Thoughts.
—–> 1
Many times I have heard the phrase ‘”Blogging” is just graffiti with punctuation,’ I suppose because of the terrible grammar and spelling, being that anyone can do it and certainly with the intention of sharing with the planet earth, at least with all who have a computer. Maybe, more because blogs are normally people rambling on as I am here.
I agree, for most of what I read. Although, I think that some people, like myself, would rather use it as a way of posting thoughts hoping to see what those thoughts may inspire and draw out of other people. Even if I garner, or draw, negative results it still incites thought, and for me, that is the purpose.
—–> 2
If you think you are the best you can be, you’ve put limits on your ability to become the best you can be.
If changing for the better to become the best you can be is your motivation, you will never fail those who respect and need you in their lives.
Never stop learning or seeking knowledge.
—–> 3
Either you control your anger or your anger controls you.
If you do not like to be controlled and you do not control your anger, you have lost the battle.
—–>4
The Little Boy Who Could.
- The Little Boy Who Could
The Process Of Healing.
You have to start with the story.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
This story is true.
A lot of things have happened through my life that will never see the surface of a piece of paper, never be seen on a monitor and certainly will never fall on another person’s ear. I will never reveal those events. Things that I will carry to the grave. Many things that were painful to endure and many that just do not need to be told. Some of the people who were involved in those activities no longer walk this earth, some do. Concerning the content of this story’s actors and participants, their names will not be revealed.
Originally, I wrote this story and post marked it via USPS, as well as Emailing it, to a family member who has been somewhat important to me through my life, although, has not been present in my life for any extended length of time. I wish it had been different, but as they say “that was then, this is now.” This story was intended for that family member’s eyes only, but that person felt the need to pass it around to others to read and then told me what had been done. Imagine how you would feel had you been the recipient of such news. I was a bit amazed. I was disappointed. I had hoped for a non-selfish personal response. ‘Didn’t happen. I was told to step back and stay away. “I’m 58. What the hell are you saying?” Regardless, that’s what was delivered, through Email, no better.
So, now that I have been “revealed,” I see no reason to keep it to myself. Maybe even gain some knowledge and repair from sharing and hearing what others have experienced and may even care to discuss.
Certainly, I do not intend to denigrate or insult with this story, but rather, intend to “just get it on paper.” I hope to overcome some or many of the issues I still carry with me from my younger years.
Now, having introduced myself, I will dig in and reveal myself.
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Many years ago, on the fifth day of the month of January in 1954, a boy came into this world because of the love between two young adults. A happy, cared for, little blonde boy, possibly an unexpected addition, but they still cared for him, loved him, watched out for his well-being, nurtured him, parented him and taught him moral values that would carry him through his life. They all lived in a very small town in the very northwest corner of the US.
The little boy delighted in exploring the world around him. He looked under rocks, behind doors, he took everything apart to understand what made things “tick.” He was curious about everything in the world. He delighted in the wonders he saw that were so big and strange to see. He was a happy little boy. His family loved him, at least that’s the way he felt. How could he not think he was loved?
His parents made such a fuss over his birthdays. He loved his birthdays and what went into making them special. One year his father collected $1.00 bills from all of his friends and taped them to a roll of paper in a long ribbon. There must have been billions of them. It was amazing to see the ribbon of money strewn up around the ceiling of the living room. The little boy’s eyes bulged when he saw all of the $1.00 bills all over the house. They were all his and there were so many. He had never seen so many dollar bills at one time.
One year for Christmas, his parents got him a beautiful big red and white bicycle. It was so big and tall. Very hard to ride, but it started a love for adventure that would last for the rest of the little boys life. His bike was his magic carpet. It always had magic carpet rides at the ready. He loved to ride his bike.
Over the years, he became the “apple” of his grandmother’s eye. She scooped him up at every occasion that came along and took him with her everywhere she went. They were “buddies.” They went to the store, to the beach, to the Century 21 Exposition World’s Fair in Seattle when it launched in 1962. They were the best of friends. The little boy always felt safe and secure when he was with his grandmother. He knew no one could, or would, do him any harm when he was with her. His grandmother loved him and she knew that the little boy needed her stability in his life.
He watched television with her, he drank wonderful chocolate milkshakes that she made in her home for him, she took him fishing at the river and comforted him when their car got stuck on the bank of the river. “We will be ok. I will get someone to help us. Don’t cry, Gammy will take care of us.” She always did take care of him.
She taught him how to make pea shooters from the bamboo that grew in the back yard of her house.
He was happy to be with her anytime she had him in her sight. They were “buddies.”
