did my best to comfort her with a pat on the back. But the other half of me realized he was running away from so much more than a fight. And I empathized with him. I started to want to run away myself, though I didn't know what from. I didn't have the pressures he did, the 5 hungry children, the emotionally immature wife, the religion that demanded perfect obedience and an idea of masculinity that sat ill on my fathers shoulders.
But what pressures I did have, I learned to run away from. Because that's what he did. He retreated inside himself, to his study, and when it got bad enough, he took the car and went away for hours.
As an adult, I can see my own patterns of running away. I can see myself recreating his reality in small, with cats instead of children, emotionally abusive and manipulative relationships instead of a wife. A job I hate that I don't actually have to stay in to keep a family afloat. Surrounding myself with people who don't really understand me, so I can play the martyr and stay encased in my shell...
Seeing my own patterns, my unwillingness to have children, to settle down in one place, with one person... I realize that I don't want to feel compelled to run away from things that really matter. At the same time, I don't want to not be able to run away. I can't STAND not feeling free. It makes me sick inside, with fear and rage and a desperate desire to chew off my own leg to get away. Of course, I don't respect this need to run, and deliberately force myself to stay, to deal with the shit situations I create for myself.
Martyrdom and therapy, all in one. Convenient.
I sat at the bus stop this afternoon, soaking in the sun and staring up at the crows playing in the tops of the pines. And I chanted over and over "Only your decisions created your cage. Only your decisions can free you." It didn't help much. I still felt panicky and trapped, sitting on a bus I couldn't stop and turn around.
But it did help some. And realizing that I was living someone elses life for them, trying to recreate it and this time do it right, that helped too.
Of course, realizing that your father desperately wanted to run away, from his life, from his responsibilities, from you... that's not exactly healthy. Seeing yourself as a burden and anchor from such a young age, being unable to STOP seeing the desire in a parent to walk and keep on walking, it fucks you up. Less so than if he'd done it. And I respect his ability to rein in his needs, to have forced himself, at the cost of much of who he was and what would have made him happy, to stick with his family and create a world for them.
But I don't even want to have to give up so much of who I am just to maintain some little self respect. I'm sorry he did. I'm sorry for him, that he was compelled to get married so young, to have children so young, with a woman who he loved but didn't understand, who didn't understand him.
I need to realize that being sorry for him doesn't have to consume my own reality. I don't have to recreate his pain and make it all better. I can't. So why do I try?
Comments
Post a Comment