Sigh. So here goes. I am really, really ready to be done with all this and move on with my life, just for the record... I keep hoping that this time will be the one, this telling of the story will finally clear the mental/emotional/psychic logjam that keeps me stuck somewhere in some distant chapter of my childhood. Fingers crossed!
First I have to simply lay out the raw data, which, as I tell it, seems embarassingly un-special, un-noteworthy. I hear the voices accusing me of over-dramatization, and my face reddens with shame (for the millionth time) for drawing any sort of attention to myself - for wanting, needing, indeed craving that attention that I am so - may I say? - cruelly denied.
Because, melodramatic as it may seem, it felt, and continues to feel, cruel. Pulling-wings-off-flies kind of cruel; vicious, sadistic, torturing somebody because you can kind of cruel. Yes, these are the parents I grew up with, particularly my father. My mother was (and continues to be) some truly special kind of clueless; but my father - he had mastered (most likely via clever training by his own parents) the subtle dig, the backhanded compliment, the damning with faint praise. I cannot, to this day, call to mind a single instance, in all the years I knew my father (24), in which he unstintingly and unstingily gave me what I most needed from him: Unqualified praise, encouragement, appreciation or support. My father was the ultimate killjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment