RDP Wednesday: PERPLEXED
When my Dad passed away some of my friends reached out to me and told me how
much he had meant to them.
He encouraged one of my friends to see the world- travel to England and Scotland
he encouraged a few of them to go to college and
he even helped a few of them with their homework.
When I said I had plans on doing the same thing, he would smiled and told tell me
not everyone could cut it in college, that going to the U.K was expensive.
It was a nice dream wasn’t it? But I had a great job in a t-shirt store ( when I was in
Highschool ) at the Mall
and that I should be proud of that.
The next Summer after that conversation my Dad took that trip to the U.K. and a few
years later my friend and her pals from College went too.
So. Yeah. I never went to the U.K. I never went to college and I worked retail for more
then half of my adult life- FYI it’s not a job, it’s a sentence. You know, like the sentences
they hand out to convicts.
This is what I remember about my Dad ‘being there ‘ when my friends needed a
parental figure to encourage them along-
I remember one of my friends standing there when my Dad said that college wasn’t for
everyone and that going to the U.K. was out of my reach and that I had a real future in
selling t-shirts.
In one breath he encouraged one girl to the hilt and in the next breath
simply- he did not.
Years later when she told me, ‘ that he was one of the good ones ‘
my brain sort of locked up and I really didn’t know what to say to that.
I still don’t.
I think it can be even more complicated than that. Kids know their parents and so have access to the emotional unconscious stuff. The parent hides that from the rest of the world. The child may also try to hide the same stuff, or may defiantly bring it forth, though the child may not be conscious of what they are doing either. I grew up in an alcohol family. Claudia Black’s book “It will never happen to me” talks about four roles for surviving addiction families. I said once that my sister and I had each taken two of them. My counselor replied, “Well, there were only two of you, so you had to cover them.” I thought that was shocking.
I’m going to check out the book you mentioned. My Dad’s parents were alcoholics and that’s what killed his Dad and his sister. My Dad never drank he ate and was severely obese until the last 4 years of his life. He acted a lot like them though. It was a waste because all four of them were smart and talented people. They just despised themselves.
Our library still has it, though it is at least 30 years old. I have read it twice, twenty years apart.
I put a like on it, but I don’t like how the dad treated the daughter, not at all. Isn’t it weird when parents seem so wonderful to other people but not to us, their children?
I think it’s matter of reflection. These parents don’t like themselves and by extension if they see themselves in their children it’s not going to go well for that child. It’s the malice in creating that parental bond in front of your child who you are throwing to the wind that is the true horror here.