Serving Everyone In Need But Those Most Important To Me

My father exited my life when I was about 5 years old. I've got two dim and hazy memories of him and one crystal clear memory.

The dim-n-hazy: seeing him in an easy chair watching television; and being in the car with him driving somewhere while he talked with my mother.

The crystal clear: receiving a report when I was 18 - after a 13 year absence - that he could be found during the day playing checkers with the owner at a local convenience mart, trying to make contact with him at that convenience mart, and having his checkers partner flip up the closed sign on the business and lock the door when they saw me pull into the parking lot.  Although to this day I'm not certain it was my father, the elderly gentleman looked directly at me, then jumped up hurriedly and hobbled towards the back with his cane.  My father was disabled and walked with a cane as a result of Polio.

I spent the remaining years of my life navigating it without any contact, influence, guidance, or support from my father. Took me several years of counseling to get beyond the issues that any child would have from that, and I can't say for sure whether all the baggage from it has fully been shed - or unpacked and dealt with - yet.  I suspect not, but I'm okay with it today because I think my dad was scared.

And I understand that fear today and forgive my dad for his transgressions and mistakes, because one cannot change what is, nor can they really force change on anyone else but themselves  But one can choose not to allow the actions of others to dictate how they will feel, act, or react. 

Given this bit of history, I had hoped that in the lives of my own children, things would be different...perhaps not so much better or worse, just different because of the presence of their father in their lives.

Hasn't quite turned out the way I had imagined or envisioned it would be. 

Now don't misunderstand me here, I have a good relationship with two of my four children.  Of the other two, my youngest daughter has yet to try to reconnect with me after I was removed from her life as a result of my time in prison back in the 90s.  It's a long story I won't bore you with here but the germane kernel is that their mother was an employee of the state prison system in California and inmates, parolees and convicted felons cannot have any contact with prison staff.

Off topic slightly, but this is one of the reasons Peers in recovery find it so difficult to provide recovery support services to inmates directly inside the criminal justice system (where of course it would do the most good).

For reasons I'm sure my ex considers valid and good, she simply blocked all attempts of contact by me through family and mutual friends to see the two youngest children of my four.  I've since reconnected with my youngest son, and that is a beautiful beautiful thing.  But my youngest daughter remains aloof and unapproachable, for reasons unknown to me. My door is open to her and I have conveyed that I will not disrespect her wishes to avoid me, but I'm here for her when or if she ever decides she'd like to know who her father is. I do know she is attending a university and hoping to become a veterinarian, and my pride knows no bounds for what she's working to accomplish - on her own, just like her father.  

Of my oldest two, my senior daughter is a "daddy's girl." We've certainly had our challenges, and she has the temper, the impatience, and the smarts of her father.  We are very much "birds of a feather" and I cherish our relationship because we've had to do a lot of work together to make it happen.  That work continues to this day, but I think overall, we're in a strong and good place together and it gets better with every passing day.

My firstborn son is the biggest challenge of them all, and as painful as it is to say it,  the utter debacle that is our relationship has apparently been so traumatic to him that he might just be better off without ever having me in his life again. I can say without equivocation or hesitation that when I compare his rage, hatred, and pain over his perception of our relationship and the blame he places on me for the choices he's made in his life to the blank nothingness of the abandonment by my own father, I'd choose abandonment.

With abandonment, I was able to early on realize that there was just one person responsible for my lot in life; me. I was forced at a very young age to take that responsibility on, to recognize that I was in control of my own destiny, and I would succeed or fail based not on the successes or failure of others, the help or lack thereof from family, but only of myself.  If there was anyone to "blame" for the challenges, failures, or difficulties in my life, it could only be me, because I had been forced to navigate life on my own.

In fact, by the time I was in my mid-twenties, I'd come to the realization that the small extended family I did have around me wasn't worth the pain and misery that accompanied a relationship with them, and struck out on my own completely in a sort of abandonment of them of my own.  To this day, I consider that one of the best decisions I've ever made, by the way. 

While many external factors impact a person when living in poverty, ultimately the person navigating this world alone and independently is the only one who can change that.  I could point multiple fingers at the myriad of people and systems that "failed" me growing up.  I could seethe in rage, drown my pain and anguish in the blur of drug induced haze, and I could find a thousand and one excuses for why I couldn't accomplish anything in my life as a direct result of all those "other" people throwing challenge after challenge and barrier after barrier in front of me.

But what good would that do me?  At the end of the day, I'm still the one who must affect the change that sets me on the proper course.  Perhaps the biggest thing I learned in navigating my own way is that most of the shortcuts I tried to get myself ahead were miserable failures.  With those shortcuts comes a subversion of one's moral and ethical compass, and of all the slippery slopes I've ridden on, the slide into corruption of one's core values is the most dangerous, for the self and others.

I've taken the hundreds of thousands of painful, difficult lessons I've learned over the past 54 years and coupled them with a very good eduction, both from the street and from institutions of "higher learning," and I've tried to figure out how best to share them with others in a way that respects and honors their humanity, provides them with the benefit of the doubt, and suspends all judgment of them for any mistakes they've made along the way to their point in time with me.  I'm not perfect here, and continue making my own mistakes on a daily basis, so it would be pretty damned hypocritical of me to stand in judgment of anyone else, yes?

I've not gotten any smarter, perhaps a little wiser, but most importantly I realize that there is no black and white when it comes to dealing with each other and the past is nothing more than a set of guideposts to help you avoid making similar mistakes in the future.  I've got a boatload of experiences I am willing to share with others that might provide a little food for thought and some may find helpful as they navigate their own lives.  Apparently these have been valuable to some; it's why I am doing the work I do today with others who are struggling to find their way in life.

But the hardest thing for me to do is to watch those I brought into this world blame and hate me so much for their own difficulties in life that they can't see past it enough to allow  me an opportunity to try and improve that journey together.   

Perhaps my own father was on to something. Abandonment did have with it some of the most important lessons for survival and personal responsibility I've ever found. Given the horrific hatred and blame my oldest son has for me, maybe it would have been a much better option for him, too.