Prologue
Since publishing my most recent article, The End of A Particularly Terrifying Era, about the death of my father last November, I have received a wealth of very thoughtful responses from many close friends and professional colleagues, both personally and online (via Facebook and LinkedIn). Generally, the comments have been positive, with many people saying the article 'spoke to them', that it 'mirrored experiences they had had in their own lives', and that it allowed others to understand me better, by opening up, for them, a window into my own childhood experiences that allowed others to realize how those experiences colored my view of the world around me.
Yet other people had quite different reactions. They noted it was just plain difficult to read the memoir, that they cringed and had to set it aside several times before finishing it -- or didn't finish it at all, because it was too painful to read in its entirety. Some noted how completely paradoxical it was for them: their own experience of their parents had been quite positive and endearing, and, as a result, they found it quite disorienting to hear from someone who had been in terrifying fear of their father (and mother).
At my congregation, during the 'Joys and Concerns' portion of the sermon, the minister, who had heard my story beforehand, said "Donald has a joy, but you need to ask him about it", knowing full well that saying that my joy was about my father's death was far too paradoxical for most people to stomach. When one of the church members asked me, a couple of weeks later, "what was the joy we should ask you about", and I said it was that my father had died, she raised her eyebrows and asked if I was joking. And I said "no, I'm not joking, it is a joy -- but rather than explaining it, read my blog", which she said she would do.
There was no doubt in my mind when I wrote the blog that the unexpected joy I felt at my father's demise would make many people queasy (I say unexpected, because for them it was unexpected, not that I ever failed to expect that I would feel true relief or satisfaction when it finally occurred). My experience flies in the face of the dominant cultural expectation that parents love their children, their children feel loved, and love their parents in return. But, of course, as noted above, from the reactions of some that they had had similar experiences, that sort of Father Knows Best kind of happy American family was not as common an experience as our culture would want us to believe. My reaction may not be common, but it is certainly not completely unusual either.
(1)
When I wrote that article, I wanted to see it as the end of a life of being continually tormented by a person who had made my young life a living hell and had visited his most venial destructive tendencies on a defenseless child. I wanted to view his demise as the end of that emotional wasteland. I hoped that I would now be allowed a reprieve, so that I could move forward unimpeded by those haunting memories. But 30 years of incredibly painful (though often enlightening) therapy, during which I worked through the outcomes of the post-traumatic stress syndrome [PTSD] that I had experienced, taught me that such hopes were at best wistful and probably unlikely.
We all wish that the process of emotional healing would be linear, moving from one phase to the next seamlessly, with logical gradations, and with a satisfying conclusion. But the reality is that it's more like two steps forward, three back, several to the side, and then eventually moving to the next phase, with periodic elastic bounce-backs to earlier points in the journey. In the same way, I would like to believe that the passing of my father last November -- and hence the death of my tormentor -- would be the end of my chronic panic anxiety. But that's just not how the healing journey works. My own experience is an example of how PTSD works it's way into every cell and fiber of one's body, and periodically, when it is exposed to the light of day, forces us to re-experience profound states of panic anxiety.
My father's torture and rape of my child Self was so unrelenting and so continually invasive that overcoming the resultant effects has been profoundly difficult. I have engaged in 30 years of psychotherapy and 'worked my ass off', plus have read hundreds of books on the subject and accessed many massages and other bodywork treatments. And yet, for all that effort, while the panic fears have been greatly 'bled off', they are hardly gone. Each time they arise again (as they do when I take homeopathic remedies or have acupuncture treatments or am 'triggered' by some stressful event) they 'feel' as terrifying as the original events that produced them.
I have, over many years of therapy, acquired more effective 'coping skills', in that I can usually tell the difference between 'the here and now' anxiety and the fear 'that this will last forever'. But the panic is nonetheless overwhelming when I am in the midst of it, with the panic spewing from my chest, throat, head, and guts at full force. And it doesn't, in that moment, feel like 'the past revisited', but like 'the fear that never went away, but was only temporarily sublimated'. Those panic releases often make me feel like I am 'dying', like the end is near, like there's no point going on and I just want to end the terror NOW! But so far the panic has eventually passed by, though my body is often exhausted and painful afterward.
(2)
For many years, especially when I sat in church services, when I heard a child crying, on one level I was irritated (in that the crying disrupted my meditative state), but on another, more terrifying level, I was in profound fear for the child's life.
Now, this second fear doesn't make 'logical' sense, unless it was my personal experience as a child. Crying, to my father, represented rebellion or rejection, and he simply could not tolerate being around it. Like parents who violently shake their crying infants and cause brain damage (as in Shaken Baby Syndrome), our father often beat us even worse if we cried, screaming "I'll give you something to cry about!!" Expressing discomfort or anger in our family was simply not acceptable to the Enforcer and our mother did nothing to impede that behavior.
