COMFORTABLY NUMB

Smiling.

I remember that Edgar's background makes mine look like a field of wildflowers. Not to nudge him to talk, but that his is part of the accumulated experience here.

As many of you know, I have vowed to one day journey to California long enough to urinate on my stepfather's grave. He put me inside cardboard boxes, which he sat on while training a water hose in my face. He sat me in a chair and belittled me by the hour. It's quite an experience to eat unseasoned beans for dinner, then to be awakened by the aroma of your stepdad frying himself a steak. Humiliating to wear pants so threadbare and worn the zipper won't stay closed in the classroom, and no underwear to put on. Pretty terrifying to be awakened by a two hundred seventy five pound man trying to force your 16 year old brother to fight it out with butcher knives. After Mom got him out of the house at last he spent a year trying to get back in. This time she stood firm. Once he came and took me and my next younger brother to see the annual parade. He knew how I worshipped Hopalong Cassidy. Well, Hoppy was in the parade on his white horse, Topper. Pinky Lee was there, but we ignored him. After it was over, my stepdad asked me a question. I didn't hear him. He repeated it three or four times, but I simply became incapable physically of hearing him speak. Finally, to end it, I replied, "I don't know." Later, I asked my brother what he was saying. "He asked if you wanted him to come back to live with us."
One day, he cursed my mother over the phone, using profane language. In those times, operators heard our conversations, and what he did was against the law. He went to jail. Mom bought us train tickets to Corpus Christi, Texas. The day we were to board and haul ass, here he came in the driveway. Mom said we were moving across town and he bought it. That afternoon, we were rolling, never to see his sorry butt again.
He went on to start up a restaurant. Closing up alone one evening, he had a stroke. After nearly three days, he was found and taken to the hospital. His right side remained paralyzed and he lay in the bed more than a year before passing away.

Nod to edgar..
well, ok, bow...

What a great song Gus. So unlike the other Youngbloods stuff.

Once in Texas with my mother's family, you might expect things would have gotten better, but we lived on my 16 year old brother's pay of $1 per hour the first year. Then I quit school to work also, for a relative who kept more than half of the $7 per day he owed me. Why not quit the relatives and work for somebody else? Easy for you to say. When you have been browbeaten daily, with every support kicked out from under you, you have no esteem, can't look someone in the face long enough to ask for a job. So I worked for this relative, then that one, being called stupid and getting ridiculed for every move once again. By the time some other brothers also quit school and started to work, I had reached the limit. With three dollars in my pocket I began hitch hiking. I spent one of those dollars for a book to read on the way. Once back in California, I saw it would be hard to even get a toehold, so joined the Navy. After getting discharged, I spent the last five years of the 60s involved in civil rights and antiwar activities.

I little knew my father before i was an adolescent, which was just as well. He is one of the most intelligent people i've ever met. He graduated cum laude from a private university, and summa cum laude from that same university's law school. My Aunt, his sister, tells of how he and his friends, and she and her friends, gathered at a resort in upstate New York after their respective graduations (he from law school and she from a Catholic university), and heard the news of the invasion of Poland.

My father entered a good law firm--he had specialized in corporate and constitutional law, considered to be a savvy move during the FDR administration--but apparently developed no loyalty, or engendered no loyalty, as he did not return there after the war. During the war, he was trained as an artillery officer, and he met my mother in England, where they were married in the spring of 1944. My mother landed at Normandy with a field hospital, and my father landed later with Patton's Third Army. Because George Marshall and FDR planned for the aftermath of the liberations of Europe (unlike the current administration's hash in Iraq), my father was identified as a lawyer, and transferred to civil administration. My mother was discharged in early 1945, and my eldest brother born in that year.

Returning to New York, my mother and father had four children in the space of just over five years. There was something there, although it was not to last. The photographs of them with friends at 21 or the Coca Cabana seem so strange to me, and i don't know the people in them, although i recognize the faces. We lived in the Bronx, and i was born in Manhattan a few years after the war. My mother left my father when i was still quite young, and we went to live with my maternal grandparents.

