As I said towards the end of my last post it’s not my intention to demonise my Dad.
When I started this often painful excursion through my formative years I did so with the desire to give as honest a record as possible which necessitates recalling some pretty horrific moments.
I loved Dad and I know that he loved me. Our problem was on a rather more visceral level, we didn’t actually like each other and that’s a much more difficult situation to resolve.
As a teenager I’d get irrationally upset by trivial things such as his whistling while he shaved and when he came down for breakfast. That’s hardly a failing on his part, now is it? What’s wrong with a man being happy in his life and his work?
For his part Dad completely misconstrued my dislike of being touched as rejection. By the age of eleven I flinched from contact with any man or older boy but of course nobody had any idea why.
When I kicked over the traces Dad reacted the only way he knew; genuinely believing that strict discipline and corporal punishment were the only things that would keep me in line. At the time this was accepted thinking when dealing with errant boys.
For my part I provoked him beyond reason many times and could hardly claim to have been surprised when the belt made contact with bare flesh. That said the punishments were painful and, in the nature of their delivery humiliating.
Not being a parent or a teacher I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to deal with a supercilious and patronising child who simply has to have the last word on any subject.
One of our former next door neighbours summed the whole thing up rather neatly when we were talking after Dad’s funeral “I think that stepfathers and stepsons nearly always have problems”.
That may sound simplistic, even trite but fundamentally it was probably an accurate assessment.
I want to dispel one possible misconception. I have never claimed that certain events in my early life ruined it and I certainly don’t regard myself as having failed in any way because of those events.
I’ve had some high profile jobs over the years and have worked for some extremely well known companies. With the exception of being made redundant in 2009 my leaving those jobs has been entirely my decision.
Circumstances changed my young life dramatically, sending me along unexpected and sometimes treacherous paths but they didn’t ruin it.
It’s very easy to get trapped by the linearity of cause and effect; that’s a form of denial. To simply say that X happened and that Y resulted is to deny one’s own contribution.
Yes, the abuse made me angry and depressed but in my last year at primary school there was something else weighing heavily on my mind. My best friend, the boy I’d known since we were 3 wasn’t coming to Grammar school with me; none of my friends were.
Looked at through mature eyes that may seem trivial but to 10 year old Malcolm, losing the unfailing love and protection that Rich gave me was a cruel blow.
Before I even got there I was scared of and hated the school for which I was destined and had probably already made a subconscious decision to be unhappy.
Love
Cause and effect is almost impossible to tease out when you talk about human relationships. And I some times wonder if we wanted to some extent to be beaten. It was something to some extent that we could control in a life that was totally out of our hands to deal and steer….. Just my strange way of looking at things…..
Not that strange really. Looking back at some of my more spectacular efforts as a child/adolescent it’s all too clear that I often went out of my way to bring beatings, in some cases I relished them at the time.
Maybe it’s an effect of abuse, causing a twisted view of what love and affection mean. The abuser was always affectionate, even after committing some painful and distressing acts, that may have given me a distorted view.
We can either be a product of our past or be enriched by it as we create our future. I was a product of my past for a long time. I suffered inside and it affected my outside life. It was 20 years ago when I met Ron, and he started to show me the world that could be. Seeing the world through his eyes helped me rebuild my self, my world. I am the person I am today in spite of my childhood, and I can say we don’t need to be held hostage to the past….unless we let our selves be.
Many hugs and warm thoughts,
Scottie
You’re so right, Scottie we have that choice. Like you I let my past rule me for too much of my young life and as a result I was a deeply unhappy person until I was nearly 30. Of course I have moments when I regret certain choices but despite the bad times I’m here and with someone I love. Changing any single one of those childhood events would have sent me down entirely different paths and I would never have met Gary.
Love
Mac