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So who is ****? What does he value? What does he like? What does he want?
I don't know. I can’t fully answer that question — I think most people can't answer that question about themselves. But I can try, and the only way I’ll ever know is if I keep asking myself that, and trying to answer it.
It’s easier to start not with who I am, but with what I am. Like many, I was born to two parents who tried their hardest to make it work, who had big hearts and good intentions. It is important in this exercise not to blame others. I am responsible for myself. I do not see people as malicious, but rather misguided.
On a fundamental level, I do not believe we are in control of our actions. I don’t think that people wake up in the morning, setting out to be selfish. The same way I never woke up in the morning telling myself who I’d be or what I’d do; I simply did and was. So to better understand why, I need to first look at the examples set in my life. Who were they? What were they like? What did they do?
My father was a blue-collar man in a white-collar world. The first in his family to go to college. And I don’t think anyone in his family really cared. That achievement, if I were to guess, got little more than a pat on the back. He did not have a very supportive or ideal childhood. My grandfather was a product of his era. Hard living. Hard drinking. Chain smoking. The breadwinner for a while, who later became a passive provider by way of welfare and workman’s comp. Who did not see his children as people to nurture, but more so the successors to his empire of dirt.
I never met him; his heart did not have enough in it to see me enter this world. And frankly, I’m glad he didn’t. Because I share his name, but I am glad that my father is instead my example of a model ****. Because he has my name too.
My grandfather hardly had enough heart for his children, let alone for grandchildren. I do not understand why my extended family laud him as some sort of iconic figure, when I know he never went to my dad’s football games, never went to visit him at college, and when they were poor, everyone else in the family would have hot dogs on white bread for dinner, while he had my grandmother cook him a steak. It is not my intention to insult someone who can’t reply. I don’t know his story; something made him the man he was. Maybe growing up in the depression, living in a time like he did, no one ever helped him understand empathy.
I think my father does. Or if not, he has made up for it in devotion, work ethic, and sacrifice. He got dealt a poor hand, like many of us do, but he somehow managed to make a full house by the end. He started a family, with a woman who entered his life with baggage from an abusive first husband, and two children who desperately needed a father figure. For many, the prospect of raising two kids who aren’t you own is a deal-breaker. But my dad doesn’t break things — he’s an engineer — he designs solutions, he makes things work. They then married and had two kids together, my sister and I.
I cannot say we ever lived an incredibly charmed life, but we did live a happy one at times. My half-siblings come every other weekend, and for many years would sleep three or four to a room, in whatever modest accommodation we were renting at that time. We moved around a lot, which I don’t remember, because I was so young. But in 2000, my parents bought their first house, where they live to this day. Like many people, they aimed a little too high, and didn’t know exactly what to look for. After moving in, they discovered many glaring errors and outright lies from the previous homeowners, massive structural issues that lead to costly repairs and a length court battle that only further strained tight finances.
That brings us to about 2003, and before I go much further, I should stop and tell you about my mom. Born and raised in Connecticut, I’ve had nearly no contact with her side of the family, and therefore much of my knowledge about her life comes in small pieces that constitute a rather undeveloped narrative history. What I do know is that her biological mother left early — simply disappeared and moved on to greener pastures, leaving her husband and kids behind. My grandfather then remarried, to a woman who served as my mother’s true maternal role model. Unfortunately, that woman succumbed to a terminal respiratory infection as my mother was finishing high school, and my grandfather mostly sat idle as she worsened and passed, leaving my mother to balance the tasks of student, nurse, and babysitter of her infant sister. My maternal grandfather was a drinker, and prone to violent outbursts, violence he inflicted on my mother, and I imagine her siblings and his wife as well. He never seemed to be able to hold down a marriage other than the most recent, I believe his fourth, which has now lasted seventeen years. I’ve met him only twice in my life, the last time was fifteen years ago, so any true insight into his character is long gone.
My mother then left home — according to her — and lived out of her car in New York City for a while, held down a few odd jobs, then registered for the military on a dare. It was the early eighties, one of the safest times to be a soldier, and she was a medic, stationed in Germany, Texas, and Colorado. In the military, she met her first husband, a man who turned out to be even more of an alcoholic and abuser than her father, with whom she had two kids, before divorcing just three years later. Manipulative, conniving, and seemingly utterly incapable of remorse, he later went on to be abusive with their kids, regularly using them as pawns in his own revenge games, and even once called Child Protective Services, who came to my house when I was eight or nine — a counselor very eager to find out if my bruises were indeed from Little League Football, or from my dad, as she had been lead to believe from the “anonymous tip” they received.
