I wish I had a great synopsis of my childhood and parenting to tell. My father raised me much more than my mother, especially after they divorced. My father never told me I was a disappointment or a failure or anything like that. He wondered sometimes why I just didn't understand what I was supposed to do, which looking back on it, when I was a teenager for whatever reason I was terminally confused about everyday activities all the time. I don't think about it now, because it doesn't matter anymore.
But one thing I do know is that my Dad never pushed me to excel or achieve. Or rather, he never pushed me to excel at education and achievement. He understood how important they were, and tried to say all the right things that a father is supposed to say. But what mattered to him was partying, and playing the guitar, and chasing skirt, and crashing dirtbikes, and hotrodding his car. It's not hard to guess which priorities won out in raising me.
The problem is, his conflict between raising me to party and raising me to academic excellence was lost when I was about 13. And trying to goad a 13 year old into chugging whiskey, smoking pot, crashing dirtbikes, rock'n'rolling on stage, and picking up sleazy women, with my loving father and his load of deadbeat 20-something crackhead friends, sent my already nerdy personality spiraling off a cliff. I spent most of my teenage years turning into an academic shutin, as a default option compared to the terror of leaving my bedroom. My grades still suffered, partly because it's hard to get to school everyday when my "ride" is passed out in the bathtub and/or the family car is in pieces awaiting a new manifold. (We'll never forget that glorious day when he woke me up with a hand over my mouth to say, "No school today son, the cops are outside.") And partly because I was never instilled with much of a work ethic, since my father bragged about making money (or dodging bills) with as little effort as possible, even while complaining about doing all the work. As I've more or less learned, because he would rather do everything around the house himself rather than force me to do anything, because he loved me too much to put any pressure on me.
I wound up a "smart" guy with no work ethic, constantly trying to reconcile my love of learning with my hatred of work, and my respect for people with my inborn need to raise Hell. Which comes back around to a conversation we had a while ago, wherein I revealed to him that this whole time, and especially over the past few years as I let myself recollect on my adolescence, I've come to believe that I failed him. That I failed at being either of the people he had wanted me to be. I spent a couple years dragging through school with no money and bombing grades; and after doing everything in his power to make me cool, none of really "took". I certainly tried to live up to his standards, once I was actually able to drive and wheedle my way to possessing the requisite "shit", which earned me quite the wild reputation among my nerdy band of friends. My grand master attempt at that lifestyle landed me in jail, which he bailed me out from.
And at that point he revealed that he'd been doing plenty of thinking to, and was simultaneously as proud as a father could be for even trying to be a real student with real goals and dreams, and blamed himself for everything that happened then and now, knowing full well how much of it could be blamed on his influence. And finally laid the most ominous sentence I ever heard. "Your children don't grow up the way you want them to, they grow up the way you expect them to. Expect them to fail, and they'll fail. But I always expected you to succeed, no matter how many times I managed to sabotage that." And the more I think about it, the more it all falls into place, especially how he never had to say a word to let me know what actually disappointed him and what really made him proud.
So I guess I was able to write a synopsis of my parenting, that doesn't really have much to do with the topic. Except at the end there, and that disputable bit of advice. All fits into the Sad thread though, since I've been pretty twisted up over this shit for a while.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9451964 times)