Dirty Old Man

I once had a lover, and she used to call me her Dirty Old Man. I won't go into much extra description of the circumstances surrounding such a nickname. It paints it's own picture. Anyway, that's what she called me. It was sexy and romantic. It was her special name for me.  I guess I imagined that, for the rest of my life I would look back and remember "Dirty Old Man" as simply the super hot and creatively personal nickname she charmingly bestowed upon me with a wink.

Today, while getting a haircut, my mental paradigms about myself and my place in the world were drastically shifted by the young girl with brown hair getting her hair cut in the chair next to mine. When I first noticed her reflection in the mirror through a darting glance, I was vaguely aware that she was looking at me.  I made conversation with my stylist for a few minutes and then looked again, this time purposefully.  She was looking at me again. We stared.  I felt uncomfortable, smiled.  She smiled in return.  Afterward, I realized she was quite young, perhaps under fourteen years old.  I avoided making eye contact again.  Now, I'm not the kind of grown man that is going to try and capitalize on sexual opportunities with underage girls, but we had had what I like to call a moment.  I couldn't help but notice, throughout the rest of my haircut, that she was looking my way from time to time. Who could blame me for avoiding such an interaction? I felt shame for having even entered into that short, shared smile. Yes, aren't you relieved?  And yet, I felt bad for not returning to our friendly exchange, bad that I might make her feel unappreciated, undesirable.

Do you ever feel like we have signs on our foreheads like "Hey, you can take advantage of me." or "Hey, I won't fight back!" or "Over here! I'm easily fooled?"  I sure feel that way.  No one knew what I was going through growing up, but the bullies at school didn't need to read my book to know they could get away with harassing me. It seems unfair, but I think I wore my victim role on my face, inviting new people to try and exploit me.  I can make sense of getting hit at home and getting hit by bullies, but, and this is the point, it hasn't been so clear to me what sign is on my forehead with women.

Just for now, let's try on "Dirty Old Man."  What if that's the sign my young lover saw?  What if the much younger girl getting her haircut was reading the same sign?  It's hard for me to know what she read. Generally, I attract women with dysfunctional relationship habits, lots of self-hatred, and lots of anger toward some man in their lives who greatly disappointed them.  Dirty Old Man sounds sexy and desirable, but leaves plenty of room for hatred and judgment later on.  There might be something to all of this, but assuming women are reading a sign on my head is convoluted and keeps me from looking at my own part in interacting with other humans and myself.  Plus, whatever any girl reads on my head is most likely more about her than me.  There's something to the types of people we draw, but I can't sort it out at that level anymore.

How does Dirty Old Man apply to me?  Getting easy stuff out of the way first, I am a man.  To an ever increasing number of people, I am old.  Dirty?  Well, with a wink, I'll tell you I'm not so bad.  In my defense, I live among human beings, a species that conspicuously hides its sexuality with clothing, lies, and shaming judgments.  At least we don't stone adulterers in the streets anymore.  No, we just destroy them socially, if we can.  Some people shudder at the growth of shamelessness about sexual behavior, but, what good has all this shame done for us?  So, I'm sexual.  I enjoy it.  Sex in this society is already hidden and forbidden so much, and my family was full of rules, secrets, and lies about it.  So, yeah, a little bit of dirt is a little bit exciting to me.  I'll admit that.

What draws me to women is something different, something about their vulnerability, something connected to my mom and my shame for allowing my dad to beat her for years and ultimately kill her.  I guess my heart is drawn to abused women like the fists of those bullies were drawn to my face.  I don't mean to be abusive. I don't think I really am, but, in these recreations, it always seems to get told that way.  From my side, I feel compassion and reach out, the woman shares her vulnerabilities, and then I'm an asshole for not having loved the right way or for having needs of my own.  That's fair.  I usually enter romance as a man without needs.  I'll give for a long time and then start wanting something back.

My dad was this way, except his interactions often included violence.  He would present himself as cool and without needs, until he started feeling attached.  Then he would begin building a case against the woman, ultimately unleashing his anger.  He wasn't a serial killer or stalker.  He didn't kidnap anyone, well, unless they had been lovers previously.  He had a nasty habit of believing that he owned anyone he had ever slept with.  I guess I'm included there.

