REFLECTIONS
That Conspiracy of Silence
Well, I’ve finally done it. Broken that silence and talked about being raised in an alcoholic home. It wasn’t easy. Right up to the moment the book went to press, I wanted to take my finger off the trigger, put the gun away and let someone else fire it when I was gone. But it’s out there now, and I’m feeling edgy, waiting. I feel it on so many different levels.
All of Dad’s immediate family have gone. Still not everyone who thought my father a wonderful man has gone. I can think of at least one, a formidable adversary, who might take offence.
And my siblings? Can they handle the truth, my version of the truth? That Irish pride keeping matters of shame secret may well be incited. I can only hope those annoyed react as Dad would have reacted. The silent treatment. I can handle that. But angry abusive phone calls. Nasty emails. Mmm. Con fortare esto vir.
In some odd way, their verbal abuse would carry the voice of my Dad. Even now, forty-five years since I left home, I feel a burden of fear talking about my father’s drinking. Is it that I’m afraid he will somehow find out and confront me? Afraid those aligned with him will take punitive measures on his behalf? Is the little boy inside, not yet completely assured?
As children we had a conspiracy of silence. We did not complain, and we certainly did not talk of my father’s drinking with others. Absolutely taboo. Because we didn’t want anyone to think something was wrong. Were we really protecting Dad?
And as adults, long after he has gone, we still keep the secret from others. For me, the truth is I was protecting myself. I didn’t want others to know my old man was a hopeless drunk, a man who had died penniless in a run-down boarding house. I didn’t want people to think there was something wrong with me by association. My pride kept Dad’s alcoholism private, lest others thought less of me, looked for signs of dysfunction and held reservations about my worthiness. And that is the main reason I have been afraid to tell the story. Afraid too of the anger others close to him will feel should my revelations arouse that same fear.
But, “When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to loose” (Bob Dylan). And old age brings me closer to that moment when I ain’t got nothing in this world to worry about. Closer to not giving a hoot what others think because in the end being precious and private about a story that can benefit others is selfish. The ridiculousness of my ego is beyond measure sometimes. I see it in others too. Guarded and secretive about their lives lest others discover they and their family are not perfect. The scandal of it all! When in reality no one really cares and all I’m doing is depriving someone of a good story they could have gained from.
Stephen Pokere, All Black, in addressing a group of Northland children about drug and alcohol abuse once said, “I never used drugs. A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man learns from the mistakes of others.” In that spirit, I’ve given up my Irish pride and laid it all out there in the hope someone learns from my mistakes and those of my father’s.
The Essence of my Book
If one man reads With a Father Like Mine and is convinced of the importance of being a good father, it will have all been worth it. When I ask myself about the essence of the book, my answer is: it’s in the subtext, and that’s all about the importance of being a good dad.
I was sharing the story line of my book with an in-law one night. “Well,” she said, “men from rough backgrounds often make good fathers.” And of course that’s true for those of us fortunate enough to find love with others who gently lead us to deal with the effects of a wounded spirit.
Goodness has a wonderful simplicity to it. Being a good dad is simply giving your son your attention, providing support and encouragement and giving a good role model. Having some major distraction like an addiction to alcohol or the need to make truckloads of money compromises that father-son relationship in ways that boy will struggle his whole life to compensate for.
It’s not hard to know when you’re talking to the product of a good father. There’s that tell-tale sense of security, stability and feeling of self worth that goes with having been loved and cared for. The heart of a boy who has been loved by his dad is at peace.
A boy from a loveless home or a home with little love, as I was, has a wounded heart. Wounded by a hole never filled by his father’s love. I see now when I left home I was on a mission: to find the love and approval I never found with my father; to quieten that restless heart.
The sons of good fathers have that strong inner core. They have confidence. They know they are adequate, acceptable and loveable. When life deals them harsh blows they have that inner core to go back to, an inner strength that enables them to recalibrate and keep going. They don’t have to overachieve to find a sense of self-worth, they know they’re okay because a good man told them that every time he made time to be with them, every time he supported them, every time he encouraged them.
Sons of troubled fathers leave home without that inner core. When life gets tough, we don’t have that centre of strength to go to. We fold and often resort to alcohol and drugs. As a boy I formed the false conclusion I was not worthy of Dad’s time. He hardly ever came to watch me play sport. He almost never showed an interest in my schooling. Therefore, he must have found me wanting.