It took me many years of first noticing my reaction, then analyzing why I felt that, and finally realizing that just because that had happened to me as a child, it did not mean that all parents would act that way toward their children. And then putting one and one together and being able to lower my own fear and paranoia for the child's life.
(3)
The same 'illogical' reaction arose when women I was dating would mention the idea of having children or a family eventually.
Often my experience was that the women I dated had no motivation to 'know me for whom I was', but rather were solely focused on 'shoving me into their Man Box', whether or not I actually fit. It was like they were talking to me, but looking over my shoulder instead of into my eyes, focusing on their dream of having a family. I was solely the 'potential means to an end', not someone with whom they wanted to engage in an intimate, connective relationship.
My 'objectively illogical feeling' was very much like they were putting a 45-caliber pistol to my head and threatening my very existence. My PTSD experience, the way in which I was 'triggered' by this hope for a 'family', was that I was being asked to support their dream of a happy family, of two adults who were parents of children, without their taking the time or wanting to invest the energy in getting to know me first as a friend, which would allow the two of us to work out such an arrangement collectively. I was simply, for them, a potential paycheck and 'a guy' with whom to have a child.
Now, frankly, it never actually reached that juncture. I was so thoroughly terrified of the idea of having children, given how frightfully painful my own childhood had been, that when such a subject was broached (and especially if it was continually stressed), I would simply back away from the relationship and let it wither on the vine. I was often asked to support and defend women when I had no template upon which to base such behavior, having never had the opportunity to experience loving support and protection within my family-of-origin. The vast majority of my intimate relationships with women (except for my present, quite respectful 4-year relationship with my female friend and partner) ended after 3 or 4 months, with my feeling a profound sense of emotional anguish, since it was obvious that my partners had no wish to know me for whom I really was, but rather only whom they wanted to see me as being.
(4)
The most lasting result of my father's terror (combined with my mother's complicity in the dysfunctional behavioral pattern) was a continual 'distrust of my own body' and a strong desire to dissociate from the 'here and now' reality. I've spent a lifetime of struggle trying to 'stay inside my own body', without feeling an overwhelming desire to 'go somewhere else -- almost anywhere else -- or be someone else' rather than having to face the omnipresent fear that pervades every waking moment. And a lifetime of coping with the suppressed anger at the way in which I was abused as a child.
Dissociation is a common defense mechanism for physically and sexually abused children, and I have fallen back upon that emotional defense throughout my life. It has taken much of my years of therapy to work through those fear and anger spaces, and it still takes much of my energy to fight with those dissociative tendencies when I am triggered by stressful events in my life.
I'll speak more about this in later articles; for now, I want to acknowledge that it has been a prominent emotional outcome of all the pervasive abuse.
(5)
My introduction to the men's movement in 1986, when I lived in New Mexico, and my devotion to working on issues of men's emotional wellness ever since, has given me a new 'lease on life' and has allowed me to find some degree of comfort with my maleness. My father's weird and bizarre views on gender and on what it 'meant to be a man' so profoundly poisoned my own satisfaction and 'comfort with my male Self' that it has taken me many years and countless hours of therapy to crawl out of that totally confusing abyss. At least I'm now on the path of solution orientation, on the healing journey of transformation, rather than wallowing in the profound victimization of so much of my earlier life. The journey to a 'healed emotional state of heart' continues to be difficult. But the respect and love of my intimate partner, competent guidance and assistance from my therapist, emotional support of my friends, respect from professional colleagues, confidence displayed by members of my Unitarian Universalist congregation, and my own developing knowledge and inner self-confidence about my many skills and abilities has allowed me, in recent years, to find a greater sense of personal satisfaction with my life.
As Lord Byron said "No one leaves this world without some pain." I'm slowly working through my own and attempting to assist many others with theirs, via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute website and blog, facilitation of men's support groups, and work on issues surrounding men's emotional wellness. Though not a linear path (in fact, rather quite a zig-zag path), I am making clear and distinct progress toward inner emotional health. And that alone is a great testament to how it is possible to heal from such terrifying beginnings.
As I often joke "we live with our parents for 20 years and spend the next 60-80 years trying to overcome that experience." For some that experience is positive, but clearly it was not for me. But there is hope, and I'm an example of someone who has 'seen the light at the end of the tunnel' and known that it was not an oncoming train, but rather a manifestation of 'enlightenment'.
There is no perfection in this world, but transformation is indeed possible.
And, for now, that is enough.