What was the sign on his head?  Had he been sexually molested as a child and felt like the other person took all power from him?  Just questions prompted by the last paragraph....  Your thoughts?

As I learn to let go and grow, I'm finding that my perceptions are not so permanent. At the wise age of 42, I'm seeing myself in everyday life like never before. I'm feeling my feelings more powerfully and fully, and, yes, making those I love most quite miserable as well. I'm probably pissing off lots of people, and I just haven't noticed. Maybe it's been this way all my life. I've been doing lots of writing and soul-searching, and it sounds good to attribute the changes to my heroic efforts to be a better person and bestow my gifts upon mankind. Oh, how I love to represent myself that way. Really, that's only part of my story. I say I'm wise and 42 with tongue in cheek, a high-five to a very special young woman who has spent the last couple of years experiencing my foolishness first-hand, perhaps for her own selfish reasons, perhaps to give me the gift of insight.  Maybe it's both.  Maybe neither of us knew what we were doing.  I'm trying to learn about how the world sees me and how I choose to interact.

We all have patterns of loving and patterns of pain that seem to go hand in hand.  May we all learn about ourselves and make the healthiest choices we can.

© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III

Why Men Enjoy Porn

I tell my stories in a rather round-a-bout way. I'm just discovering this. Do you do that too? :) Me too. Well, I said it already, I guess. I don't really know if I should apologize for the quality of my example. Anyway, welcome to what I am pretty sure will be a story, told all backwards, kind of like me and the mind I am learning to love, mine.

So, I'm apparently really smart. Yeah, thanks, I'm tall too. Oh, and I'm white and attractive. I've had a lot going for me in life. Smart people like me are supposed to go to college. I withdrew from classes in my first semester. See, this seems all backwards, but how do I just come out and say my dad beat me up in the kitchen over my alleged intention in interacting with the woman he currently had at the house and then made me drop out of school?  Don't worry; it's all very anticlimactic.

Without any further subjection of this already abusively stretched blog to the chaos of detail, I give you this:

Dear Reader,

Forgive me, for I have sinned. It has been 40 days since my last blog entry.  I'll admit it; life has not gone the way I expected since I last wrote here.  I had ideas of self-reliance mixed with good love and renewed purpose.  I got all those things, but not by stoically quoting scripture and bravely denying my appetites.  Jesus, it is written, spent 40 days in the desert, being tempted by Satan. I spent 40 days thinking about the ways in which I enter these roles as well as that of God, their silent partner.

Satan challenged Jesus to make the stones into bread.  I have been working hard to earn more money after years of being stuck in poverty, living paycheck to pawn shop visit and back again. I haven't been offered a deal to betray my values. I do that for free.  Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would bow down and worship him.  I've considered life's questions and the reasoning of my mind, in some cases choosing to set aside old virtues and parental directives.  If the fruit looks good, sometimes I eat it. Satan dared Jesus to jump off the temple, presumably to impress the people with his immortality.  I don't put much stock in angels catching me, but I did fall off a ladder yesterday, more accurately, I fell into it, toppling and hitting the ground along with it. Strangely, I don't have a mark on me.

Please, lovers of Jesus, don't take offense.  I mean no disrespect. Quite seriously, I have been meditating on God, Jesus, and the Devil and how the drama of my mind can be understood through their stories, contained in the Bible.  I used to think the Devil was evil, God was good, and Jesus was safe, all of them actual beings with those distinct personalities represented by Christianity. I've got a metaphorical angle going on God.  Let's see if I can show you what I mean.

Remember me dropping out of college? There was this woman named Sam, just like me. She had arrived in Eureka sometime in the previous year, finding refuge in a warehouse controlled by a small group of semi-homeless men. My dad knew them. I remember hearing them talk about her.  She was the "whore" they all wanted to fuck. They spoke disdainfully of her. "She can't be trusted." Then they would drag me into the conversation laughingly adding, "Don't leave her alone with Sammy!"  I thought she was attractive, but, at 17, I didn't join in with such revelry. The fishermen and downtown drunks would join my dad in mocking me for my facial reactions to their comments, but I was determined to continue seeing Sam as a down-on-her-luck human being, not a sex opportunity to be exploited.  How could they joke about using her for sex without any consideration of how to help her regain her dignity? Oh, that's right; her shameful position was part of the attraction.

