Wow!!!! My uncle, who
I have not seen or spoken to in 37 years just reached out to me on Facebook. We
have not spoken due to fractured family relationships….but I have no beef with
him…he has always been beyond cool with me. He would come by and say hello and
hang out with us despite my father’s and his father’s insanity and dysfunction.
My back and forth conversation with him brought back some
very vivid memories and also highlighted the fact that no matter what I’ve done
and what I’ve become in life my father would find fault with all of it. It was
hard enough being an honors student and a recruited athlete…he always found a
way to attach an exception to all my laurels. The thing that would really bring
forth venom and bile is the fact that I’m openly gay, living out loud and proud.
I was once asked by an arm-chair psychiatrist (you know,
that person that can quote self-help rhetoric) like it’s a mantra.) if I believe I was gay because I have “daddy issue”? I gave the question all the time it deserved
maybe 2 seconds , 1 second, too long….before I responded. I have known I was
different since the age of about 5…I just didn’t know what to call it. When I
did know there was a word for it…the word that the adults around me used were
never positive or affirming (faggot,
funny, punk, sissy, dyke and bulldagger) so I learned to lie and cover up who I
was …up until about the age 25.
I do own up to having “daddy issues” and after I list them…you
can tell me if my issues are valid. My father was a brutal man that confused
masculinity and power with abuse –mental, verbal and physical. He often
entertained himself by pitting my brother against me in some sort of sick
gladiator play. My father was a serial philanderer who had women come to our
home to openly question and challenge my mother like she did something wrong.
My father would often take me to his various girlfriend’s homes under the guise
of doing fatherly outings. Then I would be groomed and brainwashed not to say
anything. My father’s idea of an outing would be to supply me with quarters to
shoot pool or play the jukebox at his local watering hole – I was pretty much
raised in a bar. My father pretty much sponged and stole money from my mother
up until the age of 34 when he decided to work full-time but when he did work he
did not pay rent or buy groceries…his money was his money. My father was a man
of extraordinary cruelty, he often exacted that cruelty out on physically
abusing my mother. My mom would sometimes have to miss work because of the
brutality….keep in mind that she was the sole means of support for 3 children
and he did not care. My father would come in the house , cook and eat a steak
after we would only have rice for dinner (my mom often not eating at all)….my
father would offer us his gravy like we were starving dogs that he felt sorry
for….not sorry enough to give up the steak mind you. My father sold my mother’s
house after she left his for all the stated reasons – she purchased that house
with her inheritance money from her parent’s death. The list goes on but you
get the gist….so yeah I do have daddy issues but my sexuality was shaped and
founded long before I knew what daddy issues were.
Welcome back Uncle and here’s hoping to healing a broken
family.
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