(Editing in Progress - If Any of This Makes Sense, You Might Consider Professional Help (:)
Late one afternoon, on a dispersed forest service campsite in the woods up Boulder Canyon Sophie and I encountered a guy who can best be described as a “crazy fucker.” No other words suit this guy. He was some sort of PCP-fueled prophet to a mass of young followers who began arriving one by one. Eventually I got Sophie and I the hell out of there, moving to another site a hundred yards away. Still I could hear the wild masses all night, howling on command at something.
The next day my curiosity got the best of me and I cautiously wandered over there to survey the damage. But there was none; no sign of the previous evening’s festivities remained. None of the people, their cars, the prophet-nothing.
Of the few cars that remained I was startled to happen across a terrified little girl, naked except for some sort of wooly animal skin. She had a terrible case of acne, if that helps to guess her general age. These days everyone looks like a baby to me and I’m wrong more often than not when I try to guess people’s age.
Even so I wondered: Was she an innocent, abducted child who played the central figure in some sort of quasi-religious ceremony? Or maybe she was an undergrad out doing something weird to make a few bucks but bit off more than she could chew?
The previous evening a baby-faced Boulder County deputy appeared, just a scared kid in uniform, who was about pissing himself in fear as he approached that whole group of stoned lunatics. The mass was howling and shrieking one moment then, seeing the cop suddenly quieted as their prophet spoke to the boy-cop: “Yes, Officer, I/we understand, we’ll keep the noise down, etc.” the sort of BS only intended to placate the law and impress upon his flock his godliness. The hollering resumed immediately upon the cop’s departure.
After moving us to a safer campsite for the night, I decided then that Sophie and I would go to Mexico. Whatever crazy ideas anyone ever fed me about the so-called dangers there couldn’t be any crazier than what I saw that night.
It was a good sendoff from Colorado, for it kept me from leaving with an ache in my heart ❤️ for the place. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I remember telling Sophie. And away we went, and we didn’t look back. That’s the kind of wonderful co-pilot Sophie’s always been, forward-looking and enthused. She’s a reliable reflection of my feelings, and man, was I psyched to cross that Mexican border. I still am, and when the time’s right, I’ll probably miss Colorado and the wonderful, healing experiences I’ve had here. But I think I’ll be happy enough to live out my days as an expat. I’ve researched becoming a legal Mexican resident, enough to access medical care anyway, and even the legality of medical marijuana for my seizures and neuropathy.
We’ve also got friends from Canada 🇨🇦 there that we’ll miss this winter, and we’ll also miss the campground owner Edgar and his family, who we’ve had a mutual adoption, we of them and they of us.
In Mexico, we’re accepted for who we are there, and I don’t recall feeling any ambivalence there. I love the language and the new to me culture, and how much of it I already picked up as a kid from my Mexican grandfather, mi abuelo, el padre de mi padre.
Hmm, let’s see... I think the following is a reply to an email I’d begun to a family member showing justice taking place for a most deserving person. You’ll remember this story, I’m sure:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/10/31/utah-nurse-arrested-for-blocking-cop-from-drawing-blood-from-patient-receives-500000-settlement/
Warms my heart to see this.
You know, I could’ve benefited from witnesses ever since age nine or ten. The cop that hurt Sophie and I in the desert was just a jacked-up kid.
Nothing he could ever do to me could ever scare me, or terrify me like our own father did.
My heart goes out to you for being a survivor of brutality by someone you shouId also have been able to trust. Something about it cuts so much deeper than a stranger’s hurt ever can.
I lived it almost on a daily basis as a kid, and it casts a pretty horrible shadow over my life still: Nightmares, trust issues, inability to maintain intimate relationships, eg with my wife and daughter and others.
Superficial friendships once were terrific, peachy-keen, okey-dokey because nobody knew what went on behind closed doors. Smiling outwardly but too often crying inside.