My mother is a sympathetic figure who really has always tried to be the best mother she can, but ultimately lacked the tools to cope with her trauma. My dad focused on his work and providing for his one-and-a-half families. My mother, after abandoning her career as a nurse to raise us full-time, likely lacked the correct outlets to deal with her earlier trauma, in addition to the stresses of the time.
In 1999, her biological mother died in Florida, beginning an inheritance and estate fiasco that highlighted the worst in her father and sisters. Over a trailer and what was in it. We aren’t talking about fortunes here, just a couple heirlooms in a pile of trash. The experience shook her so much that she began to use alcohol as self-medication. Having a small stature and even smaller tolerance, she was prone to drink two glasses of wine and enter delusional states, wherein everyone conspired against her, and everything was our fault. That behavior continued for the next fifteen years, through cycles of false promises and failed attempts at sobriety. She would often be drunk, hiding wine in the garage, going on hour-long diatribes, telling me at five, six, nine years old that my father beat and raped her. That he was the reason we were poor. That he didn’t love us.
None of that was true. I so distinctly remember being six or seven and hearing them “argue”, meaning mom was drunk and on the attack. She’d come into the living room and immediately open fire — screaming that my father was ruining her life, that he took away her dreams, actively destroyed her career. His return would be to try and calm or quiet her, which inevitably ended in her retreating, only to come back five minutes later with anew volley of vitriol. And on one occasion, I stepped in, that six or seven year old me, and shouted at him. That it was his fault and she was right. Just like she had told me, because children don’t know what drunkenness is or what manipulation is. We just believe and repeat what we hear.
Things would eventually worsen. Her addiction took more and more from our family emotionally and financially, until there was nearly nothing left. I kept it a secret from all my friends, even my closest ones. They never understood why they couldn’t sleep over, or why my mom was still in bed at 3PM on a Saturday. So I’d lie, make up some excuse.
The specifics of certain incidents will be elaborated on in the future, but at a basic level, it was Jekyll and Hyde. She’d pull out of a bender into a manic episode, waking us up in the morning with a literal menu of breakfast options, written on paper, that she could make for us ... we just wanted cereal, we didn’t have an hour to wait for waffles, the bus was coming in twenty minutes. She would try to be our best friend and arrange things to do, volunteer to chaperone field trips, not understanding that we had no idea how to reconcile what we saw most of the time, with this new shiny and chrome version.
The first few times I believed her. She’d say she was getting a job, going to AA meetings, this time was the time. But it never was, and before long I became numb to it. That this used-car-salesman version of her personality was just as bad as the drunk one. Because I just wanted my mom. And so often she couldn't give us that, or if she did, it was soon overwritten by another spectacular fall off the wagon.
Then the recession. My dad got laid off, and had no prospects for two years. As an engineer with almost two decades’ experience. All of his savings, all of his 401(k) went to saving our house, which was nearly foreclosed in 2009. And I learned, as a middle schooler, not to ask for anything. I already didn’t ask for much — I knew as a kid we couldn’t afford Xboxes or computers, or new bikes, or the latest toys all my friends at school had.
I tacitly came to understand that after Christmas 2001, when I asked Santa for all kinds of expensive toys, and not one of them showed up under the tree. I realized then, that my dad’s paycheck, not the North Pole was where the gifts came from. So I only ever asked for gifts on holidays, and what I asked for was always modest. But as I got older, during my final five years of school, I stopped asking for anything. If my jeans got tight or shoes too small, I would keep wearing them until he said something and insisted we buy new ones. We always shopped at cheaper stores, and I did my best not to compare myself to the kids at my school who always had Ralph Lauren, or Hollister, or Abercrombie clothes.
Soon, for holidays I asked for nothing. Money, if they had to get me something. They’d find some gifts for me anyway, but I never asked for anything because I knew my dad would move heaven and earth to make it happen, even if he knew he couldn’t or shouldn't. That’s a theme you’ll also see more of later.
So all through school, I hid my drunk mom and poor family. For my sake and theirs. I think most of my friends from that time never found out, even though I’m very open about it now. Just lies and hiding. Lying to everyone, and hiding from everything. No one ever got let in, no one ever helped ease me of that emotional weight.
