As a father, I see plainly that a boy needs his dad. A boy needs guidance in all things. How cold is a heart that only thinks of itself, and says nothing when that child is wet, or crying, or in need of some guidance, or lashing out at the world through what looks like insanity? Nothing the warm, forgiving arms of a father couldn’t set to ease. Yet, an emptiness nothing will ever fill.
I believe you continue to get some very bad advice. But you choose to accept it. You choose to continue the cycle of fatherless children in your blood line. I needed you to be a man, vulnerable, available, accountable, and at least tolerate me, maybe even like me, or perhaps lift a finger to know me.
Now I am a grown man. A grown man with a hole in his heart (and possibly in his head too.) I will not kneel, or cry, or wait another minute. You can believe whatever it is you want to believe. You can judge, and resent, hold whatever grudges your heart desires. Never know me, never thank me for spending my last $12 on gas to come see you. The reward is a cold, and distant deaf man who loves me not.
Enjoy the time you have left in this world. I do not respect you. I do not admire you. I do not want to be like you. I realize that in many ways I am. But it has been my life’s purpose to uproot those demons, and cast out those ghosts. They dance about my head like a crown of ivy, and yet i hear them no more.
Before I go, I have a few questions you will never read, or answer, or have the courage to even acknowledge:
Where were you when the kids were beating me up at school, pulverizing me every day and beating my self esteem into the ground?
Where were you when I had 22 fights in 6 days, where I won all of them, and was asked to leave school forever?
Where were you when those men put their hands on me?
Where were you when I sought refuge in drugs and alcohol?
Where were you when I learned to inject myself? To take more pills than anyone else?
Where were you when I was selling myself for money to buy heroin?
Where were you when I asked all the questions I had about friendship, loyalty, love, sex, drugs, truth, value, and picking up the pieces of myself?
Where were you when I was victorious?
Why was it so hard to find the time to see me? Was it really such a difficulty for you to actually make the time to meet? Did you really need to make me beg, and wait for months until it was handy for you because you had another appointment in town and could then, easily fit me in?
Why did you tell me, when I asked you for guidance, that I am a failure and it is my own fault?
Why did you tell me when the world was dark and lonely that I should have mysteriously “known better,” and that I was “stupid?”
Why have you always been so kind and thoughtful to cousins, step children, strangers, and business associates, but only writing checks for me and expecting it to equal the time, effort, kindness, and wisdom of your life?
Why do you listen with deaf ears while explain my “business” to you, desperately trying to explain myself to you on your terms, and after fifteen years your mantra (’I don’t understand anything about your business’) is unchanged. Why haven’t you been listening? A fifteen year explanation should have given you some idea.
Why do you only think of yourself when presented with a basket of love from your son and grandson?
How can you turn your back on a man, and a little boy who would love you so much if only you cared enough to lift a finger to demonstrate that there was anything in your heart for us?
How can you quantify love and affection? Is it really that all you are is a man who considers money as life’s only goal? I don’t care about money. I don’t care about profit. I only care for things which remain, and last as a means of balance, hope, peace and love within me. If you’d spent one second of your life with me, listening to me, making any effort whatever to know me you might have understood this already.
In your silence and your distance, judge away… knock yourself out old man. I offered you my love for so long, with such earnestness and trust, despite repeated setbacks that I have come to see you do not care for me. You are not interested in facing up to your son. You just judged, and talked behind my back. And I wonder where my fucked up world view comes from (a kind, but unexpected laugh blurts out of me.)
I am damaged, and yet you have taught me a thing or two. I stand up to my opponents. I face my debts, my shame, and all of my feelings with confidence, faith and trust. I never back down, or slope away from anything. I am a dump truck, a steam roller. I am an elephant. With Tara on fire in my heart, and Ganesh beside me to point the way I will heal, and proceed beyond this ghastly place of emptiness and loathsome bitterness. With or without you.
You can annul me, ignore me, resent me, talk shit about me, and ask your wife to make excuses all you like. While it cuts me as it passes, it passes. I have trouble believing that this is the best you can do. I have difficulty believing that this is your only way of saying you love me. I have trouble accepting that this is all there is, and to toil over it will only cause me pain, not you. And yet I wish you no pain, no harm. I stupidly love you. And I stupidly with you peace, prosperity, hope, light and happiness.
So, with these memories and sentiments as my only comfort, perhaps I am a failure. Perhaps I am a phony. Perhaps I am stupid. Indeed, I would wear these garments for many years, and only now make the decision to remove them, and leave them folded neatly as I found them by the side of the highway.
One Comment
I am weeping.
My mother blamed me for all the things that were not to her liking in life. I always wanted to have a close bond with her and yet when I opened myself up usually that frankness was turned back against me to highlight my inperfections. Still I chose to be there for her in her times of need, to show that I could give the best of me without the expectation of thanks.
As I sat with her on her deathbed, listening to her drug induced psychotic blame, I also found the love that she was not able to give to me when I needed it bfore. We gazed at the reflection on the East Bay hills of the sun setting and she told me of the day that I was born…watching the sun rise behind those same hills and adoring me. I was so sad that it took her facing her mortality to let me in…and so blessed that I could give comfort when she could not give me any.
“I am only human and inadequency is what makes us human. And if we was all perfect then we wouldn’t have nothing to strive for.”
Ntozake Shange “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf”