What They Told Me....

Well I don’t know exact details of him but I do know the stories that people told me. My biological father could walk through my front door and punch me right in the face and I wouldn’t even know him. I have some early pictures to look at, but that is it. I would like to believe that because he is my father that is I ever did meet him and sat and talked with him that I might notice some mannerisms or just “know” that he was my father. I use to meet new people that knew my mother and wonder “Is this him”, is “this my father”. My biological grandfather died, who I barely knew, and I went to his burial like it was “This is Your Life”. I checked out everyone and everything they did. Did he look like me? Is that my shade and texture of hair? Did we have the same eyes? It was a futile attempt, but also an unproductive one. He never came to his own father’s funeral.

They tell me he was a small man, 5’7 or so slight of frame, brown eyes and brown 1970’s feathered hair. They told me he came from a good family. Mom and dad both in the picture, they had money, not too rich but definitely not too poor. Now I look back on his description and think to myself I LOOK NOTHING LIKE HIM. I’m big 6’1” 230 lbs (ok maybe 240) dark hair and dark eyes. They tell me I carry myself differently; I walk differently, and talk differently. They tell me he was extremely smart, very intelligent. He graduated high school and got a job working for NJ Transit. He worked in their accounting department and rumor even has it that he took the CPA exam and passed it without going to college. They tell me he had a photographic memory. This is one thing I can definitely say that we have in common. I can remember anything and everything and I see things in my mind like they are sitting right in front of me. I can tell you exactly what the person was wearing down to the rings on their fingers after meeting someone for the first time. I guess this is one trait I’m happy to share with him. The one and only trait we share. They tell me he did drugs and drank a lot. They tell me he quit his job to become the first male go-go dancer in the state of NJ (I have the newspaper article to prove it). They tell me he beat me one time when I was very young. They tell me he took me on an afternoon drive and we ended up going to a drug deal. I was crying (like all babies do) and he proceeded to beat me until I stopped crying (not like all fathers should do). I came home and I had a big black eye and he made up some excuse that I hit my eye. My mother believed him. This pattern of my mom believing the men in her life and taking their word over my well being was set at a very early age. I guess you could say this was the foundation that my relationship with my mother was built on. They tell me he came home one day and announced he resigned from his job and he was going to go-go dance full-time. They tell me he drank, snorted cocaine and smoked pot all day. They tell me after my mom threw him out he once came back into the house and tried to rape my mother. She hit him a wooden elephant we had in the living room. She called my eventual step father and he threw him out of the house. After this time I would only hear about two other stories about him. The first story being when they divorced. The agreement (so I was told) was the he didn’t have to pay child support or alimony if he gave up parental rights, visitation right and the house. I guess he took the deal. I have not seen or heard from him for 35 years. He left when I was 5 and I am now 40 and nothing. No cards on my birthday, no father and son activities in school, no one to play catch with, basically no father contact at all.

There was a long time that I would think how could someone just leave? How could someone not want to get in touch with me? Does he wonder what I look like? Does he wonder what I’m doing? Does he wonder if I’m a good man? Now that I have my own kids I can’t fathom not seeing them EVERYDAY. I know they are well. I know they are taken care of. I know that they are growing up to be good people.

There was a long time I would suffer from about who I was and how could my biological father just leave, how my biological mother could let this stuff happen to me and how could a step father beat me like he did. I must be a horrible person. I must be trash. I must not be worthy of love. That is hard for a kid to deal with, but let me tell you it is even harder for an adult to deal with. I struggled. I struggled hard with this. It affected every part of my life. I used to think how and why it affected me. I know now it started right here with him. Now I don’t hold him totally at fault, but he started this cycle for me. He left first. He delivered the first blow and from there on out it started. It is like starting with one little snowball and then you roll it down the hill and it keeps getting bigger and bigger, but no matter how much snow builds up on the outside and the fact that you can’t see the original snowball it still started with that one snowball. Eventually the snow will melt, but that takes a long time.

You know after all of this, the hurt, resentment, wonder, anger I would still like to meet him. When I was young I wanted to go to his house have him open the door and just punch him right in the face. Now I guess I have matured a little since then because I don’t have that feeling anymore. I would love to sit down and look at him, watch his mannerisms, study him and see if I have any of those traits that all fathers pass onto their sons. Does he sit like me? Does he move his hands when he talks like I do? Does his face light up when he talks about stuff? What are his likes and dislikes? They told me he remarried and had daughters. Do they look like me? Did he leave them also? And if he didn’t why did he stay with them? Why were they more worthy of him than me? I know the people that supposedly were left to raise me weren’t the most upstanding people. TO be quite frank I don’t believe a thing that comes out of my mother’s mouth and these stories that THEY told me have been sprinkled with many untruths. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t need a relationship nor do I think I want one with him, but I have questions. I would like to hear them from the horse’s mouth and move on. I have finally come to grips with it. It took 3 years, but now it is in my past. The questions still linger and will I let them ruin my life, like they did in the past…NEVER, but they are there and I think one day, god willing they will be answered or one day I will finally realize they have already been answered..