I discovered worthiness through the love of my wife and children. Their support and encouragement have gone a long way to heal my wounded heart. The scar that has formed over that wound can still be sensitive but the love of a family surrounds and strengthens me to keep doing what is right and the old inherited ways of responding to hurts diminish in power and appeal with each passing year.
It’s true, men from rough backgrounds often make good fathers. Knowing the antithesis of a good father enables us to know what to avoid and inspires us to give what we never received. It’s not necessarily a given though. Men from rough backgrounds are more often poor fathers ourselves unless we have been able to correct those unconscious, unexamined scripts we left home with, which is what the text of my book is all about.
Those Poor Kids
Almost every human situation has its compensations. I recall as a boy being the subject of pity. Poor boy, his dad is an alcoholic. Hand wringing relations of my mother would inquire tentatively how we were doing, their eyes brimming with concern. But to me, as a boy, they all missed the point. Every coin has its flip side.
When your dad’s main focus in life is alcohol, and your mum is struggling to try and put food on the table, there’s not a lot of time for supervision. My brother and I were virtually free to go where we liked and do what we liked. There were no curfews, no need to say where we were going and no need to be home at a certain time. Dad and Mum had other things on their mind, like the next beer and survival. “Interfering” in our lives was low on their agenda. So long as there was no call from the police or irate neighbours, we enjoyed absolute freedom. For a boy, with a bike and a few dollars in his pocket, that freedom was intoxicating. When I observe my own sons and the close way they and their wives monitor their children’s every move, I realize how lucky we were. Fortunately we were never abducted, sexually abused, or killed in some terrible accident, though we came close. And when we did it was just another good story to tell. We wouldn’t have swapped our freedom for close supervision, ever!
And yes we often witnessed some ugly adult behaviour, but we had our ways of coping. When Dad lapsed into one of his filthy dry-drunk moods, it had no place in our bedroom where my brother would mimic him, biting down on his bottom lip, twisting his features into a ghoulish masks and repeating all Dad’s favourite expressions: “I’ll do you! I’ll do you!” “Go that way, go that way!” “You bloody no-hoper kids.” “I’ve had it with you.” “I’m wiping you all, all of you!” With exactly the same intonation, venom and passion. Adults creeping around the rest of the house in the funereal atmosphere created by Dad may have been concerned about the poor kids witnessing such a terrible rage, but in the kids’s bedroom, the new Billy T. James was holding court, and I would be in the death throes of hysterical laughter, sides aching, hardly able to breathe, begging him to stop.
It’s an amazing tribute to the power of ego that my brother and I, far from thinking we should be pitied, actually considered ourselves superior to kids from normal homes. Whenever we went to stay with relations we were disgusted by how easy they had it. Everything was so nice, correct and predictable. No drama, no tension and parental love of such monumental proportions, relatively speaking, it appeared to us smothering and sappy.
We may have come from a home where the food cupboards were often completely bare, a home where charitable organizations often called with food parcels. We may have been sent off to school on our first day in second hand uniforms. We may have lived in a state house in the poor part of town. Our dad may have sold vacuum cleaners or worked as the usher and cleaner in a movie theatre. But in our minds, we were better than others. We were better because we were tougher. At least that’s what we thought. Those rich saps with their easy living, what did they know about tough. It was the age-old poor man’s badge of honour: toughness, and our egos drew endless consolation from it. So much so that people pitying us confounded us. They didn’t get it.
We wanted nothing to do with anyone feeling sorry for us. We were okay, thanks, in the way a boy is always okay with all he knows.
But of course we weren’t. The adults were right and their concerns were warranted. A loveless home is not good for a boy. We were damaged, albeit at a subconscious level. At the time, with all the inborn adaptability of children, we coped. Part of that coping mechanism was believing nothing was wrong. It was only later, while in close, intimate relationships we were found wanting: all those unconscious, unexamined scripts established during childhood came back to haunt us.
Wanting to Break Out
One of the hallmarks of a family in which children are raised to do well is surely predictability : “certain certainties”: a time for meals, a time for bedtime, a time when the family can expect dad to return from work; food in the cupboards, shelter for the night and parents to watch out for the children’s best interests. It’s the matrix from which children can launch out into a world and deal with things that are not predictable and certain.