I never saw her hang her head. She was proud and defiant when she stood up for herself. Maybe she was a little crass at times, but she was kind and polite to me.  I liked her.  They viewed her like a devil, untrustworthy, unfairly beautiful, and unworthy of their Christian charity or virtue.

Dad brought her out to the house a number of times.  They would do drugs and have sex. By the way, now that I'm older, I would just like to say that doing drugs and having sex can be really fun!  Growing up, I had no idea. Maybe that saved me some trouble as a youth, but I found it anyway as an adult.  Why is our society so uptight about making sure kids stay on some straight and narrow path to recreating the currently broken social system? But that's another subject.

My dad, the God of the Bible, and most evil characters in fairy tales have this in common: They are all guided, to some degree, by their own selfish goals and personal emotional states of the moment.  You could argue that God is good, but I will say that God's "good" is whatever he says it is.  He is not guided by some greater idea of what is good or evil. If so, then that rule would be above God, begging the question "from whence did it come?"  In that self-directed way, he's just like my dad.  Stick with me here....

I had just gotten home from my morning classes at the University.  I knew Sam had spent the night with my dad, but I was hoping to slip into the house, make lunch, and leave for my afternoon drawing class, unnoticed.  As I finished making my mac & cheese and sat down at the bar in our kitchen, the two of them entered the dining room arguing.  Dad's hair was wet with sweat and matted, his eyes refusing to make contact. He was on speed.  I prepared to eat quickly and make my exit.

I heard her ask for a drink. She turned and headed toward me, just half a step, and I was already planning.  Dad had expressed concern that I might be attracted to her in the past. In his paranoid, unpredictable state at that moment, I was trying to avoid any hint of inappropriate interaction between Sam and I.  She was coming for a glass. I was sitting directly under that cabinet.  To keep her from reaching over me, arousing his anger, I reached up and got one for her. She moved to other side of the kitchen and prepared to pour some juice.

Dad interrupted her, yelling at her, and made her leave the house without her juice. I guess she walked home. I thought he was putting the juice away until I felt that gallon burst against the back of my head. I withdrew from my classes the next day and went to work for him. Anyway, that's how I quit college.

So, how can I understand my mind in this story through the metaphorical characters in the Bible? I don't even know what I was thinking or feeling.  I was just reacting to those around me.  In that way I am both the Devil  in his role as God's dependent second opinion and God in his role of omnipotent denial of his own internal self-judgment (the devil).  Jesus is perhaps the forward step that I need to take. Jesus, in his setting aside of his own life and ego for the sake of some higher purpose, is attempting to lead me out of my God vs. Satan duality, my raging emotions overpowering and condemning my calm rational thought, arrogant animal impulses vs. sober self-judgment and patience.  I believe it's a trap to think of these characters as separate beings.  When they're seen as parts of the whole of the mind, then they start to make sense.

By the way, if all of this seems confusing, please accept my apology.  I'm just trying to get the words out.  Please offer comments and questions.  I love questions!

As soon as I saw that God, Satan, and Jesus were all archetypes for stuff that happens in my own head, I remembered the words of Jesus.

"I and the Father are one."
"The kingdom of heaven is within you."

What if Jesus is the ultimate ego model?  Fully pleased to follow the Father, he is free to act bravely.
What if God is an imperfect emotion model? If he wasn't so bad, Jesus wouldn't need to be so self-sacrificial.
What if Satan is a model for dispassionate skepticism? Is there any way to help these three get along?

"Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

What if giving up what I want for me and making my choices based upon my own highest values would actually make me happier and braver than if I chose what seemed best in the moment?

I just didn't want to get hit.  I just wanted to avoid Dad's anger. I work hard to anticipate what other people need. I stress about it.  I have for years.  Ironically, it hasn't worked well. I'm totally inept when it comes to setting people at ease or making them feel loved.  In this way, the blind Father God of my ego must make peace with the objective questioner of my intellect, and it may require that my body make the sacrifices of its appetites in order to do that, to bring my whole being completely under the direction of my own mind.  Maybe self-direction sounds scary.  What if I do things like my dad did?  What if I justify bad behavior by insisting that I may decide right and wrong?  Well, it's good enough for your god to do the same, right?

