MORE AUTOBIO! (Patreon)

I am taking it easy with this, and am writing only one page per day so as not to overtax myself emotionally (I figure 365 pages will be enough). I am writing without editing. It'll be depressing, and to some will come across as a list of gripes, but here goes...

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I wasn't conscious of my own problems. I was told I'd “act up”; “act out”; had “outbursts”. I'd yell. I don't remember who at. I'd get impatient, and the yelling came out. I didn't even know I was yelling. It seemed like a normal tone of voice to me. In fact, I thought I was whispering.  It was then I was starting to get psychiatric medicines. “Quiet down” pills. I had to bring them to school to take at lunch.  Didn't know what they were for and thought they were nasty. I remember just dropping one in a hallway.

For a while, I'll be touching on isolated incidents. Their order is a blur to me; I don't remember the order they were in or how old I was when they happened...

By second grade, order in my home was really going to hell. Weekends had always been the occasion when Dad got drunk as a skunk, but he started getting raving drunk every night. Screaming, breaking our belongings. I remember his throwing Mom's big clunky green ashtrays, which I believe she was fond of, across the hall. I think he was hoping they'd smash to pieces, but they were so thick, they just missed chunks. (They don't make anything that solid anymore.) I was sleeping in that end of the house. If I wanted to, I could have walked out and taken one to the head. My mother said not to come out of the room when he did that.

One weekend I came home after having fought with my father and found that he had trashed my room. It was like a scene in CITIZEN KANE, with the main character demolishing a room for five minutes. My mother said nothing. I cleaned it up. I knew I couldn't even trust my father not to do that when I was away. But it was his house. Every inch of it, including my room and my belongings.  He owed me no respect. Respect is one thing I definitely did not get from my parents. As far as they were concerned, one respects equals. To respect me was to upset the order. I couldn't fathom seeing boys with their fathers treated like their friends. With my father, there was a frosty wall of ice.

I really had to raise myself. I had no role models. I poked around at life. I did wrong things. I was kind of lost.

Bringing home report cards were a time for teachers' complaints about my behavior and getting beaten with my father's belt. I protested to him that he yelled all the time. He answered, “I don't do it at work.” But home was the only way I saw him and could gauge his behavior.

My mother, of course, was in her own fog.

“I hate my father!!”

“No”, with a dazed simper, “you hate the things HE DOES.”

Not even that much respect. It was like a laugh or another smack. She couldn't, or wouldn't visit my reality. I didn't trust her either.