A Lost Family

One of things that hurts me terribly was the loss of Juliet's family as part of the fallout of our divorce.

My own family was severely dysfunctional as I came to understand after years of psychotherapy. It was probably the abuse from my parents and my blind willingness to accept it as reality that caused, in part at least, my psychosis. My father was a brute and my mother a neurotic, probably bipolar, who used me as a surrogate for the love she never received from my father.

My father was a coward, a liar and a bully. This came to me in an epiphany later in life after I became an adult and drew away from them.

He was a coward. He served in the coast guard during World War II. I can imagine that when he signed up he reasoned that guarding America's coasts would prevent him from coming in harm's way. I can only imagine the fear he experienced when the coast guard was used to protect the convoy ships on their way to Europe and which often came under attack from German U-Boats. My neurotic, uneducated and stupid mother would often praise him to my brother and me, holding up his service in WWII.

He was a liar. Later in life I learned that most of the answers to questions  my brother and I had were pure bullshit. I cannot now think of an example but I know this is true. He would say anything to get us away from him. He no doubt lied his way through college to get his degree. He no doubt managed to convince the gentle monks of the Jesuit school of his qualifications. He no doubt use politics in an unholy way as he rose to the top of the hierarchy in the catholic school at which he taught. But he got caught in the end and disgraced and kicked out of the school and was forced to re-invent himself as a scholar.

He was a bully. His violent nature was directed at my brother and me. He would whip us unmercifully when we made noise that disturbed him. This he did because he could get away with it. We were, after all, small children and had no means of measuring the nature of his violence against us. My mother would tell us that my father's reasoning was spare the rod and spoil the child. This was specious reasoning meant to cover up his hatred of children. In retrospect I now know that the fathers of my friends never beat them. 

I think my father never wanted to have us. For about ten years in the beginning of their marriage my father and mother lived an idyllic life in the Ozark mountains of Missouri  My mother would sometimes tell us about how she convinced him to have children. She got mad as she told it. I think it was a bipolar fit of manic rage she directed toward my father. He now doubt relented with the caveat that we would be her responsibility and not his. It was a sort of a you can have a puppy but he's your responsibility sort of response, I can imagine.

I remember a time when the parents of my best friend asked my parents over to meet and talk with them. I could hear their conversation vaguely in the living room while my friend and I watched television in the den. It struck me as odd how my friend's parents treated me so differently after that encounter. In later life I would reason that my father and mother came off as cruel and stupid. Spare the rod and spoil the child and my mother's fawning and neurotic admiration of my father must have stunned my friend's parents. Her neurotic behavior and my dad's low brow  asocial ways made a lasting and negative effect on them. They treated me kindly but at an arms-length sort of manner.

I hate my parents. I hate what they did to me. I hate the knowledge that what I suffered at their hands probably caused my psychosis, completely or in part. I hate that my dad was so cruel. I hate how my mother fawned over me and used me as a surrogate for the love she never got from my father. In an evil way it gladdens me to have not been at her deathbed or even in contact with her during her last few years of her life. As she so often boasted, I can be mean you know, I got the last laugh. I was mean to her as she lived those last years of her life. I can be mean, too, as she taught me in her loving and smothering embrace.

The only real family I ever had was Juliet's. My violent divorce from her ended that relationship. They loved me like a son and gave the love and respect they would have done had I been their real son. All that was lost. I lost so much when I lost Juliet. I lost her and my family. And worse, I must have broken their hearts to have lost me, too.

I am sitting with Juliet and her family. It is Christmas and we are gathered around a colorful Christmas tree. Under the tree is a mound of presents. The atmosphere is merry and loving. A single present is doled out to me and I open it to receive a sweater (I think). Everyone is quiet and the merry feeling in the air becomes muted. There are no more presents for me. The jolly and merry mood returns as my wife and her sister's family continue to open their presents.

I suddenly realize that the gift for me was something of a concession. It was given as a thoughtful gift for a former family member who has left the family but nevertheless retains some connection with it. To a degree I am forgiven but it is on the periphery of the love life they all share with one another.

Vist är det Jul och alla skå skålla. Of couse it is Christmas and everyone shall have a good time an love one another. But no one looks at me when this toast is made.

I am cut from the family and utterly alone.

I wake up.