Every now and then I try to bond with my very difficult father.
I shared a note yesterday telling him my next novel is almost ready to submit to my agent.
As per usual, he ignored the notice (he calls it "parental envy", which keeps him from celebrating any success on my side) & sent along his usual random death notice, which always serves as a tacit lament about how his own life is near its end (and has been for decades)--implying that everyone needs to cater to his fears of mortality first.
there are so many who fit this description. 🥺
it's very sad to waste the opportunity that a precious human body provides even though struggling is part and parcel of it.
fragile and imperfect, but doing its best to carry us through to enlightenment.
@MLClark We can talk in DM if you wish, but publicly I just want to send you a virtual hug and assure you you're not alone. No matter what I accomplished, my father never once said he was proud of me or loved me. I was the bigger person, time and again opening the door, but he was determined to put me down.
I finally realized the problem was him, not me. There's only one judge of my life, and that's me.
My family is who I choose. You are in that circle. 😘
And you in mine, Stephen. Thank you for the risk of vulnerability with me, too. 💛 🤗
@MLClark I think part of his problem was he came from a broken home. He was raised poor in El Centro CA (near the Mexican border) during the Great Depression. His father died when he was eight. His mother remarried but was brain damaged in a car wreck when he was around 13 or so. He joined the USAF at age 18 and was shipped off to the Korean War.
I think he didn't understand what a healthy family was supposed to be like. Doesn't excuse his behavior, but explains it.
This is why I think we became such fast friends.
Some folks never get over treating their parents as failed gods.
But it's clear that you & I, & many others here, know that our parents were all too painfully human. My father was also a deeply broken person long before I arrived. Such parents make mistakes in keeping with not being anywhere near ready for the responsibilities they took on.
I'm so thankful I get to know the person your father helped create, for all his faults. 🤗
@MLClark And think about how many lives you change for the better every day.
When I was in police work, so many times we saw incorrigible teens from broken homes. Thankfully, none of my siblings turned out like my father, although we all have our demons.
We need to swap stories sometime in DM, preferably with multiple glasses of wine. 🍷🍷🍷
But the bottom line is we don't let the bastards beat us. That's what they want. He wanted me to be him, so he'd feel better about himself. He lost.
Drinking game for an open CoSoCall over a later VOY episode, is what I'm hearing! :D
But for now, again, thank you for finding your true self despite being dealt such a difficult opening hand. 🤗
You make the world a better place with your wonder and delight in the best of what we create, in science as in fiction, every day.
@MLClark My mom has expressed pride in me since I started helping her out financially since she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. 30 years ago?
"Mom, why won't you come over and see my first house, the life I've built?"
"I am jealous."
My dad says he's proud of me, but rarely. He now lives in a government subsidized retirement community and off social security only.
My sisters don't even acknowledge anything I've done. Jealousy, inferiority complex, you name it. I've lived it.
@MLClark in short, our family isn't close. 😂
🫂 This context just makes all the more extraordinary all the posts I've seen from you, in which you've named stressors in your life, and the ways that you act to surmount them.
You are *such* an incredible person, SAM, for having leaned into the value of self-care and ongoing personal growth despite so many figures cutting you down all along the way.
I'm very grateful to get to see you continue on that brilliant path today. Thank you, as always, for thriving as you are.
In my experience, if serious narcissism is involved, real change is unlikely. Usually, all that's left for us is some kind of acceptance of the loss, which ain't easy. There are no words to tell you how sorry I am you have to go through this.
It's a heartbreaking thing, among atheists.
He should know better, but he spent so much of his life raging against theism that he never built a better praxis for himself, of wonder for the brief time we get as conscious beings in the cosmos. It's possible to be atheist and still tethered to toxic religious models about what a life "should be".
I grieve routinely how much time he frittered away on cruelty, hate, & narcissim, when he could have deepened in delight at the wonder of life itself. 🌌