Ok, this one's a mess, so I'm expecting your lively debate!

Thanks,
© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III

Sick Actor or Tortured Soul

Wow, I'm only on my seventh post, and all I can think right now is that I'm not exactly sure this is the seventh. Someone in my head says "I should go check."
     "Open a new tab!" he cries out with urgency
     "I can check it later and change it if necessary."
Wait, who said to open a new tab? Who are these characters? How can I explain the experience I have in my mind? I'm trying to map it. I have to find a way to understand my thought-life so that I can tolerate real life without being dependent on distractions, addictions, or, worst of all, vulnerable people who will love me even when it takes a toll on them.  I don't know what I'm doing here with this blog.  I don't know what I'm doing in life.  So, bear with me while I try to figure out how my head works.

  People in my life often say they don't know how to take me. When I started getting honest, those comments increased. I often choose to reveal myself in some confusing mix of indirect vagary and blunt shock. A recent television show covering my story invited viewers to question whether I was a sick actor or the tortured soul I claim to be. I think I'm both. . As a child,I had learned, or tried to learn, to display and express the feelings, thoughts, facial expressions, desires, and attitudes that adults expected from me.  The confusing part for me has been that I never knew these things about myself until very recently.  I'm just starting to discover why I've struggled all my life in social situations and in feeling comfortable in my own skin.



All my life I've lived out a facade, hardly looking within, trying so hard to be the kind of person everyone else might desire.  As a kid I learned to be an actor.  Deep down, I always knew that I was playing a role.  I just couldn't spend too much time thinking about it and risk exposure.  I imagined that everyone else had life figured out, and that they would condemn me if I did not appear like them.  Even wise sounding advice like "just be yourself" was processed in my mind as "just act like you're being yourself."  I've always looked outside of me for who I should be, how I should act.  I'm just now starting to see what's sick about that. I wasn't able to look at me, so I wasn't able to be "me."  "Be yourself" always came with the promise of feeling whole, natural, comfortable.  I've always been myself.  I've just always had a discomfort with seeing myself or feeling like my natural self.  So, I've been an actor.  The sickness is the tortured soul inside of me that could not heal as long as I could not see him.

In my childhood, I looked outside of myself, to Jesus, for peace.  Religious faith was helpful sometimes, but also kept me stuck.  I held onto Jesus during times when the me inside might have been completely destroyed.  On the other hand, I held onto Jesus at the expense of seeing and acknowledging the real me.  I allowed my internal self to suffer at the hands of others, mainly my dad, because none of it was hurting Jesus.  As long as Jesus was intact, I could go through anything.

After my father died, I gave up on Jesus.  At the age of 36, I had finally suffered enough, lost enough, destroyed enough, that I was ready to stop following this outsider to myself.  I talked to a few Christian friends about my decision.  One said to "be still and know that he is God."  They seemed to think I was making a horrible mistake in leaning on my own understanding.  I reasoned that I couldn't give a thing to God that I had never had in the first place.  I had to find myself, apart from my dad, apart from God.

The last seven years have been messy.  Christians teach that we have some sort of hole inside of us that God fits into perfectly.  They will also acknowledge that, if God is rejected, people may try to fill that hole with drugs, sex, abusive relationships, money, basically sins of all sorts.  I did.  The world is full of things I can look to while refusing to see the tortured soul inside of me.  It's painful to see myself, especially in light of all the sick acting I've done over the years.  I feel like I've whored out the hole left by my hidden self to everything but me.  Me has sat in the dark, alone, unseen, while my brain runs my body through life, coping, recreating, rationalizing, but never finding peace.

Recent events in my life have opened my "mature" heart like a set of surgical tools, revealing my life-long problem of self-avoidance.  I fell in love with a young woman who may be more damaged than me.  I tried to fix or save her, not realizing that I was, again, simply trying to dodge seeing myself.  Ultimately, realizing that I was not fixing her but causing her more pain, I had to face that it was my pain that I needed to address.  As the charms of our romance wore thin and our pain began to emerge, our fights became more regular.  And as we fought, I began to see, over and over, that what she was saying to me seemed like something she could have said to herself.  And, after I judged her for that, I began to see that all the things I had been saying to her, including my judgments of her projecting onto me, were things that I should have been saying about ME.  I had not been seeing me.  Seeing her was just my most recent and most tragic stand-in for seeing me.  Her pain touched mine in a way that finally allowed me to admit that I had been avoiding myself and acting like I wasn't, all my life. I would say that I love her, but I think she would have been better off without me.