She taught him how to tell time when she gave him his first watch. She gave him a chalk board and some chalk and taught him to write his name. She taught him the “ABCs,” she taught him how to write 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 on the chalk board. She made his lunches and took him to school.
His grandfather taught him how to fix a flat tire on his bike. His grandmother and grandfather were all in the sky that he could see. They blocked out the sun and shone much brighter.
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Where were the little boy’s mother and father?
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Sometimes the little boy saw the father hit the mother with his open hand or fist. It was very scary to the little boy because the mother would cry. The little boy loved his mother and father very much and became confused when these scary things would start to happen. But after the loud noises, hitting and bad words stopped, the mother would put dark glasses on her face and she would be pretty again. This made the father happy. They would kiss and be in love again. The little boy always knew when there would be hitting because he would hear the father and mother say nasty words to each other and talk very loud. The little boy would run to his bedroom and hide under the bed and cry. He loved and cared for his mother and father very much but they didn’t seem to care. He was very confused and afraid.
They had had some problems in their marriage and decided that their problems were not reconcilable and they decided to end their marriage. This meant that their problems were not considered to be solvable, even though, by this time, they had three precious children who needed to be cared for and looked after. The oldest was just eight years old, the next youngest was five years old and the littlest was just two years old. Even though these children were so young, impressionable and innocent, that was not more important than divorce. The parents were not willing to work their problems out or put them aside for the sake of the children who needed them.
“I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.” Those wonderful words did not seem to be worthy of the safety of the children in the father’s and mother’s life.
This meant that the mother would now have to provide for the children on her own, that the father would not be a part of their daily lives, and that the oldest son would have to step up and be “dad” to the two other children. This was a monumental responsibility for one so young, none the less, an inescapable role in his little life. His childhood was now going to be denied him and he would not be able to go outside and “play” as other children did because he would now be charged with taking care of every aspect of the two younger sibling’s lives on a daily basis from morning to bedtime.
Eventually, he was old enough to start school, although, because of the proximity of his birthday relative to fall enrollment, he was held out of kindergarten and entered a year late. He would always be a year too old and would result in his school early years being hard to endure. School children can be very mean and normally reflect through their actions on other children what they are taught or see in their home that their father and mother do.
His first grade teacher was Mrs. Adams. She was a stern, tall woman with a gruff voice. Later in the boy’s life, Mrs. Adams’ son, Robert, would become one of his best friends and the little boy, as an adult, would become friends with Mrs. Adams. They would laugh and joke and have fun after Robert and the little boy grew older and they visited in Robert’s house.
During the first year of school for the little boy, he was cared for by many people who were and were not family members. He was cared for by his grandmother adequately and most often, but he also was shuffled to his aunt’s home, to his parent’s friend’s homes, to people’s homes that he did not even know. He was passed around like a piece of trash that no one wanted, although the relatives were reluctant to act on or to tell anyone how they felt about this.
Over the years, the little boy lived in many homes and played in many environments. So many, in fact, that they are just too impossible to remember. He even lived on an animal shelter property once.
Through all of this turmoil, the little boy remained steady and stable in his heart, mind and soul. He learned to speak when spoken to, he learned to take abuse without shouting out, and he even learned how to run from school yard bullies again and again. He had a hard time knowing how to behave because he was always trying to stay safe and unharmed. He missed his Gammy above all. His safety was no longer a daily way of life. He hid behind and under things often.
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As the little boy entered his teen years, there were even more challenges to face. ‘Challenges that were not considered to be normal or ‘matter-of-fact’ for most young adults to encounter.
By this time, being bullied, more at school than anywhere, had become a part of the little boy’s life. It was inescapable. Some family members and those who took care of him were abusive as well. It was a daily ordeal for the little boy to avoid people who were always mean and abusive. He had bad dreams many nights.
At fifteen years old, he was living at home with his single mother, and had been for at least seven years. The little boy was now reaching puberty. He was shy, as the abuse over the years had made him be, but not actually shy, rather afraid of expressing his feelings and ideas to anyone older than him. The adults in his life had now, for years, laughed at him, they threatened him, they made him feel so small that he no longer felt any importance to anyone. He just existed as a boy, not a person. He felt as though he had been left solely and completely on his own, even though he lived with a parent.
His mother would daily go to work tending bar somewhere. Her parents either felt no need or had not the means to send her to an establishment of higher learning and education; hence the mother never established a skill which would be profitable to her as a means of financial and professional support for herself or her family as a stable career. She worked as a bar maid because she knew nothing else and had no time or effort to waste on attempting to better her situation without jeopardizing her children’s well being or the roof over their heads. Consequently, she was in no position to inspire the pursuit of higher education in any of her children.
