Saturday, April 12, 2014

Masking What You Can't Face Leaves You Alone With It



It's troubled me my whole life that I don't know the details of my father's past, or family.  That lack of information left him one dimensional to me, which isn't fair.   

He never tried to explain himself with narrative, or anecdote, and there wasn't anyone to do it for him. He was a collection of single notes that were never strung together to make a tune. And he was a man of masks. It's sad how little I know about him.

The void he agreed to when he erased his family eventually engulfed him. He wore his rage mask, or his silent one, when it was necessary to disguise it. His determination to ignore the void enlarged it before it was passed down to me, before it became my inheritance.

Not knowing who, or what, made him the man he was had an effect on how I was made. The fractures, and losses, that composed him were useless in aiding the shape of the man I wanted to be. Without examples to follow, or core values to adopt, I was assured the man I hoped would emerge, wouldn't.


As a boy, I missed my dad.  As a man, I'm missing the belief that
I can be one. I think my father was the same. I think he was attempting to define that for himself, without knowing how.   

If you take off the mask that defines you before you've prepared a new one, nothing's between you and oblivion. You get lost.   


When my father died, he was more lost than anyone I'd ever known.  

Including me.




An Unmasking


I've heard a boy will grow up to either emulate his father, or reject him. I did both. The demons I carry are the same as my fathers. His eventually claimed him. Mine became an opportunity for forgiveness when they tried to claim me.  

My desperate and naive tenet toward self-preservation clarified a place where he and I differed, and made me realize I'd fought through what he couldn't. That awareness changed my thinking. I believe he wanted to be the father I needed, and may have even tried. Now I understand what kept him from it.  

Where I'm left with uncertainty about how to be a man, he was burdened with an impossible standard by which to measure whether he'd become one.  
Without a family to support him, he was doomed.

Sound familiar?  



Reflection



He and I are more alike than I thought, and our family support is the same. That's why he beat me.  

A therapist I worked with a few years ago explained it to me after months of collecting details from my story, and a handful of photos my mother had found. He noticed that the activities I participated in as a boy were the same ones my father had. And he noted we both did them well.

"You're father didn't hate you, Patrick", he said. "When he saw you excelling at what he'd excelled in, and saw your joy, he saw himself. You reminded him of what he was promised, and didn't get, because his life became derailed. He abandoned his place. He felt so much turmoil, and pain, all he could do was extinguish the flame in you that forced him to remember. He beat you because he couldn't bear the pain of what he gave up."

Holy Shit. 

My father had abandoned his authentic self. 
And he knew it.
"Dad"
 

Replicating portions of my fathers journey has enabled me to see him clearly, and back-fill some holes. He no longer looks how I remember. In the effort I've made to heal myself, I've healed my perspective of my him, and lessened the distance between us.

When my family left me, they created the space I needed to do it.


And I've fathered three sons who will be different than both he, and I.


There is a reason for the events in the world. There is a purpose for your life. 

If you accept those events as they happen, and don't try to change them for comfort, 
and then enter, 
you'll see both.  


We can create a healing by entering what caused us harm.













































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