I'm seeing that I've hurt people throughout my life, albeit in more socially acceptable ways than my father did. But what progress have I made if I'm just causing damage, blind to myself, in a dialed-down version of his blindness? I've set out to write this book in desperation.  I've known I was suffering, known I needed healing, but writing about my childhood experience has highlighted my life-long reluctance to feel the pain in my soul, the soul I've ignored all my life.  I haven't wanted to face my pain.  I've felt like I couldn't bear to see myself, so I couldn't face that I was using everything and everyone, including my false representation of me to avoid actually feeling my own pain.  Now I have to face the hurts in my childhood soul as well as the hurts I've inflicted on myself and others in my adulthood.

My life may look boring and unsuccessful on the outside, but I'm taking myself out of the acting game to see my sickness which is nothing more than the game I've been playing.  I've been playing the game of anyone or anything but me.  Now I'm just facing how I feel about it.  Looking at the real me involves facing all my childhood fears, the reasons I learned to deny me in the first place.  It feels like the most epic risk to simply sit with myself and feel.  You might see me sitting on my couch right now, making my typing face, flexing my toes.  The real battle is in trying to feel comfortable here without calling a friend, checking my social media, watching a movie, or seeking escape through sex or drugs.

Just here, I sit.  I breathe.  I feel a little bit sick, but I am ok.  I think I can do this. I think my blog entries are about to get real....

© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III






 
 

Judgment for Patty

Patty was one of my dad's regular visitors.  One day coming home from school, on my way into my room, I glanced into my father’s open bedroom door.  She was there, standing in the mirror, naked.  I paused and stared at her breasts.  I remember thinking they were beautiful.  And almost immediately I felt a fear that I might be discovered, averted my eyes and continued walking.  She was there from time to time.  He must have met her in town that day.  At least he would be occupied. I remember wondering:  "Does God disprove of me for lusting after her.  I know my dad would.  I can never admit this.  What if he saw me?  What if he questions me?"

Before doing my homework, I spent the next few minutes practicing my surprised face which I would use later in the face of any accusation.  He would often question me about my potential attraction to the women he fucked.  I see now he was insecure.  Then, I only feared his anger and planned my words and facial expressions to keep him calm.  Homework.

Later that night, the yelling began, followed shortly thereafter by the cries of pain and fear.  I could here the impact of his blows. I used to judge the women for not working harder to keep him happy.  Could they not see how I handled him?  Did they not care if they were beaten? Or was I wrong? Was the situation actually much more helpless and hopeless than I realized?  Could I face such sober reflection?  No.  That’s why I turned my thoughts to their mistakes. Whatever was happening was not my fault.  I went to bed and tried to sleep.

In my adult life, I have carried his fears into my romantic relationships.  I suppose I fill the same “beating-time” role, sitting in my room, feeling frantic, trying not to look at those feelings.  Look how we all do that: blame and judge, skipping introspection, denying personal experience with the same kinds of failures. Relationship problems are mostly discussed in terms of whether we have found the "right person" as opposed to being seen as prompts for self-reflection and personal growth. I'm not blaming anybody. Self-reflection and growth are hard.

Should I have done something differently? I prayed. Jesus didn't help Patty escape. Jesus helped me escape, but in a different way than I ever would have imagined.  I always wanted Him to show up and magically change my whole life.  I wanted anyone to show up and change my whole life. Now that I'm telling my story publicly, I realize why I was right to keep silent as a child.  People don't want to get involved any more than Jesus does. People just want to ask why I didn't see how to handle my dad.  Of course, they mean well, and their ideas about what might have worked for me probably sound reasonable to them, in their own imaginations.  The bottom line is this: I didn't do anything to help Patty escape. I feel guilty about that.  Likewise, no person did anything to help me. I wonder if people feel guilty about that. Is that why they tell me what I should have done differently.

I think it's more useful to focus on what we can do now. I'm going to try my hardest to face the difficult memories and suppressed emotions of my childhood. Whether you support me in my healing or insist that we rewrite history with what "should have happened," the choice is up to you. How does my story make you feel? What would you like to see changed in this world?

© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III

...the Son will reveal Him

"All things are delivered to me of my father: and no man knoweth the son, but the father; neither knoweth any man the father, save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him." -Matthew 11:27

Adult life is not like I imagined it would be.  Honestly, I can’t say that I had much imagination for adult life when I was a child, not realistically.  I was a pirate ship captain or a movie star, nothing close to the stressful mediocrity I experience now.  Accomplishing great things and resting in my success has given way to day after day of bills, feeling stuck in undesirable jobs and social engagements, and countless hours wondering what to do with my life.  Of course a child cannot prophetically imagine the details of his future life as an adult, but one failed dream haunts me most, the dream of peace.  Going through hell as a child, I always longed for the day when I would be at peace in my world.  The shattering of this illusion has been the worst.  I can handle not being a hero in some grand play.  I guess, even,  then, I knew I wouldn’t really live out my grandest fantasies.  Still, all that day-dreaming had a common thread.  I would grow up and my childhood would be over.  It didn’t turn out that way.

“All things are delivered to me of my father..” rings true today.  My daily life is plagued by insecurities and painful emotions, triggered by everything routine.  This afternoon, the rug beneath my feet is one I’ve never touched.  I don’t know when it was made, and I’ve lived 41 years without ever seeing it.  Yet, the sight of it, the design, the level of soiling, and a couple of specks of food lying precariously in plain view all conspire to take me back to some vague re-experiencing of sitting or standing, frozen in fear while my father yelled at me and beat me.  I have trouble recalling the things that made him angry and the things he said.  All of that was so long ago, but in this way, my father never left me.  Escape never entered my mind.  I have escaped, but he hasn’t left. For many years, I was helpless, waiting for him to stop.  I’m still feeling that way.

“All things are delivered to me of my father..”  The man that I am, in many respects, is a product of my childhood.  My attitudes, fears, expectations, interpretations, and delusions all had their beginning in the forge of that time when I was his son and he was my father.  Often, more so when I’m excited and animated, those who knew us both will halt me to point out that I remind them of my father.  People will argue about nature and nurture and which should be blamed or credited for current situations of all kinds, but there is no doubt for me that my father shaped the man I am today.  However I am, that experience was pivotal in making me this way. Odd as it may sound, Dad would be very proud of me if he could see the man I've become.

“All things are delivered to me of my father..”   On every level of discussion, things come from the place they came from and resemble those places.  All children are different, as any parent with more than one child will quickly tell you, but no child is unaffected by their “family of origin.”  The journey of life leaves it’s mark upon the traveler.  No matter where we go, there we are.  No matter where we go, where we’ve been has left an indelible mark. We experience life in an endless string of present moments, and we carry those experiences with us.  We are shaped by our lives. In Childhood, when emotions are raw and understanding undeveloped, when the words and thoughts of our caregivers are everything we have to work with, the marks left upon our souls stay with us throughout our lives.  

"All things are delivered to me of my father: and no man knoweth the son, but the father; neither knoweth any man the father, save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him."

I got what I got growing up, and it's my story to tell.

© 2013 Ernest Samuel Christie III

What? Me love my enemies?

"If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?" -Jesus

"I only hit women and 12-year-old boys!" my father declared with a proud grin, passively acknowledging one of his flaws.  He had many, as do we all.  I guess we don't all kill people. Well, we all go about our selfish, daily lives while people are killed everyday.  What do we actually do to save anyone?  What effort do we actually make to change things?  Seriously, how many of us can even face who we are long enough to admit that our lives are completely about us?  Some people hurt others with fists and weapons, some people hurt others with a snap judgment and casual disregard.

So, like Dad and all of you, I also have flaws.  I've spent a lifetime beating myself up for mine, everything from watching helplessly while he killed his girlfriend to not making everyone I meet happy with just the right word or smile.  I was beaten, and I learned to pick up where Dad left off, emotionally, physically, sexually, you name it.  Maybe this self-abusive pattern is the biggest flaw I have.  What's underneath it?  I always like to ask that question.  I've learned, writing and talking about the traumas of my youth, that everything is not always as it seems.  I've learned that there is often more to every story, just under the surface, waiting to be discovered. At this point, I don't know if that's true or just another flaw.  Maybe I haven't learned as much as I think.  Another flaw!!  Ha ha!  Back then, I didn't know the difference in my father's words and absolute truth.  Likewise, outside of the home, I interpreted all interpersonal difficulties as a sign of my own failure as a human being.  So, for most of my adult life, I've wasted my mental energy worrying about how other people felt about how I was doing, living in this culture, appearing to assimilate, while my own merciless stone wheels of shame and pain slowly ground my soul to powder.