My childhood was unpredictable. I never knew when Dad would come home, whether he would come home drunk or sober, whether he would come home alone or with friends for an all night party. I could never predict how he would react to anything. And my mother was just as unpredictable. Living with Dad put Mum under enormous strain trying to survive on what little money was left from Dad’s drinking. She was completely distracted and on an emotional roller coaster. And as for food, shelter and parental support, it was a roll of the dice.
I did what all human beings do: I adapted and learned to live with the unpredictable. In fact my whole system evolved to actually like and need it. Paradoxically, unpredictability became the one predictable element of my childhood. Living with adrenalin and that feeling of being on edge became a habit. I wasn’t aware of it at the time but I realize now a part of me needed the drama and the excitement of unpredictability to feel “normal”.
As an adult that became a problem. I had to adjust to living with people who valued predictability and routines. They did not need to turn their worlds upside down and break out from time to time. Getting drunk or stoned did not appeal to them. They were happy to inhabit predictable lives free from drama. They finished their studies, they stuck with their jobs, they gained promotions, they stayed in relationships, and they didn’t have any record with the police.
I felt like a prisoner in their world. I needed to break free. Getting drunk did it from time to time. But that wasn’t enough. After two years of university, I couldn’t take it anymore and took to the road and found what had been missing in the life of the traveller. The road was full of the unpredictable. There was no routine. Members of my tribe were there. They, too, had found the calming effect of the road and I met and travelled with others whom I am sure grew up in alcoholic homes just like me, though we never talked about it.
Life on the road didn’t corner me and show up my flaws. Any time things got tough, I moved on. Any time a relationship aroused that wounded spirit it was hasta la vista. There was no real pressure to deal with my issues. Until I fell in love with someone who wanted a normal life. Someone who wanted to settle down in one place. Someone who wanted a close, intimate relationship with all the vulnerability and honesty that goes with it. Someone who wanted to raise happy, well-adjusted children. And that’s when all that woundedness I had kept hidden started revealing itself, and I was cornered. And I loved her so much, I had to stand my ground and try to deal with it.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Well if we’re talking overcoming the influence of an alcoholic father, then the answer to that question is: everything! There’s no way I could have changed without my wife’s constant and unbreakable love.
Once I married and had the responsibility of children, the first thing I had to work on was perseverance. There was no way I could leave a job, hoist up the backpack on my shoulder and hit the road every time things got tough. I had a wife and children counting on me.
“I will not quit” became my mantra, and I looked for inspiration anywhere I could find it. My go-to-theme in literature and movies became perseverance. I watched films like Papillon and drew inspiration from a man enduring hell and never saying die. I read books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the Gulag prisons and imagined myself there, refusing to give up. I trained for marathons and ran for hours without giving in to the body’s call for mercy.
And gradually I managed to change that default button that always headed for the road when life tested me. It was an epic battle waged in the silence of my heart. All I had ever seen as a boy was a father who went to the pub when things were tough. So often, in my mind, I imagined hitting the road and going back to the carefree life of the traveller. I listened to old Bobby Dylan and the traveller in me was stirred.
I cut off my hair and I rode straight away to a wild, unknown country where I could not go wrong.
Because I knew he was right. In an unknown country, you can’t go wrong: no one knows you, no one holds you accountable. And I sang along with him: Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow. With all the romance of the traveller in my heart. I longed to be free. But hung in there.
And then it became apparent, I had other work to do on a side of me I never really knew existed: a cruel, merciless side. If my wife hurt me, especially if she accessed old hurts from my childhood, I withdrew from her, for days. Would not speak. A cold, cruel silence I struggled to break from. When her love eventually broke the deadlock and I came back to myself, I hated what I had done and resolved never again. Easier said than done. I seemed powerless to change.
The oddest things could spark it. If she kept me waiting, she would return to cold fury. The response was over the top, unwarranted and irrational. My work as a counselor put me in touch with reading on the subconscious and I realized that abreactions are triggered by hurts from the past. What did it remind me of when my wife kept me waiting? A good question and one I immediately had the answer to: all those hours I had been left to wait in a car while Dad drank with his mates in the pub.
Slowly, over years, I drew back up from the past all the hurts of my childhood, like dormant volcanoes, resting in the subconscious ready to erupt with the right pressure from within. That was important. They lost power over me as my wife listened and loved the little boy still trapped in all that hurt.
