Al

The name "Old Whig" comes from Hayek's "Why I am not a Conservative," in which he disparages conservative positions and places himself in the Lockean camp.  He says some things in praise of Edmund Burke in that article...fortunately Burke once wrote a piece called "A Vindication of Natural Society," which makes it possible for me to continue using that moniker.

My Life

Married. 

Raised two stepsons before I realized I was doing it wrong.  The younger boy was ten when we got married.  He left home on his eighteenth birthday.  The older boy left for the army soon after.  (The good news is, he was drummed out for health reasons before he finished his training to be a so-called MP - actually urban assault troops.  When the war in Kosovo started, I was very glad he wasn't there.)  The birth of my oldest daughter was like a huge lightening bolt.  There is so much to say about that that I don't know where to start.  There was this explosion of passionate love in me.  There was the realization that the boys certainly hadn't gotten all they deserved from a father.

The last paragraph is a late addition.  I can't think of how to transition right now.  Thinking about that is an interruption of more important things.

Milestones: My "best friend" punched me in the stomach three times in Kindergarten.  (Maybe that shouldn't be listed first, but chronologically it's the first thing that disturbed me.  It was the birth of a deadly rage, in me.)  Dad taught me to fight and I "got even" with that sob.  That was never satisfying.  I wanted to be friends, or at least be left alone.  Both of those were out of the question.  He wouldn't leave me alone, and he couldn't take me.  Beating him up became a grim, several-times-per-week chore.  Nobody offered him psychological counseling or me a better solution.  Christ!  I was 5, 6, 7, 8 years old!  People are telling me, "You're fighting too much," or "violence doesn't solve anything..."  Funny that nobody seriously tried to stop us.  Ever.

Age six or so: My brother took up the hobby of beating up my (and my sisters') stuffed toys.  He beat me up sometimes, too.  He never left a mark on me,  and he says "I never hit you hard!"...  He's never apologized for any of that either.  [update: he offered up a general apology recently, after a major blow-up between us.]

Age seven: accepted Jesus as my Savior and was baptized.  We went to a Wesleyan church which is a fundamentalist offshoot of the Methodists.  My mother was raised Missionary Baptist in Oklahoma, and occasionally we went to an Assemblies of God church in town.  In college, I called myself a Baptist/Methodist/Pentacostal.  The first and the last figure the other is a variation of Satanism.  Ho ho ho!

You know, it occurs to me that this may not be the place to try to put everything I can think of.  The list feels very long.  I told my shrink about a lot of it.  But writing this little bit down here shows what a mass of contradictions my life has been.

College: German major, Math & Philosophy minors.  Graduated a nihilist.  Nothing was true unless it was right in front of my face.  I went to the Grand Canyon to make beds.  I was shanghai'ed to drive a delivery truck (because the boss was a racist and the other candidate was black).

There are a couple of points about my current life that I don't want to be thought to be hiding.  My wife and I are "unequally yoked" as the Bible puts it.  We weren't until I came out as accepting the logic of atheism...fully.  And, more importantly that I see the error of...  Maybe I can put this in a way that I can present to her to help her see the error of the white trash childrearing methods she picked up in the trailer parks she lived in before I met her.  Hmm.  That ain't it.

Anyway, the other thing I should say here is that I took up...  Sorry, I was going to say it funny and that's not going to help anyone.  I'm an alcoholic.  I've been dry for two years now, but during my last binge I revived my tobacco chewing addiction (it helps your buzz and helps hide the booze on your breath...and gives you a reason to sneak off to the store without explanation; getting caught sneaking in a can of snuss doesn't cause a row).  So, I'm walking around with that shame even yet.

I gravitate toward doing things I'm ashamed of.  Now I know what to talk to the therapist about.  He apparently couldn't guess based on all the crap I threw at him.

Update - March 17, 2013: My mother died 11 days ago.  I went down to Muskogee for her funeral.  (Which reminds me that I didn't say anything about the fact that my father died in '94.  March 7th - Mom died on the 6th.  I imagine I'll be screwing those dates up for the rest of my life.)  When Dad died, I felt like I had lost an important resource.  There was nobody to ask about fix-it projects, and I've steadily lost the drive to do them much any more.  I did those things to impress him, I think. Mom never required that.

But Mom stopped being much of a resource over a decade ago.  Arthritis closed up her spinal column and, although she had surgery, she'd been mostly an invalid ever since.  Come to think of it, before that she'd had to start dragging around oxygen bottles for her COPD, which she got from smoking. I think those two things sapped her will to live, along with the belief that she would soon be going home to see Dad.  All she ever did was sit around watching old TV reruns and reading silly romance novels.

I think I've been following her example.  Sort of.

What I'm trying to say is that, even though Mom's death was sudden and surprising, it really wasn't shocking. I don't, of course, feel that she's "in a better place"... But the vigorous, strong woman that was my Mom has been gone for a hell of a long time, already.  Besides the fact, that when Dad died she moved back to Oklahoma, 700 miles away (exactly, from my house to hers).  It's that that I haven't allowed myself to mourn. And my becoming convinced of the non-existence of anything supernatural was a wall between us. What had passed for closeness and depth in our conversations was revealed to me as silly speculations about somebody else's fantasies.  Urban-legend-quality moral explanations for the random terrible crap that occasionally happens is what the very best Bible stories are about - if they're worthy of any credence at all.