Insight

For the better part of my life I have thought of myself in terms of not quite measuring up. I didn't graduate high school, instead I dropped out and got my GED. I don't have a bachelor degree. I started college and am in fact halfway towards a bachelor degree but have not finished it. When I began my career with the state I moved up rather quickly but then stalled out. I am frequently tardy, I miss a lot of days. Whether there are mitigating circumstance or not these are the facts and it is by these facts that I judge myself. It is very hard to succeed if what you are aiming for is someone else's ideal for you. Let me explain.

My dad and I have had, for the greater part of my life, a very stormy and strife filled father/daughter relationship. There is very little in my father's life that he does not claim dominion over. He has said that I am the only thing in his life he isn't able to control. Well, that just isn't so. So long as I allow him to set the standard I judge myself by he is in complete control. I just realized that tonite. I'm a little slow, I do realize this.

I have labored under the knowledge that while my dad has his flaws, just as we all do, he has led his life with a high degree of perfection. I have set him as the standard by which I judge myself. I did not see this until just now.

My mom and I are closer than we have ever been but my relationship with my dad is pretty much unchanged. I finally learned how to avoid open warfare in the last 10 years. He honestly believes that he is absolutely correct on 98% of his opinions and feels that my life would be vastly improved if I would just get in tow. He also believes that any question about my life any aspect that he wishes to scrutinize is his business. For a very long time I accepted this as fact. It was very liberating for me when I awoke to just how false that assumption is. It has been quite some time since I actually justified myself to him verbally. I did not however evict him from my head.

I struggle with this as much as I do because of the physical abuse. He would beat and intimidate me with his physical force starting some time around first grade all the way through sixth. When I was eleven he decided the only solution to his problem was to evict me from his life. He placed me in a children's home. If you are unfamilair with these types of institutions let me give you a crash course. Children's homes are where kids who have been removed from their own homes either because their parents lost custody of them or because run ins with the law brought them there. I was the only child I ever met who was simply taken to the pound because I became an inconvenience. That is such a harsh way to look at ones self but I believed for years that I was disposable and of very little merit.

Two years later my mother had had enough. She had made a new friend who taught her how to put her foot down. Taught her that she too could be a force to be reckoned with. She brought me home my father be damned. Thanks to the loving care provided for me by my father I had been raped at the age of eleven, was introduced to drugs and learned how to fight. The only thing I learned that was of any value was how to stand up to bullies, I never again allowed him to hit, kick or beat me. With the women in his house on the revolt flexing their new found power my father's life can only be summed up as pure hell. I took every opportunity to punish him and my mother no longer stood united with him where I was concerned.

It is little wonder that my dad plays such an important role in my process of self-evaluation. I have done what abused kids do. I emulated his characteristics and behavior in an effort to self-protect. When abused children do this it is because they feel powerless and mimic their abuser in an attempt gain power over their situation. This did nothing to improve relations between my father and I. Seeing the poorer aspects of our own character in the other we were quick to point fingers and our conversations almost always ended in heated screaming arguements. Between the ages of 13 and 17 I ran away a half a dozen times, sometimes staying gone for over a week. I was kicked out of my private school on the suspicion I had engaged in sexual activity. I had been engaging but all they had was a note between me and a friend. For all the actual proof they I could have been bragging. Church of Christ, aint they something. The principal came over to talk to my parents. I overheard her suggest to them that I be sent to an institution. I didn't wait to hear my parents response. I was gone before she left. It was almost a month before I returned that time.

I didn't mean for this to be a trip down my childhood trauma but it feels very cathartic to do so. It has taken me years to realize that this does not define me. It wasn't until I worked with middle school children that I looked age 11 in the face. I remember the impact with which it hit me that in that situation I was not the adult. Coming to terms with abuse, looking at how it has shaped me and then choosing how to move forward with my new insight seems to be a continual process. Each time it has been very liberating. It has allowed me redefine myself if I so choose, how I will react to threatening situations, people in general and most of all gaining a clearer picture of who I actually am.

So where has all this been leading. Now that I see it, I don't know why I didn't see it before. My father has been wrong many times in his life. He has made actual mistakes, huge whopping mistakes. When he was my age he was divorced with two children. It was 30 years before his oldest daughter Nora would consent to be on speaking terms with him. The younger daughter Susan refuses to speak to him to this day. He went so far as to track down where she lived, she wouldn't even answer the door. I have never, ever fucked up that badly at anything. I have danced around this truth for years without ever seeing it for what it is. I am succeeding at something he could not. When he was at my age he gave up and walked away from a realtionship because it was just too hard. He gave up! I have faced infinately more trying circumstances with Tom and didn't run away just because life happened. I made a better, smarter, infinately more loving choice than he could have, than he did. The odds he faced with his first marriage don't compare, are insignificant when you consider I have stared the death of my husband in the face more than once. On a lighter note my first dog, my boxer Jazz was a pain in the ass. More than once I felt the rage he must have felt when he beat me. I know it is in me. It is impossible for it not to be there. I chose to take her to obedience classes. I chose to crate train her so she didn't pee all over the house. I went so far as to compete her in AKC obedience trials and she earned her Companion Dog title. I did not choose to beat her senseless. I did not choose to dispose of her when she became inconvenient.

I have defined myself all along. I just never saw it before. Knowing this means I have greater choice over my life. I can be, I can do whatever I choose. I've got lots of experience at it.

I need to examine my choices more critically. I see that I have made some choices I am not happy with. I really and truly am not a victim, not even of myself. I feel more than ever that the power to decide who or what I want to be and do resides squarely, soundly and solidly with me.