The whole intricate process of healing a wounded spirit is long and complex. I’m sure there’s a spiritual element to it. I know forgiveness is important. Suffering is part of it, too. The older I get and the more I realize how Dad suffered the easier it is to forgive him. But the absolute essential in the process is someone’s love. If you have that gift you’ll make it to a new way of being, free of hate and hurt and cruelty.
So many of us from alcoholic homes never find that love or if we do we drive it from us with our wounded behaviour. And although we left home determined never to end up like our alcoholic parent we often do: alcohol and drugs ease the hurt. Ask an alcoholic or a druggie to stop and they’ll want to know what you’re offering as an alternative. The only alternative worth considering is love, love so powerful it can endure the cruelty of a wounded heart. Beyond human comprehension really. I found it and will always regard it as my greatest treasure. It has had almost everything to do with freeing me from the influence of an alcoholic father.
Manning up to the Hurts
What is the point of we children of alcoholics discovering those hidden, unconscious scripts and digging those deeply buried past hurts? Psychoanalysis has gone out of favour among therapists these days because research shows it does not effect change. Cognitive theory and behavioral modification have been proven to be more effective. Which begs the question: is digging up past hurts and revealing hidden subconscious scripts a waste of time?
Looking back on my own personal journey I agree that unearthing material lodged in the unconscious did not change my behaviour. I had to work on my attitudes and scripts and set up new ways of behaving to short circuit the way I was wired as a child.
And yet, I am pleased I came to know those hidden subconscious scripts driving so much of my behaviour. By knowing, for example, I was scripted to seek approval and inclined towards overachievement I was prompted to change it to: I am acceptable as I am. I do not have to overdo things.
Learning to talk about the hurts did not change my reaction to people unwittingly triggering them. I had to work on modifying that behaviour, the old silent treatment my Dad had taught me so well had to be changed for a willingness to keep relating to those who had hurt me. However, by talking about the hurts from my past, I did manage to quieten and comfort that little boy trapped in all that pain and those hurts lost their power over me. They healed over, leaving only scars.
So easy to write stuff like “learning to talk about hurts” but that process was an epic struggle for me. Like David I was armed with seemingly puny weapons while pitted against the Goliaths of pride, anger, shame in a society where a man doesn’t talk about being hurt.
I didn’t want to admit I came from a dysfunctional family. I spoke instead of my great-grandfather, the mayor of Otaki, of past family wealth, of family accomplishments. To find the humility to speak the truth, to let go as a man and weep tears I had kept locked in as a boy was a long journey.
I was also afraid of the terrible anger inextricably linked to the pain of a child’s perceived cruelties and injustices. Like the boy in the fable who removes the thorn from the lion’s paw, my wife had to proceed carefully and I was afraid of how I would react if she made one false move.
And I prided myself on being a bona fide member of New Zealand’s rugby culture. Rugby players never talk about personal hurts. Ever. Can you imagine it. Approaching the ref during the after match function. “Ah, ref, I was more than a little hurt by the way you kept penalizing me. Felt like I was being picked on. My dad used to do that.” Or talking to the coach after being put on the bench. “Ah, coach, I’m feeling rejected here.” No, it’s not going to happen, but a wounded spirit has to talk about it somewhere. The rugby way couldn’t be a family man’s way.
And in the end “seemingly puny weapons” like love for my wife and the desire to be free to be the best father I can be proved giant killers. But I don’t kid myself into thinking the battle is over and the giants completely vanquished. A scar can still be made to hurt. I have to be vigilant with those states that make me vulnerable. Hunger, anger, loneliness and fatigue are best avoided.
Well, I’ve finally done it. Broken that silence and talked about being raised in an alcoholic home. It wasn’t easy. Right up to the moment the book went to press, I wanted to take my finger off the trigger, put the gun away and let someone else fire it when I was gone. But it’s out there now, and I’m feeling edgy, waiting. I feel it on so many different levels.
All of Dad’s immediate family have gone. Still not everyone who thought my father a wonderful man has gone. I can think of at least one, a formidable adversary, who might take offence.
And my siblings? Can they handle the truth, my version of the truth? That Irish pride keeping matters of shame secret may well be incited. I can only hope those annoyed react as Dad would have reacted. The silent treatment. I can handle that. But angry abusive phone calls. Nasty emails. Mmm. Con fortare esto vir.