My mother's father was the light of my life. He was a station master and telegrapher with the railroad. Although it would seem he would have no spare time, he did in fact have spare time, and in that time he was a printer, prining bank and school stationary (deposit slips, checks, report cards, attendance reports, etc.), as well as keeping a "second-hand" store, which is what antique stores were once named. I have written much about my grandparents both here and at AFUZZ. My grandmother loved me, in her own resentful way--my mother i hardly knew. My sister once tried to shame me by retailing a family story that at age five or six, when asked who "that girl is," with my mother indicated, i had replied: "That's the girl who goes to work"--and that this had "broken my mother's heart." I have never felt that children are to be faulted for telling the truth as they know it, and that incident only confirms that belief on my part. It was not my fault that she had made the choices she did in fact make, and i suffered as much because of them as she. My grandfather was uncritically loving, and was therefore my salvation. My mother and grandmother were anything but--my earliest memories are of shouted abuse and very pointed misanthropy. We were "bad" because first, we were male, then because we were Irish (which ignored their own Irish heritages), and most especially because were were __________ (insert my father's family name in the blank). I was told on at least a weekly basis that i was lazy, no good and would never amount to anything. There were things much, much worse which went on as well, but i will not recount them.

My grandfather helped me to preserve a modicum of sanity, and he trained my mind as best he was able in the time available. He taught me to read before i reached the age of four. He trained my memory and introduced me to a wider world through books and magazines (he possessed every issue of Colliers and Liberty). Without him, i don't know if i could have survived the abusive atmosphere in which i was raised.

He retired after forty-four years with the railroad when i was seven. When i was nine, he had a stroke, and he was dead by the new year after my eleventh birthday. Without that anchor, but with a growing body and mind, i became a child out of control. My youthful rebellion was not the pro forma rebellion of all adolescents in comfortable circumstances (my grandfather had always assured that we lacked for nothing, while my extremely wealthy paternal grandparents seemed to see us as an annoyance, and were ever suspicious that we were after their money). I was thrown out of the house when i was thirteen. I went to live with my Aunt, my father's sister. My father was by that time a confirmed alcoholic, and had not worked since about the time of my birth--he lived on hand-outs from his father, and later the inheritance from his parents. He was more abusive of my aunt than i had ever seen any man act toward a woman. In the home in which i was raised, women were the highest authority, and people to genuinely fear. At age sixteen, i assaulted him, phsyically threw him out of my Aunt's house, and stood at the door to prevent his re-entry. Born in 1916, he is now a very old man, and i do not know if he is still a hard drinker. He and i have not seen one another since 1969, and have exchanged correspondence on a single occassion in the last 36 years. I do not now know his address or his circumstances.

My grandmother was a strange case. Her older sister, my greataunt (born in 1889, she is long gone) once told me that at the time when their mother proposed marrying for the third and last time, my grandmother, then an adolescent girl, made their lives Hell, and only "allowed" the marriage after having secured terms. From her adolescence onward, i suspect that no one opposed her--she certainly brooked no opposition. My mother and her twin were born more than sixteen years before the birth of their final daughter, and one suspects much from that fact--although i know nothing of the cause with certainty. Although once again my mother was responsible for her own choices, the origin of her hatred of men was more obvoius than that of my grandmother. For my entire life, i have had trouble taking men seriously as authority figures. They do not frighten me, and they have nothing in their arsenal of arbitrary powers to compell me against my will. On the other hand, it has taken me nearly my entire life to reconcile myself to the notion that women are not intrinsically evil and manipulative beings whose only pleasure lies in tormenting the male of the species.

My life has been hard at many times, and no one to blame but myself. When i was younger, i resented that other children of "good" families had a support network which i lacked. Age and a very little maturity has lead me to see that as a "sour grapes" exercise--nothing i have ever done or can do now can change the circumstances and the consequences.

I was briefly an outrageous binge drinker in my teens, and then when i first entered university, but it did not last. In the Army, i hardly drank at all. But in university and the Army, i began to use "recreational" drugs. I have "tripped" literally hundreds of times--now, you couldn't get me to indulge in that particular passtime for all the tea in China. In the mid-70's, i began binge drinking again. I do not care to relate to what extremes of depravity that took me. When i reached 40, i began to see (as i probably already knew deep inside) that my "friends" were only drinking companions. When i gave up the booze, gradually at first, but soon abruptly and completely, my suspicions were confirmed. I have had very few friends since that time, and have made more and better friends in the "virtual world" than in real life. It is good that i did not pursue the path to marriage and a home life, because i would have been a miserable failure as a parent and spouse.

