Squaring with a toxic mixture of love and hatred

[Billy]

I was born to drug addicts, crack for mom, heroin for dad. Dad was in and out (so to speak) for the early years of my life, he didn't become a concrete fixture until I was probably 5. One of my earliest memories was being sent with money into a crackhouse across the street from our apartment (we lived in subsidized housing aka Da projects) to get my moms drugs for her. "dont tell dad and dont look inside the package he gives you." It seems ridiculous to even try to defend that kind of a situation but I knew the house, my friend TJ lived there with his dad and his dads girlfriend. His dad was a crack dealer. My father as I said was strung out most of the time, he worked as a carpenter and also he beat people up for a small time loan shark. Another lovely childhood memory was sitting in my mothers lap in my dads car while he went to collect and the guy he was collecting from pulled a gun and traced it on my mother and I in the car. It was the 1st time I ever saw my father beat someone into the ground and take his wallet and gun.

 

Then my brother Ricky was born, roughly around 6 or 7 months premature. Open heart surgery, collapsed lungs, messed up eardrums, so on and so forth, I was 4 or 5. All I knew was that my mother was dying, my new brother was sure to die, and my dad just dropped my off at random relatives homes. They tried to push religion on me at that time and even back then I could tell how incredibly bullshit it was. If there was a god, he would not be murdering my mom and my brother. Even now I think back on this stuff and I am overwhelmed with grief, christ help me when I hear the song "Over the rainbow" Which played in its awful 8bit glory on some crappy windup toy my Memere  bought for Ricky.

 

So much pain, so much misery. It was like I was collecting the interest off of the misery my parents bore. They both grew up in broken homes without fathers. My mothers father an alcoholic womanizer left the family when she was barely 8 and my fathers father an alcoholic WW2 veteran who bombed his mothers home city in Germany committed suicide by putting his head in a gas oven when my father was 10. My father and his brother my Uncle Dan, found him there dead. And these things of course terminally stained my parents minds.

 

That is no excuse, just some background info. 

 

Ricky and mom did survive just barely, but we still all bear the scars.  I feel traumatized by these things. Even now just nearly 33 years old. I feel helpless in the dark in the broken silent moments of night as I lay awake. Swimming in these memories and thoughts, love, anger, hatred and then guilt. SO much guilt. Guilt for the things I suffered, guilt for the things I have done in response. Guilt for being cold and hard towards my fellow man and my family after I survived such insane fucking reality. I could probably reduce most people along with myself to tears, there is so much of this shit. I recall vividly still being molested by a neighbor who lived next door. Another sadistic fucked up depraved drug addict. These are the kind of people our culture produced. I held that in for 30 years before I told anybody, by the time I told my mother she cried... she cried and cried and I stood there, cool and indifferent. Feeling guilty that this data would make her cry. Its why I didn't ever want to tell anybody, but the secret was literally tearing my mind apart after holding it for 20+ years. And in heated angry moments, shouting at my mother as she stared at me, eyes aghast in denial and incredulity  all she could mutter was that life didn't come with instructions. Which is of course true, and also part manipulation. She is incapable of being responsible, and that only enrages me further. To the point where I will be standing over her berating her like her own mother should have been back then.

 

Mom was  stuck on illegal drugs at least until she began doctor shopping, and it is my belief that she had been on prescription drugs for the majority of my life. Dad got clean, I remember when it happened. I don't know what sparked it, no one ever told me. But one day I was sent off to live with my insane aunt Cindy in another ghetto, Ricky was sent off to stay with my aunt Sally and Colby our younger brother was sent off to stay with our fathers best friend and the only "Uncle" i ever knew Chuck.  I dont remember how long it took but during this time I got really into my 1st real addiction. Nintendo. 

 

Well living in the ghetto is bad, not to a childs mind. There was certainly a lot of other kids to play with and being the 80s crack epidemic there was no shortage of skinny teenagers with pillow sacks filled with 5 dollar NES carts. I plunged head 1st into the 8 bit realities Miyamoto had constructed for me and it was there that I found some sort of semblance of normalcy. Mom and dad are fighting? Mario Brothers, Mom tried to stab dad with a kitchen knife? Legend of Zelda, Ricky nearly dead? Metroid.

 

It was then I believe that I learned to pacify myself with fantasy and imagination. There wasnt much else to do.

 

****

 

At this point I am very well aware dear readers how much jumping around I am doing, and I will try to bring this to a head in a bit, but I apologize in advance for the jittery nature... there is SO SO much dysfunction that its hard to just lay it all out in order, especially when much of this stuff happened to me before the age of 10.

 

I was cursed / blessed with a very deep and vivid memory. All my life people have called me an information sponge. 

 

Anyway...

 

Folks ended up getting clean, well sort of. Dad was and is still an Alcoholic and mom has been on narcotic prescriptions. They never got rid of the addictions, just the illegal aspect of fulfilling them.  Thanks government!

 

We ended up moving when I was in 3rd grade to a very nice town. They still live there to this day. 