Endless efforts at therapy and other potential long-term solutions, great people and terrific ideas, have worn me out.
Things I saw and heard no kids should ever experience at home. Long before you were born our parents were young, too young to deserve a child, but there I was anyway.
Not unlike you, I believe. Us both.
“Unplanned” is the term civil people use, while the generic, Catholic term is “ultimate shame,” mortal sin, etc.
You know the terms, you heard it growing up, too. Some things never change, some people never are quite grown up, mature enough to have kids.
Adding insult to injury is how I felt and what I experienced in confronting my childhood abusers.
Just as the guy in the White House can say and do something one moment, and then, right in front of you, deny it the next and completely believe his own lie, I was stonewalled, too.
The guy in the White House, just by being himself with his perpetual sneer and condescending tone, subjectively directed with favor toward some and utter disrespect toward others hits too close to home.
It’s a home I tried, many times, to leave, first as a kid and then, as an adult, ever since.
In being unable to seek validation from my original abusers, I’ve found myself unable to find it elsewhere.
No amount of words like “We paid your college tuition,” or “You’ve always had a roof over your head” can ever take the place of words of contrition, offered voluntarily and without condition, from those who first caused the hurt.
I’m not just speaking for myself, but for anyone who’s ever had their trust violated by someone else.
In grade school it can be the “first crush who left me heartbroken.” This isn’t puppy love, though. Rather, it’s a shocking, slap-in-the-face introduction to how violent grownups can be.
At home, behind closed doors and involving adults, all the name-calling and door-slamming, and the screaming and shouting and cussing, can escalate into domestic violence. It becomes criminal behavior, a crime.
If kept behind those closed doors it becomes a hidden crime - and an ugly secret - that all who live within must never tell.
Even when it comes time to stand in line outside the confessional, waiting your turn to kneel in the darkness and say “Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” you must never tell.
Add kids and it becomes child abuse, yet more violent crime at home. It’s yet another secret that must be kept, especially among the kids now.
But what happens when the kids grow up, as they always do? What becomes of their secret? How is it resolved in their mind?
One obvious answer is to take it back to the source. You’re not a little kid anymore and, even though you may be scared, no one can hurt you now.
So you bring up the subject. There’s no pleasant way to do it, and it’s awkward for everyone, especially you.
“Why would you say these things now?” you are asked, “We always did our best for you kids. All we ever wanted you to do was to get with the program.”
You’re faced with denial and, in a strange way, you find yourself doubting yourself, even though you know that you’re not wrong; the things you saw back then, the screams and the hands on you and the fury in their eyes were all real.
Now they’re telling you it’s not true, you’re making it up and, finally, the closest expression of guilt you’re likely to get from them, “You need to get over it.”
But you can’t. It was a lifetime in the making and, if it were that simple, you’d have done so long ago.
This denial of this on the parents’ part for whatever reason, such as “Good Catholics don’t do such things!” places the weight of the knowledge of these crimes forever on the kids. Though it was never their fault, it was blamed on them nonetheless.
They’ve become scapegoats, and some are even destined to raise their kids the same way.
I’ve witnessed my share of this, long before you were born. To my credit, this way of life never permeated my home as an adult.
Having never learned the nuances of physical closeness with others through my parents as a baby, I feared the unknown and repeatedly fled.
My recollections of dinner time conversations between parents then were actually commiserations about the various people in our lives.
Usually a person was defined by their ethnicity or religion. My father was most vitriolic about this, but mother held her own:
“Those Jews/Jigaboos/Protestants always X, Y and/or Z,” he’d say. “I cannot understand what’s with those people,” she’d say, “Shame on them!”
And somehow, because my mother didn’t cuss, I didn’t fear her like I did my father, who did. By default and in the absence of anyone else she, the emotionally distant one became the one I turned to for love and understanding. It became my own definition of what Love is.
But the people I relied upon weren’t even mature enough to be self-reliant yet. In many ways, they still aren’t and never will be.
