Good morning Old Friend… we’ve been together for a very long time… from writing stories on wide line paper… to small journals with silly locks and wild ramblings of a teenage mind. Over the decades bits and pieces of you have been torn… wadded up… burned… deleted… posted… and saved… yet you are still with me… in all your varied forms….from a small child’s coloring book to 53 year old adult’s computer, facebook, blog postings.
I remember way back in the day… a teacher standing in front of the class teaching us how to write the alphabet. I heard her say write b d …. It would seem I heard something different than she said because she was not happy with what I wrote… bdbdbdbdbdbdbdbdbd…. It seems she had actually wanted bbbbbbbb or ddddddd frankly I cannot remember which. She did not bother to ask what I had thought she said… she just scolded me and told me I was wrong. I remember I was happy and proud I had completed what she had assigned… then sad and afraid.
I wonder if she had any idea the impact she had that day… I knew the difference between b and d… the lesson she reinforced in my small child self was if you are happy and they know it… they will take it from you… don’t let them see what you care about. Don’t let them see you… hide.
I watched the series Prison Break on Netflix this past week… and I saw the same thing over and over. Find what they value… be it a child, husband, wife, family, friend… whatever they love … and threaten to take it away from them if they do not do what you say. Make examples of various people so the others realize you will actually kill their loved ones. Or beat them for a minor infraction.
I remember hearing spare the rod and spoil the child when I was growing up… children are meant to be seen and not heard was another one I heard…
Then all the arguments over to spank or not to spank… discipline vs lack of discipline.
I learned a lot from my mom… some good some bad. It wasn’t until now that I realized part of why she was the way she was.
Mom was afraid to be happy. Her love… happiness… had been used as a weapon against her. It had gotten to the point that she could not say what she wanted directly. Even ordering a meal off a menu in a restaurant she would sidestep and not get what she actually wanted.
It was as if … if she did not show what she wanted… what she loved… or valued… then they couldn’t take it away from her. The truly sad thing is that she turned into “they” repeating the pattern throughout her life. Continuing the punishments devaluations that started so young in her life….
I saw the same patterns in my Uncle Gene’s behavior… over and over… find something you love… or someone… then destroy it or drive it away… over and over… punishing himself….
I wonder how many generations this has been repeated. Curse of the parents upon the children… I remember when I first heard that… thinking why would God curse the children. I now think it means something different than what I first thought … when I heard it as a child and it made no sense to me. The curse of the parents often does go to the children and the children’s children and so on… not always… sometimes you can break the patterns…whether they are behavioral patterns embedded in a child’s mind so deep they are not even aware of it…. Or sometimes the genetic patterns come together a bit differently and some genetic mess the parents’ had is not evident in their offspring … nurture and nature so to speak.
So how did I escape this mess… I didn’t. I have repeated these patterns as well. I have always been curious about the “why” behind things… what is the logical explanation… what happens if this variable is changed… and so on. When it came to my family… my objective as a teenager and young woman was to escape. I did… I went 800 miles away to go to university. Then I missed them… and much to my surprise… I took the behavior patterns with me.
The beginning of the change… I was fortunate enough to see that not everyone else lived the same way I did. I was fortunate to come in contact with people from many varied cultures … countries… and layers of society from around the planet. My mom actually gave me this great gift… I went to the university she wanted me to go to… no it was not my first choice… but it was a good thing. There were students there from 30 different countries around the planet. This was a great gift indeed…. Coming in contact with various peoples from around the planet.
This was such a great thing… the beauty of the various shades of skin color… eye color… hair… patterns of speech… languages… cultural beliefs… modes of dress… the differences… the similarities … and the why’s behind it all… I remember walking across campus and hearing the different languages being spoken in clusters of people walking about or sitting and studying.
My perspective is different now than it was then… at the time I had no idea how great a gift that was.
Another great gift I received while at university… was contact with a particular professor… oh how I hated him… yes… hated him at the time. I don’t remember the man’s name. I have an image of him in my mind’s eye… I saw him once… that I remember away from campus…. Hot disheveled … wrinkled shirt with the shirttail hanging out… a cig hanging out of the corner of his mouth … seems he had a brief case in one hand and a stack of books under his other arm… the course I had him for a was an intro to church related counseling course.
I was very set in my way of thinking at the time… in how I approached my classes… gather info… and spew it back in the form the teachers/professors wanted it. This did not work in this man’s class…. And I was mmmmmm…. Shall we say angry… and rather confused … this particular prof had taken a mental pry bar and shoved it in my ear… so to speak… to pry open my mind… his entire objective was to get us… us being his students… to … are you ready for this… to actually think… to form our own opinions… and voice them in written form. That is what he assignments and exams were based upon. …rather than spewing back the status quo.
My modus operandi for survival from a small child on… had been … find out what they want… give it to them… or an illusion of such… shield yourself… hide who you actually are… and move on… do not draw attention to yourself.
And here was this ….. mmmmmmmm…. Ok… person… not accepting my offerings… trying to pry off my mask… to see what I actually thought. GGGrrrrrrooooowwwwwllllll…
I won… in that I learned that my thoughts do have value… that it is ok to have a difference of opinion… I learned to think and question… this was the beginning of my becoming aware… the beginning of me seeing the familial patterns. ..the beginning of an awakening… that has been a gradual learning process over the years…
Such a great gift… perhaps he knew he was giving such a great gift… perhaps he did not… I do not know. But it was a great gift indeed. Sometimes I wonder though… how different my life would be if I had not “become aware” if I had just lived with the status quo… thinking it was the only way to be… not seeing the many different possibilities…
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