One cannot recall the years past to amend them, but one can amend oneself with a due regard for the lessons which we have learned, or ought to have learned, from our life's experience. I hope that i have, at least mostly, done so.

Wow, this thread has really taken off.
Thanks for the kind words .
But I do have to say -
it isnt the life experiences that MAKE a person good, bad, or what have you.. It is what they learn from them . How they apply those lessons and how they strive to make themselves greater no matter the circumstances.
Many great people have been delt shitty beginings, and shitty lives. It is who they BECOME, that makes them great.
Edgar being a shining example . Have you ever considered writting a book?

I missed the question " are you like me"?
If that is a direct question from you Set, my answer is yes. Alot like you.
I strive for sobriety every day. I wear my addiction on my sleeve . For the very reason that, if I dont pay attention to it, and i get the false sense of having conquered it, I will fall back into the person who would rather be high or drunk then happy and healthy. This is a driving force for me and something I can never 'get over'.
In that sense, i think i am exactly like you.. :-)

Listening/bookmarking.

Shewolf--you are spot on about what you do with your life, despite the hardships, whatever they may have been. What has impressed me about this thread is that noone has whined or blamed anyone for who they became. Upbringing, hardships have been noted, but there has been no whining, no poor me.

I can't go into detail about my upbringing, but there are times when I realize that the very best of me is in someway related to the very worst of what I experienced.

I had nightmares last night and was regretful that I had posted on this thread. After reading it again, I'm glad to have it out, as much as I can, and looked at in the light of day.

Thanks Setanta. Yes, I am, in some ways, like you.....except prettier. :wink:

bm. Excellent thread to which I must return after helping Bear set up his gig for tonight.

Well now, don't be silly . . . i'm not prettier than you . . . not by much, anyway . . .

I can't really boast of any character building hardship in life after reading the history here of others. I'm in awe of your persevering spirits.

Homeless - No.

Penniless - Yes, but always knew something would come through and that I would be provided for. It always did somehow, even if it meant a two mile walk to a night shift at McDonalds so I could be assured of a free meal.

Lonely - Sure. I have 9 siblings, but there were times of being lonely. Even with Bear and I spooning in our bed, there have been times I have felt very alone.

I've never hopped a train. I've never run away. I've never been without a safety net. I've never been hungry due to lack of money for food. I've never been addicted and been forced to fight that tiger. I've never been without love of family and friends.


At the moment I'm feeling a bit as if I haven't really lived.

Need I add, I became an alcoholic? Breaking the addiction was among the hardest things I've done.

This has been a very moving thread. Despite the hardships that many people have experienced, it seems it hasn't beaten the humanity out of you. I'm grateful for the opportunity to hear these stories and grateful that the stories have been told honestly and without bile.

I can't speak for the others, but, I am leading a contented life.

I'm with you there, Edgar. I couldn't have let anyone close enough even ten years ago to have left everything for the man I love. It took 'til I was sixty. Slow learner, but it was worth it!

I was married once to a terribly abusive man. The abuse and control starts slowly, you barely know it's happening. After four years I was staring at the business end of an M16. It scared the living crap out of me and I actually fainted. This seemed to take the edge off his fury, but he left a few hours later and took my son with him.

He had broken his hand during the argument that lasted several hours. Only for the grace of God, he drove over to see my mother and father to look for sympathy. My mother offered solace and told him he should leave the baby with her and go get checked out at the hospital. As soon as he left, she called me......I had been sitting in the same place I was in when he left trying to figure out exactly what happened. But when I heard her voice asking me "Just what the hell did he do to you last night" I had to face up to reality. I drove to her house immediately and never spent another night with that man. He was confused by my decision and asked me what was I looking for, and at the age of 27 I said "Peace of Mind".

It was the best decision I ever made, even if it took some prompting to do it.

fascinating stories.

So I'm not the only one who came from a dysfunctional family.
That in itself is a bit of a relief!

glitterbag - so many women I have known endured abuse instead of walking out on it. Congratulations for making the move.