Due to this situation, the young boy was stuck at home preparing the meals, washing the clothes, greeting the bill collectors at the door, ensuring that the two younger brothers did not get into “trouble” by just being boys. The young boy, from the age of eight years old, was expected to be the “father” of the house after the parent’s divorce, thus relieving the rest of the relatives from having to accept any responsibility of helping the situation by lending a hand in any way at all. This was a God send for the family members who did not want to help or were afraid to step in because the mother was unapproachable.
The mother would go to work, then eight or ten hours later (sometimes not till the next morning or afternoon), come home from work with a bag of burgers and fries in one hand, and a male companion in the other. She would drop the bag of chow on the dinner table and instruct the young boy to “Put the kids to bed at 8:00 pm. Make sure the dishes are done, all homework is done and the doors are locked” then she and her companion would leave. Their were many different “companions” over many years.
One day, the mother met a man who she thought seemed to be nice. She brought him home all the time instead of just once in a while. They were “meant for each other.” Once in a while, the “boyfriend” and the mother would disagree about something and the “boyfriend” would hit her a time or two, like the father did many years earlier, with his fist, then the yelling would stop and it would be so peaceful that they would go in the bedroom and make all kinds of noise. ‘Grunts, growls, etc., the kind of sounds that animals make in the wild. They would come out of the bedroom in the morning, happy. The mother would be wearing dark glasses to make her look pretty. Life was good again for at least one more day. The “boyfriend” lived with the mother for many years, but he never married the mother. He would have been a really bad father. He scared the three little boys who lived in the house with their mother, but that didn’t matter to the mother. She didn’t even ask for or consider the feelings of the three boys about the “boyfriend” living in the house.
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Well, in a few years, the boyfriend wasn’t around anymore. The mother could stop wearing dark glasses to make her pretty. She could now start the burgers and boyfriend act again which she seemed to like better than having to wear dark glasses all the time.
A few years later, in the same small town, the mother met another man who she thought was nice. He was from the state of Texas and talked funny. It was hard to understand him when he spoke, but the little boy and his brothers got used to it. After a couple of years, he married the little three boy’s mother. Then again, the mother had to start wearing dark glasses again. A few years later, the mother and the stepfather did the same thing the first father and the little boy’s mother did, they divorced. ‘Burgers, boyfriends and dark glasses again. Again, the mother never considered the three boys’ opinion of the man from Texas.
By this time, the young boy was becoming braver in his life. Braver in speaking out about his disappointment in the way he had been brought up, speaking out about the bullying that he had lived with for so many years. The bullying he received through the end of his grammar school years and into his junior high school years.
Through all of this, the young boy developed a habit of biting his fingernails. He bit them till they bled, sometimes they would become infected. The boy was beginning to show signs of mental instability. The boy never became violent, mainly because he had seen it in his own home and saw how badly it affected people. He knew that was a bad thing. He didn’t abuse animals, or beat people up. Bullies were never cool, and he didn’t want to be a bully. The activities the he saw the adults do that hurt people he decided he would never do or repeat in his own life.
Now at the age of seventeen, he was beginning to become more and more able to confront those people in his life who felt the need to constantly control him or other people. He was beginning to refuse the control those people felt they needed to exert upon him. They called him rebellious. It escalated to the point of his mother sending him 150 miles away to live with his father. He was being passed on to someone else again.
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He ended up at his father’s house in a large city, still in the northwest part of the US. He now lived with his father, a new stepmother, (the father had been married and divorced a number of times by now), two step sisters and one stepbrother. He was now a senior in high school. He hoped the bullying would stop because he had now changed his demographic. He was living in the big city. The bullies never came back. He was experiencing a freedom to live a life the way he was supposed to, finally, a life without fear of someone.
He became somewhat popular in his new academic and domestic surroundings. This became quite a shock to him because he had previously lived and grown up in a small backwoods town where no one cared about him, and certainly no one important came from “there.” He started smoking pot like everyone in the big city did, even like some of the new family members did. He started to drink a bit. There was always alcohol in this new house in the big city. He got invited to parties, just like a normal young adult about to cross over from his teens into his adult years.
His father tried ever so hard to become important to him, even after being gone for ten years from his life of eighteen years, but he didn’t know how to get the son to respect or trust him because he didn’t have the skills to do so. He would not become an important figure in the young man’s life, ever. The father tried very hard, but his tactics were very poorly thought out and executed. The father thought that yelling and being violent to people would get them to listen to him and respect him even though it always failed to get the sought after results. The young man never did respect or trust the father, and never would respect or trust him as a father.
