I had a good chat with Tess about this a few days ago. Here's some highlights from my part of the conversation:
Although I hope my dad's in a better mood than he was last time. The miserable cunt. The trouble is that as soon as he starts I revert to old coping behaviour and I get sad and upset and close in on myself and completely stop enjoying the walk, or the car ride, or whatever. It's REALLY fundamental to my being. I think if it was anyone other than my dad or mum I'd be more capable of blocking it out, accepting it for who they are etc but it really fundamentally effects my mood.Reading that all through again shows me one emotion that stands out from the others: fear. Fear of aggression, conflict, confrontation, pain, fear of fear itself. That last one is really interesting, and it reminds me of recent ways I've reacted to dad's anger. I curl up in a mental ball and try to protect myself from getting scared.
I'll have to learn to accept it as part of who he is. I think that's probably the hardest part. Accept it, let him be it, move on. Ignore it. It's just so hard. I don't know why.
I think I feel somewhat forced to "love" and "respect" him as he's my father figure, when in reality I guess I just want to resent and dislike and forget about him. I hadn't really thought about it like that before. There's a fair amount of resentment behind all of this.
My instant reaction when I think about who to blame that is how he's treated mum through most of my memory. His anger, shouting, aggressive and unfair behaviour. Mum doesn't like living with him, hasn't ever really done, but feels trapped. She has no means to support herself and she's scared. Scared of being alone, fending for herself, scared what me might do.
I guess it's his unwillingness to better himself, to change for the better, that frustrates me most. He's never really admitted he's got a problem with anger management.
The real question is "What am I attempting to blame?" As in, the action or outcome. I blame my mum for staying with him as long as she did - which is a catch-22 because without her doing so I probably wouldn't have my youngest brother and maybe not Luke either, my life would have been completely different. At the same time if she'd have left him years ago it would have saved a whole lot of heartache and mental anguish throughout my developmental years and beyond. She's admitted she regrets that and feels responsible for me being mentally ill. I blame my dad for being a miserable, misanthropic, stuck-in-18-year-old-boy unwilling-to-change angry annoying unloving cunt. *smirks* hah that felt good.
I think I'll tell him actually, next time he pisses me off. I'll tell him "I don't want to inflame your bad mood but I want you to know that whenever you get mad like this it brings me down, turns me into a defenceless five-year-old boy and ruins my day."
He hit me once, in my early teens. We were on holiday in a caravan in Wales, I think, by the sea. It'd been a nice enough break, the three of us boys taking advantage of the sun and free reign. Dad had been pretty miserable for much of the trip, as per usual. One morning I went in the shower and washed, then got out of the shower and dried and dressed. Dad started picking on me, pointing to some dirt on my face and saying I hadn't washed it properly. I said I had - I probably hadn't *shrugs* - he said I hadn't, I said I'd been in the shower, how can I not have washed my face? Mum was trying to calm him down, he was getting angrier, I was backed into a corner, he continued picking on me. I got scared and said "Why don't you just fuck off?" and he clouted me around the side of the head. I howled and cried, my little brothers started crying and mum dragged us boys out of the caravan and away from dad. We went for a walk along the cliffside to get away and leave him to calm down. We were out for an hour or two. After an amazing and exciting walk along the side of the cliff we came to a town and there was dad walking along the sea wall out looking for us. I dreaded seeing him. He came up to us and kind of settled things with mum, although I'm not sure he apologised to any of us. I was scared, and have been scared of him since. In fact, I think I was scared of him before.
In reality he was justified. Not that I'd hit Sophie around the head but it's a natural reaction for him, I think his dad used to hit him like that when he was naughty. I think the main thing is that if he'd smacked my arse I'd probably not really be that bothered, and if it wasn't preceeded by him being angry and unreasonable it probably wouldn't be worth comment.
Here's an old example of the most extreme course of dad's anger:
- Dad gets angry
- I get scared, leave the room, hide in my room or go out to play
- Mum meekly defends herself
- Dad gets more angry
- I get more scared
- Lots of shouting, swearing, aggression purely from dad, mum stays calm
- It all gets blown out of proportion
- Mum grabs me and my brother, packs a small bag and takes us out of the house
- We catch a bus or train to my parent's friends in Birmingham
- Someone entertains us while mum sits in a room with someone else and cries
- Eventually dad turns up and convinces mum to come home
- We all go home and wait for the next time this happens
I can't even estimate the number of times it happened but we didn't get dragged half-way across the country - it's probably in the hundreds. I moved out when I was eighteen, glad for the freedom and to get out of this cycle of being scared of someone I'm supposed to be close to. I kind of lost touch with both my parents after I moved out, despite living within very few miles of them for my whole life. I even rebelled against my dad shortly after he and my mum separated for a few years - they got back together again, just like they always did.
In my mid-twenties my mum told me he wasn't be biological father, the same night she came to my door crying with a bag in her hand saying she'd left him. I didn't realise the significance of that image, that moment, until just now. Interesting. My rebellion took the form of a strong, concise and eloquent letter to my dad describing how I felt I'd been treated over the years, like I was the odd one out, and how his anger had caused his sons to withdraw. I wish I'd kept a copy of that letter; who knows, it may be sat on one of the numerous old hard drives I've got in a box. I wish I'd kept his response too, which spoke of a tough childhood, heavy hard-drug use, an aggressive and physical father and expressed regret at how he was built.
I may have moved away from the source of those feelings, but it's clear the effects of those events still have repercussions now, particularly when dad shows his edge, and in how I handle conflict and aggression: badly. There's a whole lot to think about up there, but mostly I think it's worth looking at the fundamentals of my behaviour when presented with aggression, patterns involved in people who have effected me in that way, and how to progress to improve that behaviour.
Tess made a good observation about this last paragraph: I don't handle conflict and aggression badly, I handle it very well. It's the feelings about it I'm uncomfortable with, and maybe that's worth further investigation.
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