I’ve just described the American president and, given his ubiquitousness, it’s not a surprise that
A. He can trigger these memories for me and
B. It can happen anytime.
I’m too tired to write more, but this writing is the only way I knew how to remain safe.
The next day my curiosity got the best of me and I cautiously wandered over there to survey the damage. But there was none; no sign of the previous evening’s festivities remained. None of the people, their cars, the prophet-nothing.
Of the few cars that remained I was startled to happen across a terrified little girl, naked except for some sort of wooly animal skin. She had a terrible case of acne, if that helps to guess her general age. These days everyone looks like a baby to me and I’m wrong more often than not when I try to guess people’s age.
Even so I wondered: Was she an innocent, abducted child who played the central figure in some sort of quasi-religious ceremony? Or maybe she was an undergrad out doing something weird to make a few bucks but bit off more than she could chew?
The previous evening a baby-faced Boulder County deputy appeared, just a scared kid in uniform, who was about pissing himself in fear as he approached that whole group of stoned lunatics. The mass was howling and shrieking one moment then, seeing the cop suddenly quieted as their prophet spoke to the boy-cop: “Yes, Officer, I/we understand, we’ll keep the noise down, etc.” the sort of BS only intended to placate the law and impress upon his flock his godliness. The hollering resumed immediately upon the cop’s departure.
After moving us to a safer campsite for the night, I decided then that Sophie and I would go to Mexico. Whatever crazy ideas anyone ever fed me about the so-called dangers there couldn’t be any crazier than what I saw that night.
It was a good sendoff from Colorado, for it kept me from leaving with an ache in my heart ❤️ for the place. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I remember telling Sophie. And away we went, and we didn’t look back. That’s the kind of wonderful co-pilot Sophie’s always been, forward-looking and enthused. She’s a reliable reflection of my feelings, and man, was I psyched to cross that Mexican border. I still am, and when the time’s right, I’ll probably miss Colorado and the wonderful, healing experiences I’ve had here. But I think I’ll be happy enough to live out my days as an expat. I’ve researched becoming a legal Mexican resident, enough to access medical care anyway, and even the legality of medical marijuana for my seizures and neuropathy.
We’ve also got friends from Canada 🇨🇦 there that we’ll miss this winter, and we’ll also miss the campground owner Edgar and his family, who we’ve had a mutual adoption, we of them and they of us.
In Mexico, we’re accepted for who we are there, and I don’t recall feeling any ambivalence there. I love the language and the new to me culture, and how much of it I already picked up as a kid from my Mexican grandfather, mi abuelo, el padre de mi padre.
Hmm, let’s see... I think the following is a reply to an email I’d begun to a family member showing justice taking place for a most deserving person. You’ll remember this story, I’m sure:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/10/31/utah-nurse-arrested-for-blocking-cop-from-drawing-blood-from-patient-receives-500000-settlement/
Warms my heart to see this.
You know, I could’ve benefited from witnesses ever since age nine or ten. The cop that hurt Sophie and I in the desert was just a jacked-up kid.
Nothing he could ever do to me could ever scare me, or terrify me like our own father did.
My heart goes out to you for being a survivor of brutality by someone you shouId also have been able to trust. Something about it cuts so much deeper than a stranger’s hurt ever can.
I lived it almost on a daily basis as a kid, and it casts a pretty horrible shadow over my life still: Nightmares, trust issues, inability to maintain intimate relationships, eg with my wife and daughter and others.
Superficial friendships once were terrific, peachy-keen, okey-dokey because nobody knew what went on behind closed doors. Smiling outwardly but too often crying inside.
Endless efforts at therapy and other potential long-term solutions, great people and terrific ideas, have worn me out.
Things I saw and heard no kids should ever experience at home. Long before you were born our parents were young, too young to deserve a child, but there I was anyway.
Not unlike you, I believe. Us both.