The father made it very clear that he did not like the clothes the young man wore, the haircut the young man had, the type of music the young man enjoyed. The father never got to meet many of the friends the young man had because the young man, by this time, knew the father wouldn’t approve of his friends. The young man knew the father already hated everything else about the young man, so the young man never invited his friends to his house. He was sure the father would ridicule them also, if not to their faces, he would ridicule them later to the young man. The father was very judgmental, indeed. He liked nothing about his son, even though he made no effort to understand him, even after ten years of absence.
The father and stepmother consumed alcohol nearly constantly. There were fights between the father and stepmother. Very violent encounters resulting in broken bones, broken windows, holes in the walls, doors were broken. There was chaos all of the time in the home. The violence the young man had seen as a boy in his home from the “boyfriends” and the stepfather was available for viewing here in the big city as well. All seemed normal as far as how things should be in the home according to what the boy had seen growing up. There was alcohol abuse, spousal abuse and disrespect for the young adults and children in the house and family. All seemed normal.
Eventually, the young man refused to do as he was told and was sent 150 miles away back to his mother’s house and care.
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When the young man arrived back at his mother’s house, the two younger brothers were still living at the mother’s house. They were now 15 years old and 12 years old, respectively. The young man was completely lost in the world. What was the mother doing? “Burgers and boyfriends,” a cycle that seemed unending.
The young man got a job and a car. He worked at a shake and shingle mill in the small town he had grown up in and, again, lived in. He rented an apartment in the town and his life seemed to settle down.
Within a few years, he had become an active musician, a drummer, in this small town and was playing music in various bars and at events around town. He even played music in some of the bars his mother had worked in after her first of at least three divorces, although, by now, the young man and the mother had not seen each other for years.
Eventually, the economy got bad in the small town and jobs were hard to keep, least of all to come by. The young man packed all of his important possessions into his car, called his father and stepmother in the big city and told them of his plans to leave the small town for good. They were mildly pleased about this. The young man petitioned them for a temporary place to live while he established a financially stable and gainful position with an employer in the big city. They told him that was acceptable. He hadn’t seen his father and stepmother in seven years.
The young man, now 28 years old, left for the big city. He spent a couple of months with the father and stepmother before he got a bit of money ahead and moved into an apartment with a friend he had made who also worked at a pizza shop in the big city that the young man’s father helped to get him a position in. Eventually he moved out into an apartment alone. He spent the next twenty years living a normal life.
Finally, at the age of 48 the man bought a computer. He learned to get around the computer, how to navigate the web, and eventually established a cyber relationship with a woman in another part of the states. The two Emailed and “chatted” with each other for about a month when the man’s mother passed away. The woman found out, and that evening, they shared their first phone call. It was obvious to the two that something new and special and permanent had been initiated. They began to share Email, conventional mail and make phone calls for the next seven months. They established a relationship that they had never experienced before in either of their lives.
The man wanted to meet the woman so he approached his employer and asked about their vacation policy. He discovered that at that time he had a week of paid vacation ready to collect. He took it. He flew to the woman’s state and town of residence, spent the week visiting her and her family and friends. They decided that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
After much discussion and consideration, they agreed that the man moving to her area would be better than her moving to the big city. He flew back to the big city, informed his employer of his plans and moved forward. Late that fall of 2001, the man rented a truck, packed his things in it and drove across the states to be with his new love. They wed in May of 2002.
During the next ten years of marriage, the man started a business after realizing the potential the computer revolution had to offer. His business does well; he has established a fair group of friends and returning clients and a comfortable life in his new environment.
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During this last ten years, the man has also established a connection with his father back in the northwest part of the US. It had now been nearly 40 years since they had communicated.
This newly established association comes with hopes of abandoning old ways and habits, but things do not seem to be so. There is still the bully attitude in the father, pushing the man against the wall only to attempt to manipulate him into some unforeseen position or consideration with the intention of denigrating him.
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Let us move to today.
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We all need to change from day to day, just to be a better person to others, and for me, to be a better husband to my wife. I will not give up on this continuing work, and I will embrace it in those who I see on the same path.
More than anything, I want to believe that my father can change and consider that I am now a fully grown man, capable of all things he had expected from me as a boy, and know that I am already far down that road. Maybe my father is not capable of seeing me in that light, as my wife suggested, but I can still hope.
Even though there has been very little contact between my father and myself, I still care for him. I certainly wish I could go back 50 years to when I was a child and my father filled my sky, but it is unrealistic to think that way. I will have to make the best of the tools at hand.
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If you have experienced activities similar to what I have, and would like to toss some ideas around or share, leave a comment. I’ll get back to you as long as you don’t post a “smart assed” comment. This isn’t about opinions, it’s about getting over myself/yourself.