In the last few days, I've gotten some criticism for my blog and even my use of my legal name.  In sitting down to write, tonight, my first inclination was to answer those who judge without knowledge.  My emotions are charged over a couple of probably "well-intended" folks who really don't understand who I am or what I'm trying to do, but, still, the urge to respond to them is overwhelming. Something about having my character attacked triggers my PTSD from years of character assassination, alone with my dad.  No matter how he approached me, I had to answer.  As an adult, I don't have to answer anyone.  Sometimes, in the heat of traumatic regression, I forget that.

However, sometimes, I like to react, even if it does come from a place of triggered traumatic memory.  Maybe it feels good to let some anger out.  Maybe that's why my dad did it.  Maybe that's why some people choose to criticize my choice to share the "evil" of my childhood.  Maybe that's why I'm answering the peanut gallery now.  Here goes:

Should I just move on with my life? What life?  I don't know what it's like to be alive without childhood terror playing in the background of every activity, infecting every relationship. Until my dad died, six years ago, I didn't even know I had been traumatized.  I got on with "living my life" when I moved out of his house, thinking the past was behind me.  Today, I realize that putting the past behind me is a long-term process which requires understanding which parts of it are still with me.  One can't let a thing go without first accepting that it is still there.  Denying what I cling to with my own hands is the most childish of denials.  So, to those who think I am drudging up the past unnecessarily, I say thank you for your comments.  What else can I say?  Mental toddlers lying about the object they hold behind their backs rarely listen to reason anyway.

I don't hit anyone with my fists, but I'll go for the throat conversationally. Sure, I might be demonstrating my own casual disregard and acting out my traumatic training, but I never draw first blood.  My dad, my critics, and me could all have made the world a better place by listening to Jesus.

©Ernest Samuel Christie III

He never let himself vomit.

"God: out of mind? Out of sight!!"

So read the poster in my mom's dorm room at Catholic boarding school.  She was a 16-year-old atheist and my dad a 23-year-old, narcissistic Jesus freak when they met. For drugs? For sex? For the cruel destinies of broken hearts, drawn to deadly tragedy for the promise of healing and the dream of love?  I can still hear his well-practiced versions of these stories, stories of how I came into the world.  I won't bother to quote him here.  The story of how they met was always his prelude to her godlessness and the brave work of angry violence he had to embrace in order to lead her to true salvation in Jesus, always told in a drunken stupor, during that short window of tender albeit panicked concern for my soul sandwiched between threatening to rape me and passing out.

I watched his purple, trembling lips struggling to form words punctuated with his tears and heartfelt pleas for honesty.  Honesty is hard, especially when an unsatisfactory disclosure on my part usually lead to a beating, if he hadn't passed out yet.  I remained silent, unless he pressed me.  I understood his premise, and it made sense. Apparently people lie and work to divide family members.  I had not discovered this yet for myself.  Still, if anyone was going to try to cause trouble, I wanted to be as open as possible.  Mainly, I wanted to limit, as much as possible, the amount of physical punishment I would have to face.  Problem was, I didn't really have much to confess, not the kind of stuff he was looking for.

 I had cheated on a test. He smirked.  There crouched in the field behind our mobile home, stuff happened, words were exchanged. I only remember the beautiful trees and the swirling, pre-vomit discomfort of my sinking, drowning soul. Reader, thank you for holding my hair while I fill your tupperware with this shocking filth.  Thank you for helping me flush my inherited shame down the toilet in our shared mental experience. Thank you for holding my pain in your awareness, allowing me to get out from under carrying it alone.  My dad fed me lies and self-loathing.  I've held it all down too long....

Someday, I'll say, "Dad: out of mind? OUT OF SIGHT!!!!!"

© Copyright Ernest Samuel Christie III 2013