It was a move I dont think I ever recovered from. I recall in the old hood having more friends than I could count. And while yes most of them are now dead or in jail i at least had people to talk to.  In our new town I had a very very difficult time making friends. They just didn't get me. They all had cold lunches packed with care, and cute fluffy dogs and parents without drug addictions and solid jobs, they sat around and talked about the future and how their days went. Their moms and dads did their homework with them, they reminded me of everything I never had. Although I learned how to lie quite well about those things. How to deny to myself and others how horrible broken my family was. I even had people convinced that my life was better. but I secretly hated them, I despised them. I thought they were weak, and self centered. They wished their mothers and fathers dead for not buying them gameboys or for taking them on long boring trips to Florida to the beach... I have still never been to Florida.

 

I became isolated. Obsessed with dark things, horror movies, monsters, demons, guns, and death. I projected myself into dark antihero roles like the Punisher, Blade or Ghost Rider. Because Superman was a bitch, when the hell did superman ever suffer? He was not a real hero. Its not hard to be a hero when you're indestructible. I liked antiheroes. Dark heroes. People who were broken like me who didn't just want to save the innocents like children from dark forces but who wanted to take those dark forces and torture them. Not jail them. Torture them. Cut their skin off piece by piece, give them an IV so they wouldn't die so I could prolong the torture. I realized I was sick. I kept myself, to myself. Even today, if I ever came across that guy who molested me as a kid. I would kidnap him and torture him until he begged me to end his life, and then I would prolong it even longer. This is the result of holding in anger like poison for an entire life. You stare into the void and eventually the void stares back into you. I cannot deny this part of myself.

 

It is a stain that has lasted all my life. And it has spilled into every facet of that life. People know me as dark minded, maybe evil. But not chaotic evil, more of a lawful evil. Its not true of course, in fact I don't want to hurt anybody and it was those feelings that made me cling to rationality. Like benchmarks of land in a sea of molten fiery emotions that I could navigate from. Bless Marcus Aurelius for introducing me to Stoicism.  If I hadn't figured out how to get my feelings in check, I would have turned mass murderer long ago.

 

It didn't help that talking was just something we didn't do at home. To my parents talking meant they talked and I did what they said. Which lead me to my 1st survival instinct in life. Never tell mom or dad anything. I still abide by this. 

 

*****

 

Now to the crux of this screed, I am fully aware now of how broken my emotional background is. I haven't even let but a drip of the hellish soul crushing damnation of my life out here... in fact I don't even know how I could. We would need 33 years worth of text to get a scope of my life.

 

But I come to the conclusion that my feelings are out of control. Which is why I so tightly clamp down on them. But the clampage manifests in other ways, anxiety, rage, random crying etc. And hatred... so much hatred, the wounded broken heart of a small boy who was failed by every institution that was supposed to protect him. How do you square with the toxic cocktail of hatred and love?

 

The love of consciousness, the love of what little family I had, the longing for a time when things were simpler, when were were broken but together. Now that we are all older and rarely see one and other it weighs heavily on me.  We all love each other but cannot say it, we hate each other but wont say it... I don't know how I should feel anymore.  Once I broke free from the mind mold of my control freak parents especially Dad, I felt adrift in an ocean of confusion. Is this just adulthood? Why do I hate and love everything? Why do I want to see everything burn but fight these feelings back in the name of reason? I feel like a collapsing star being held up by that last bastion of nuclear forces as the gravity of reality crushes me in all directions. I am paralyzed with thoughts and indecision. 

 

Thanks for reading.

[cherapple]

I come to the conclusion that my feelings are out of control. Which is why I so tightly clamp down on them. But the clampage manifests in other ways, anxiety, rage, random crying etc. And hatred... so much hatred, the wounded broken heart of a small boy ....

 

I don't know how I should feel anymore.  .... I am paralyzed with thoughts and indecision. 

 

First of all, I want to say that I'm really sorry for the hell hole of a life that your parents gave you. What you describe is godawful insanity, which no child should ever be exposed to, or forced to endure. 

 

Second, healing from it will come with checking your conclusions. All of them. One by one. Slowly and gently, and in as much time as you need to do so. "I've come to the conclusion that my feelings are out of control." Your parents and your childhood were out of control. Your feelings were and are a rational, sane response to hell.

 

"I tightly clamp down on them." Your parents tightly clamped down on them. They attacked your feelings. They didn't respond to them or you. They didn't take you into consideration at all, or treat you as important to their choices and decisions. They ignored your feelings and neglected you. You doing so to yourself now is just a "skill" you learned in order to adapt to and lesson the impact and terror of what your parents put you through.

 

You have every right to hate your parents, and the world. It makes sense that you would. It is not a problem with you. It is a healthy response to how you were treated. 

 

"I don't know what I should feel anymore.... I am paralyzed with thoughts and indecision." There is no "how you should feel." You feel what you feel, and now you are free to feel and talk about it. Posting here just the beginning. Have you seen a therapist? If not, find one and just start talking. Find people who will listen and who want to hear about you. Most of all, listen to yourself. Write, journal, talk. Do now what you couldn't, or weren't allowed to do, as a child. That is how you undo the paralysis. 

[Wesley]

I am so sorry for what you had to go through. I felt a lot of sadness and anger reading your post. No child should be subject  that that crap.

 

There is no "how you should feel." You feel what you feel, and now you are free to feel and talk about it. Posting here just the beginning. Have you seen a therapist? If not, find one and just start talking. Find people who will listen and who want to hear about you. Most of all, listen to yourself. Write, journal, talk. Do now what you couldn't, or weren't allowed to do, as a child. That is how you undo the paralysis. 

For emphasis.