The gods wait to delight in you

I cried last night. God damn that felt good. I realized today that it’s been ages since I last shed a legit tear and that can’t possibly be a good thing. Post-divorce, when therapy was life changing/saving, virtually anything could get me to emote. A well-timed car commercial might have done the trick.

And that was in stark contrast to my life pre-divorce. Emotions weren’t an option for me growing up. It wasn’t so much the “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” routine, but more the tears are something for you to shed on your own, in your room, with the door closed.

And that started, in all likelihood, with my mom’s dad dying when my mom was 7. Her mom closed her door and grieved by herself. My mom got to talk to her 7 year old self in the mirror saying, “daddy can’t be dead.”

Would you look at that? My tear glands are working again. I wouldn’t wish that shit on anyone. The death was bad enough, but the trauma that followed was worse. How could my mom possibly know how to grieve on her own at such a young age? To not have her feelings validated had to be an incredibly helpless and scary feeling.

And I think with both her and my dad, there’s this recognition that what they went through as kids wasn’t okay. And there is certainly empathy for that. But, the part that I can’t wrap my head around is how then, when you’re an adult and you know how hard your childhood was, do you still pass on unhealthy and mind-fucking family traditions?

The depth of how that played out for me isn’t the point of this, so I’ll stick with just the lack of emotions piece. It was 100% learned behavior from a very young age for me that crying or emoting in any way wasn’t going to fly. I shut down.

Like in a “this is not normal” way. My sister told me the story of me getting in trouble with my grandma. Apparently she screamed at me non-stop as I did my punishment of hand-washing my dirty socks in the sink. My memory of that…zero. My reaction to my grandma…eerily calm (according to my sister).

So, somewhere in there, things shut off completely. Somewhere back there, I blocked the worst of my shit out. Which, I’m sure, was purely a survival technique that my young mind came up with in the same way that my mom figured her own ways out of her childhood trauma.

So, even well into adulthood, emotions just were not a thing for me. Nothing moved me. Times when any normal human would have some kind of “This is Us” tears streaming down their face moment, I’d be fucking Dexter. Cold blooded. I mean, I cared about things. And was super religious, but moving me to tears was next to impossible.

Enter Dr Grace Ketterman. Holy shit man. The tears I cried that first time I met with her. I’ll never cry like that again. I was so beaten down. In the darkest place of a life that had had a few other painfully shitty places.

And the thing that got me with her was so simple...she listened. She took the time to hear me at a time when I was getting fingers wagged in my face non-stop by my church friends. And it was the most surreal feeling when what I felt was understood. She saw what I saw. She knew I needed a way out and she was that.

I really don’t know how things would have played out if she hadn’t popped into my life. I had shut down. Wasn’t talking to friends. Wasn’t able to see the kids much, if at all. It was fucking brutal.

So, to get a post on facebook last night where a friend of mine quoted a poem I’d put on facebook that she shared with her brother a few weeks before suicide took his life. That was too much. The tears came. And are coming harder now. I know how dark life was. I know the hope that Dr Grace gave is not a gift that everyone gets. I feel incredibly lucky while at the same time incredibly heartbroken for those that aren’t able to find the light that gets them past those moments of extreme darkness.

I’m here today in large part because of my therapist. I get to be a dad. I get the constant joy of watching the kids grow up. And that’s the piece that really got me. There’s a line in the poem that goes, “the gods wait to delight in you.”

I have a blog that has almost every facebook post I’ve ever made about the kids. I hope one day they see that collection as “my dad delights in me.” I know I fuck stuff up. And I’m sure there’s a ton of stuff that I don’t even know that I do that effects them negatively.

But, I hope to god that they get that the old family traditions are done. We’re not strong and we shouldn’t be silent. Cry when you need to. talk your way through shit. Or write it out. I’m there to grieve with you and walk with you through your darkest days.

Now, that in theory vs that in practice could be an entirely different thing. Who knows how they’ll want to handle the difficulties life throws their way, but holy crap do I hope they know I’ve got their back. I do. And I want to be there, but you know, teenagers, who knows what they’ll see as okay to share with dad.

I want their lives to be the flip side of how I came up. There’s this haunting lyric that Conor Oberst has, “scream if you want, no one can hear you.” That’s how my childhood felt. Fuck. That’s how my adulthood felt. Misunderstood. Or worse than that, just not listened to at all.

But, then along came the good doctor Grace. She was this line from the King’s Speech incarnate, “Those poor young blokes cried out in fear. No one was listening to them. My job was to give them faith in their own voice, and let them know a friend was listening.”

oh my god how i hope that i can be that for the kids and that they feel that from me. because, is there a worse feeling than crying out and having no one come to help? To know you’re in darkness and you just get an echo back of your own voice or a door shut on you, signifying that you’re on your own. Just the slightest glimmer of light means so much in those spaces.

And so, tonight anyway, I’m back to writing. I’ve been a fucking robot. I work all the time these days and don't take the time to write blog posts like this anymore. i’ve written a little bit lately, but went almost a year without writing at all. That’s so unhealthy for me. I have to write. For my own sanity and because it matters to the two or three people that end up reading my stuff.

i miss the good old days of giving zero fucks about people reading this and reacting in some kind of negative or judgmental way. i have to do this. it's how i find my people. story time about the real is my bread and butter and i've been fucking starving for real talk for way too long.

I had to shut down the old blog, because I feared it could be a negative thing in the hyper sensitive teenage years…as in, “your dad is a train wreck” could be not ideal for the kids to have to deal with if some random kid read my “just trying to fucking survive” material.

But, that’s the thing. This shit is paramount at that age. Yesterday was national suicide awareness day. The kids lost a classmate to suicide in 7^th grade. So, when it comes to this type of stuff and life bubbles up enough to move me to tears, I have to blog it out.

There are so many people crying out. and so many people not listening, because they’re too caught up in their own shit. These robotic go through the motions lives don’t cut it. let your kids cry out. let them emote. Give them safe space to do that. It just takes one fucking bad day for it to all be done. One fucking bad moment. No do overs.

I feel incredibly lucky to be here. I don’t think I was suicidal back in the immediate post-divorce space, but as I wrote that I think that’s naïve of me to say. I have no idea how much worse it could have gotten if my therapist hadn’t delighted in me. She encouraged my writing from day 1. She made me feel like she was my biggest fan.

And that’s what I went through childhood without. When you’re thrown to the wolves and left in the care of a known abuser, it’s pretty fucking hard to see the parents who sacrificed you as on your side at all, let alone as fans of your work.

But, you learn to survive. And you learn to call bullshit bullshit. And figure out that what you went through wan’t okay. And that it’s way past time to flip the script on the family traditions.

And you call it a good day when you make it through the day. And eventually light makes an appearance. And it’s overwhelming. Because, life had been so dark and cloudy. But, now there are leaves changing colors and sunshine and shit you never noticed before, because shame kept you pointed inward. There’s a whole big life out there.

Someone cares. Talk. Write. Fucking scream. Wear your heart on your sleeve long enough to find the other people who are like you. The past is over. the best is yet to come. Hold the fuck on, because the gods wait to delight in you.

Here’s that poem...

Laughing Heart

By Charles Bukowski

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.