Generational Curses

I need to write about this and it’s going to be very hard for me, because I still struggle with whether or not I have a right to feel the way I feel about the way things were. I’ll probably jump around a bit because this is a processing piece of my junk, not a literary masterpiece. I don’t expect a lot of people will see this, but if you do, please consider yourself invited to my soft and fragile space, and I ask that you please tread gently.

I wrote last week asking to know more about the circumstances surrounding Kel Campbell’s exodus, and in that letter I referenced a response to that final piece she published here. But it wasn’t until reading that article again that I remembered the real reason I didn’t post my response.

I had a literal, experiential response (about my literal, male progeny) to post to a metaphorical article, and I didn’t want this woman to think that I completely missed the point of an article about men missing the point. So I erased it. Because I did get it. How could I not? I’m a woman living in this world, and while I understand that in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t have it even a fraction as bad as the majority of the rest of the world’s women, I promise that growing up in my house taught me plenty about how little I mattered.

I knew from the time I could comprehend the concept that my name was to have been Justin Michael, and that my father was unhappy when he got the news that another vagina was going to be coming home. My father wanted a son, to do guy stuff with. Which is funny to me now, because he doesn’t know how to do any guy stuff that requires more than his ass in a chair in front of the tube cracking a tall one. But from day one, he had no use for me, unless he needed the TV channel changed, or he was ready for a new beer.

It’s interesting; I was not a girlie girl at all: I was a lizard-catching, turtle-racing, dumpster-diving, muddy mess of a thing. I never played with dolls. I would have been thrilled to go out and shoot cans with dad, or hunt quail, or change a tire, but he never asked. I was just a girl. And after 6 years, he didn’t have to worry anymore because he got his boy.

My father is a sadistic sonofabitch, and I made sure to keep myself between him and the baby until I left for college. We all wanted my brother to be spared the abuse I’d suffered, and I was more than happy to take the licks if it meant he wouldn’t have to. And I know there were front lawn fist fights while I was at school, and that my brother was resentful of suddenly having to step in as Mom’s protector, but I thought I’d done well by him. His was the fun house; his buddies all practically lived there and ate my folks out of house and home and there was laughter. I never, ever had friends to the house when I was living there. My father would have (and did, the couple of times I tried) humiliated me.

I was a straight A student, competitive dancer, musician, actress, martial artist…he was nonplussed. But I made him look good, so outwardly he sang my praises, before coming home to make me pay for achieving. Because men like my father (and later my husband) cannot abide a woman achieving. It reminds them that they underachieve. It eats at their self worth. So all of the good things I was trying to do to make him proud were actually making him despise me. It was very sad.

Because he felt small, dad was all about complete control. And because I had to survive, I learned to work within his system. Because I had to, I became a chameleon. I was an expert at reading people, and rooms, and knowing who they needed me to be, and becoming that person. I was so many different people.

And I was no one at all.

I didn’t understand the reasons my father did the things he did, but I knew one thing for sure: I was not going to be like him. I was not going to drink, or smoke, or hit my kids.

My brother called me soon after I left for college. He was sobbing. Dad had put Mom through the shower doors and he didn’t know what to do. He HATED dad. He would NEVER talk to women the way dad talked to mom.

We all have such high hopes.

I became a drunk, of course. And I married my dad, basically. He was not so physical; he was smarter than that. He just tortured me in ways no one could see. And this is a piece of the last thing my brother said to me (this was when I was almost 5 years sober):

You are an embarrassment to the entire family. And quit blaming your father for all the bullshit you’ve put yourself through. Pretty sure he didn’t do any HUFFING in Vietnam while he was trying to defend our country. I was raised in the same house u were. Turned out OK. Will never forget as I kicked ur sorry ass out of my house, you asking how old I was and saying “give it time…you’ll go crazy too”. Thanks for ruining moms life.

Those words (and the rest, but that seemed like enough) hurt me more than any other words ever have.

I think of that little boy, raging in the night with tears in his eyes about how he was never going to be like his dad and I think,

Is there any hope for his kids? For mine?

See, the response to Kel’s article — the one I deleted — was about how confusing it’s been trying to teach my son about opening doors. It seems silly, but consider the point of the article. That men really can’t get it, because they really haven’t lived it.

But, see, WE KNOW THIS NOW. And our little boys are tomorrow’s men. And while I don’t want him to know oppression because he’s oppressed, I DO want him to recognize it for what it is, and fight it with all he has. I want him to fight the barrage of input hurtling towards him that tells him it’s okay to be mean to the little girl he likes, or that he should automatically get to have or do certain things ‘because boys will be boys’.

I want him to know that the girls in his class can do anything he can do, and that they can damned sure open the door just as easily as he can…but if he’s there first, then he should hold the door and let the people around him in, no matter who they are, because he respects other people.

I want him to know that if he loves someone, he should say it; but not if he just wants to hear the words directed back at him. And that if he doesn’t love someone, then he should respect his body, and the other person, and wait to have sex until he does (and I am not uptight; love is relative…but if he knows it’s not there, then he has no business IN THERE).

I want him to know that drunk girls are off limits, even if he’s drunk, and I want him to understand the reasons why and I want those reasons to matter.

I want him to know that no matter how angry he is at his big sister, there are some words you can’t ever take back and should never say and I want him to have the self-control to stop himself from sending a text like the one I got last August.

Because those words forever changed an entire family.

I want to raise the next generation to automatically react to the world differently than this one has, because what we’ve been doing all these years hasn’t worked.

I want to do all of these things. I just don’t know how.