Humiliation....

Humiliation it comes in many ways. Comical, thoughtless, cunning, hurtful, revengeful and unknowing. When you are one being humiliated I think it is easier to deal with. At least to me. I have been humiliated probably for most of my whole life. It was always there lurking behind everything I did, or had done to me. Every disgusting, degrading thing that was ever done to me was humiliating in one way or another.

I remember going to play baseball. Early on I was just like everyone else. I played rec baseball on the White Sox, graduated to the Tigers and then on to the Babe Ruth team. I was a good baseball player. Not a superstar, but a good hard working player that loved the game. It was MY game not his. This was MINE. I could escape there, I was good. Good enough to be one of the “good kids”, good enough to make All-Stars. Here he could not touch me. No beatings, no abuse no humiliation. At least that is what I thought.

He started coming to games. He tried to take My game from me. I was our shortstop and to this day I still remember the first time humiliation snuck into MY game. We used to play on a field called IFF Field. It was near the perfume factory and in the summer at night the smell of perfume would linger over that field. People hated it, but I didn’t that smell meant a sort of safe place for me. He couldn’t touch me there. I was good there. I wasn’t an asshole on that field. It was My game. I was good. I was on the Tigers and playing shortstop. I remember for some reason I looked into the outfield and saw a figure coming towards the field. It was a man, a big man, wearing boat shoes, jeans a Harley shirt (that read Ass, Gas or Grass Nobody Rides for Free), a motorcycle chain for a belt, cop like wire frame sunglasses and a cowboy hat. I knew in my heart, who it was, I just didn’t want to believe it. Humiliation was on it way to MY game.

He sat on the top of the bleachers behind first base. I didn’t make eye contact and kept thinking if I don’t really see him he isn’t there. It was my turn to bat. Now I was a great fielder, but just an ok hitter and to this day I still get nervous getting up to bat. I wanted so bad to get a hit. I don’t remember much about the at bat except the outcome after I hit the ball. I hit it on the infield and there was going to be a play at first base. I ran, I ran my hardest to beat the throw. I don’t know why, because I’ve never done it before and I haven’t done it since, but I slid into first base headfirst. It was close play, but the umpire called me out. I laid there for what seemed like an eternity; maybe I was subconsciously throwing my self on the mercy of the universe. It was quiet, maybe too quite, but not for long. I heard someone screaming, it was him. He stood up and started yelling at the umpire that I was safe. Lots of parents scream at the ump, but at this very moment I wished to God that he were one of those parents. He continued to berate the ump with words I didn’t know existed. He threatened to kill the ump and come down and punch him in the face. I don’t know how I got from laying on my stomach on first base to the darkest corner of the dugout, but at least I was there. The whole thing went on forever (or at least I thought it did). They wouldn’t start the game again until he left, the umpire was threatening to call the police and now every kid was looking at me. Humiliation had struck MY game. He eventually left and we went on with the game. Sometimes I think to myself, even to this day, that is probably the reason that I am still nervous to bat.

Eventually it became too much for the rec. baseball to take a chance on me. I had to leave the town I lived in, grew up in, and where my friends played and had to play in another town. I use to sneak out of my house with my uniform underneath a sweat suit, make a up a lie to where I was going, so he wouldn’t show up and go and play MY game. I hated to do it like this and I had to make new friends, but the good thing was that humiliation was out of MY game and I was safe again.

Humiliation comes in all forms and I guess I was good at or had to good at accepting humiliation at an early age. That was humiliating what happened to me and MY game. It wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me, but for some reason it was the most humiliating.

I hate how humiliation makes you feel. It makes you feel insecure; it makes you feel, well stupid, angry, helpless and ashamed. I never understood the ashamed part, because I didn’t do anything wrong. Why was I ashamed, I still can’t answer that, but I was.

Petrified....

Petrified: so frightened as to be unable to move; stunned or paralyzed with terror; "petrified with fear"; to be numb or paralyzed with astonishment, horror, or other strong emotion:

I was petrified. I lived it every day of my life. It was the only emotion that I could identify. It is the only emotion I was truly comfortable with. It was always there, always with me. It became part of my fabric from a very young age – 4 or 5 maybe. I was petrified of my mother and father. Petrified to be alone. Petrified of the dark. Petrified that there would be a fire in the house and no one would come and get me. My fear was always lurking around a corner, in the shadows, under the covers, in the form of people, and worst of all, in a lack of trust. I trusted nothing or no one.

As a child I never had occasion to trust. It wasn’t something that I knew how to do. I never even trusted my feelings - a classic case of attachment disorder. To me the world was an unsafe place and I never believed that I would be taken care of, protected. I began counting on myself for survival in whatever form that took. I was petrified. In my house, they ruled by fear, they ruled by intimidation, and they ruled by guilt. These are the life lessons I learned. This is my foundation – fear, intimidation, and guilt.

This is not a story about survival, but about love and redemption. I know now that just about anyone can survive with decent therapy and some good medication. But living, that’s not so easy. Most of us can survive our lives, but to really live…I suspect that’s a much harder task.