“Unplanned” is the term civil people use, while the generic, Catholic term is “ultimate shame,” mortal sin, etc.
You know the terms, you heard it growing up, too. Some things never change, some people never are quite grown up, mature enough to have kids.
Adding insult to injury is how I felt and what I experienced in confronting my childhood abusers.
Just as the guy in the White House can say and do something one moment, and then, right in front of you, deny it the next and completely believe his own lie, I was stonewalled, too.
The guy in the White House, just by being himself with his perpetual sneer and condescending tone, subjectively directed with favor toward some and utter disrespect toward others hits too close to home.
It’s a home I tried, many times, to leave, first as a kid and then, as an adult, ever since.
In being unable to seek validation from my original abusers, I’ve found myself unable to find it elsewhere.
No amount of words like “We paid your college tuition,” or “You’ve always had a roof over your head” can ever take the place of words of contrition, offered voluntarily and without condition, from those who first caused the hurt.
I’m not just speaking for myself, but for anyone who’s ever had their trust violated by someone else.
In grade school it can be the “first crush who left me heartbroken.” This isn’t puppy love, though. Rather, it’s a shocking, slap-in-the-face introduction to how violent grownups can be.
At home, behind closed doors and involving adults, all the name-calling and door-slamming, and the screaming and shouting and cussing, can escalate into domestic violence. It becomes criminal behavior, a crime.
If kept behind those closed doors it becomes a hidden crime - and an ugly secret - that all who live within must never tell.
Even when it comes time to stand in line outside the confessional, waiting your turn to kneel in the darkness and say “Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” you must never tell.
Add kids and it becomes child abuse, yet more violent crime at home. It’s yet another secret that must be kept, especially among the kids now.
But what happens when the kids grow up, as they always do? What becomes of their secret? How is it resolved in their mind?
One obvious answer is to take it back to the source. You’re not a little kid anymore and, even though you may be scared, no one can hurt you now.
So you bring up the subject. There’s no pleasant way to do it, and it’s awkward for everyone, especially you.
“Why would you say these things now?” you are asked, “We always did our best for you kids. All we ever wanted you to do was to get with the program.”
You’re faced with denial and, in a strange way, you find yourself doubting yourself, even though you know that you’re not wrong; the things you saw back then, the screams and the hands on you and the fury in their eyes were all real.
Now they’re telling you it’s not true, you’re making it up and, finally, the closest expression of guilt you’re likely to get from them, “You need to get over it.”
But you can’t. It was a lifetime in the making and, if it were that simple, you’d have done so long ago.
This denial of this on the parents’ part for whatever reason, such as “Good Catholics don’t do such things!” places the weight of the knowledge of these crimes forever on the kids. Though it was never their fault, it was blamed on them nonetheless.
They’ve become scapegoats, and some are even destined to raise their kids the same way.
I’ve witnessed my share of this, long before you were born. To my credit, this way of life never permeated my home as an adult.
Having never learned the nuances of physical closeness with others through my parents as a baby, I feared the unknown and repeatedly fled.
My recollections of dinner time conversations between parents then were actually commiserations about the various people in our lives.
Usually a person was defined by their ethnicity or religion. My father was most vitriolic about this, but mother held her own:
“Those Jews/Jigaboos/Protestants always X, Y and/or Z,” he’d say. “I cannot understand what’s with those people,” she’d say, “Shame on them!”
And somehow, because my mother didn’t cuss, I didn’t fear her like I did my father, who did. By default and in the absence of anyone else she, the emotionally distant one became the one I turned to for love and understanding. It became my own definition of what Love is.
But the people I relied upon weren’t even mature enough to be self-reliant yet. In many ways, they still aren’t and never will be.
I’ve just described the American president and, given his ubiquitousness, it’s not a surprise that
A. He can trigger these memories for me and
B. It can happen anytime.
I’m too tired to write more, but this writing is the only way I knew how to remain safe.
No comments:
Post a Comment