To Move Forward Sometimes You Gotta Go Back...

17 October 2005

Sometimes I want to meet someone that can say..."My childhood was perfect! We had three square meals a day, new clothes every school year, two parents, a dog, a cat, two hamsters, went to Disneyland, Disneyworld, and even took a trip to EuroDisney for shits and giggles." You know the kind of person that looks at you as if you were just caught making out with Karl Rove when you relate that you sometimes went hungry, thought food stamps were the national currency (and very colorful back in the day might I add), and that a coke-head step-father that beat you now and again was just part of growing up in middle America.

Unfortunately, most of my friends have stories from childhood that far more resemble the Karl Rove making out story than the idyllic version mentioned first...where you may have a caper now and again...like Webster gets caught inside the clock and is found just in time for dinner by a very cross M'am who takes away his dessert only to bring him a pudding just before bedtime thereby healing all wounds and fighting mischief with love.

Let me say that growing up my life was filled with much happiness. I never doubted that I was loved. That is very important. Even through all the bullshit...I knew that there were people around me that loved me. That is key...because so many people I know grew up in a situation similar to mine where it was every tranny for theirselves and god help you if you try to get on top of my crate as the Titanic goes down. Having said that...from the age of 3 until about 13 my life was impacted greatly by my step-father. Though he ceased legally being any relation to me by the time I was five, he was my primary father figure and was the biological father of my younger brother Jason. One of my earliest memories involves this man beatng my mother unconcious while she was pregnant with my little brother. He knocked her out in front of our house, and I remember thinking that a car was going to run her over. I lived in constant and total fear of this man who was in the grips of a powerful cocaine addiction. As an adult I now understand what it means to be an addict (being one myself) and how that controls every aspect of your life. I also know now what it means to be a black man in this world. These things don't excuse his behavior but at this point I have some perspective. At the age of three, I wanted to kill him in his sleep.

During my childhood my step-father went through periods of sobriety when he was a genuinely caring man. To this day I have met few people that can sing as well as he can. I remember watching him in church and listening to him sing and being so happy that he was my Dad. I truly believe that God can be found in music, and God was working something powerful througth my step-father. I would know that everything was going to be allright when he was singing. Because when he was singing he was someone else. I remember when he was leading the church choir at Temple Baptist Church in Brainerd, MN and he thought he could get the redneck country kids to sing God Is Trying to Tell You Something. And I would pray that he would just keep singing because I was safe then, and he was happy. I remember thinking that I just wanted him to be happy. How co-dependent crazy is that.

At 13 my step-dad largely vanished from my world. He had been sober for three or four years, but then he went on a binge, left his wife (who is one of the greatest gifts he gave me...Melanie is a tremendous woman) and kids, and pretty much exited from our lives. At that point my fear had turned into a deep seated loathing, and I tried to erase him from my memory. Since then I have seen him one time. Magically, he showed up to my high school graduation. To this day I have no idea how he knew what high school I went to or when I was graduating, but he walked down onto the grass at the end of the ceremony, gave me a card with $400 in it and walked away.  Shortly thereafter I left for college in North Carolina.

While I was gone in college, he resurfaced again to wreak havoc in my little brothers life for a short period. Taught my brother neat useful skills...like...how to smoke crack. Hey...it ain't the Boy Scouts..but it'll do in a pinch. But for the last five years no one had heard from him or seen him. On the day I left to move to Albuquerque, my little brother told me that he'd found his Dad through the MN Department of Corrections and that he was in the fifth year of a seven year sentence for conspiracy to sell powder cocaine. My brother mentioned that my step-father wanted to call me...to which he and I both giggled and rolled our eyes.

Since my brother told me that he'd found our step-dad, I have been thinking a lot about him and the role he has played in my life. In all honesty, I probably paid for my therapists recent multi-nation trip to Europe with all the sessions we've had in the last couple of years related to my step-father. And now, just when I thought perhaps he'd found Jesus and joined a reclusive mountaintop monastery in the Kalahari he goes and shows up again. I shouldn't be surprised...that has always been his M.O. I'm just surprised he managed it from a 6 by 4 cell in Lino Lakes, MN. I'm not even sure where the hell that is.

Yesterday, as I sat...bored...in my office...on a Sunday afternoon (I live a fast paced glorious life...don't be upset...with a little work...this could be your future)...I decided that it was time to send him a letter. In the very beginning of the letter I was clear that I wasn't sure where the letter was going to go...and it went lots and lots of places. I basically gave him the one page "here's my life for the last 10+ years..." and then I started to talk about my memories of him. At first I thought that there was nothing good...I couldn't remember anything at all. And I'm glad that I decided to type the letter because I started crying so badly that I was wishing my contacts came with windshield wipers. In the end, I was also able to recall some of the good things that he had brought into my world, and I made an effort to share those things as well. I thought really hard about why I was writing the letter. Was it to make him feel badly...maybe a little...but it was more about releasing the demons that I'd let run amok inside my body for way to long. I had let myself villify my step-father. He had become to me the epitome of everything I never wanted to be. As a matter of fact, when I hit bottom with my addiction to crystal meth...and I was laying on my bedroom floor--hysterical...crying to my Mom on the phone I said to her that I was just like my step-father. That I had become the person I hated the most. She almost pulled a Ghost Dad and came through the phone on that one. But now, with some distance from that evening last spring, I finally understand the gift of having gone through my own battle with addiction...it has allowed me to forgive my step-dad. If it weren't for my own addiction, I would never have the space for empathy. It doesn't mean what he did was right. But it does mean that I can start to let go of it. I was talking about all of this to someone recently who asked me why I can't just let it go...it happened...it was in the past. He was white. And white people often have a hard time understanding that time does not exist in a straight line. What happened in the past has life, meaning, and power in the here and now. Indeed, for many of us that is crucial to who we are...the ability to see ourselves and know ourselves in relationship to our ancestors and our history. The trick is learning from the past, acknowledging its presence and force in the present, but shaping its potency in a way that enhances who we are instead of letting it rule us.  I can't hold on to the pain of my relationship with my step-father. I've been holding it like some kind of crazy security blanket for so long. It's comfortable. Well worn. And I'm familiar with it. But continuing to hold on to it keeps me prisoner to a memory. I think my letter to him is the first step in letting the pain go.

Comments

[David]

You might find the letter to my Dad interesting. Same with the open letter to Kristin, my daughter.

David
http://www.denalidave.blogspot.com

http://www.davidmcouch.com