In some odd way, their verbal abuse would carry the voice of my Dad. Even now, forty-five years since I left home, I feel a burden of fear talking about my father’s drinking. Is it that I’m afraid he will somehow find out and confront me? Afraid those aligned with him will take punitive measures on his behalf? Is the little boy inside, not yet completely assured?
As children we had a conspiracy of silence. We did not complain, and we certainly did not talk of my father’s drinking with others. Absolutely taboo. Because we didn’t want anyone to think something was wrong. Were we really protecting Dad?
And as adults, long after he has gone, we still keep the secret from others. For me, the truth is I was protecting myself. I didn’t want others to know my old man was a hopeless drunk, a man who had died penniless in a run-down boarding house. I didn’t want people to think there was something wrong with me by association. My pride kept Dad’s alcoholism private, lest others thought less of me, looked for signs of dysfunction and held reservations about my worthiness. And that is the main reason I have been afraid to tell the story. Afraid too of the anger others close to him will feel should my revelations arouse that same fear.
But, “When you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to loose” (Bob Dylan). And old age brings me closer to that moment when I ain’t got nothing in this world to worry about. Closer to not giving a hoot what others think because in the end being precious and private about a story that can benefit others is selfish. The ridiculousness of my ego is beyond measure sometimes. I see it in others too. Guarded and secretive about their lives lest others discover they and their family are not perfect. The scandal of it all! When in reality no one really cares and all I’m doing is depriving someone of a good story they could have gained from.
Stephen Pokere, All Black, in addressing a group of Northland children about drug and alcohol abuse once said, “I never used drugs. A wise man learns from his mistakes. A wiser man learns from the mistakes of others.” In that spirit, I’ve given up my Irish pride and laid it all out there in the hope someone learns from my mistakes and those of my father’s.
The Essence of my Book
If one man reads With a Father Like Mine and is convinced of the importance of being a good father, it will have all been worth it. When I ask myself about the essence of the book, my answer is: it’s in the subtext, and that’s all about the importance of being a good dad.
I was sharing the story line of my book with an in-law one night. “Well,” she said, “men from rough backgrounds often make good fathers.” And of course that’s true for those of us fortunate enough to find love with others who gently lead us to deal with the effects of a wounded spirit.
Goodness has a wonderful simplicity to it. Being a good dad is simply giving your son your attention, providing support and encouragement and giving a good role model. Having some major distraction like an addiction to alcohol or the need to make truckloads of money compromises that father-son relationship in ways that boy will struggle his whole life to compensate for.
It’s not hard to know when you’re talking to the product of a good father. There’s that tell-tale sense of security, stability and feeling of self worth that goes with having been loved and cared for. The heart of a boy who has been loved by his dad is at peace.
A boy from a loveless home or a home with little love, as I was, has a wounded heart. Wounded by a hole never filled by his father’s love. I see now when I left home I was on a mission: to find the love and approval I never found with my father; to quieten that restless heart.
The sons of good fathers have that strong inner core. They have confidence. They know they are adequate, acceptable and loveable. When life deals them harsh blows they have that inner core to go back to, an inner strength that enables them to recalibrate and keep going. They don’t have to overachieve to find a sense of self-worth, they know they’re okay because a good man told them that every time he made time to be with them, every time he supported them, every time he encouraged them.
Sons of troubled fathers leave home without that inner core. When life gets tough, we don’t have that centre of strength to go to. We fold and often resort to alcohol and drugs. As a boy I formed the false conclusion I was not worthy of Dad’s time. He hardly ever came to watch me play sport. He almost never showed an interest in my schooling. Therefore, he must have found me wanting.
I discovered worthiness through the love of my wife and children. Their support and encouragement have gone a long way to heal my wounded heart. The scar that has formed over that wound can still be sensitive but the love of a family surrounds and strengthens me to keep doing what is right and the old inherited ways of responding to hurts diminish in power and appeal with each passing year.
It’s true, men from rough backgrounds often make good fathers. Knowing the antithesis of a good father enables us to know what to avoid and inspires us to give what we never received. It’s not necessarily a given though. Men from rough backgrounds are more often poor fathers ourselves unless we have been able to correct those unconscious, unexamined scripts we left home with, which is what the text of my book is all about.
Those Poor Kids
Almost every human situation has its compensations. I recall as a boy being the subject of pity. Poor boy, his dad is an alcoholic. Hand wringing relations of my mother would inquire tentatively how we were doing, their eyes brimming with concern. But to me, as a boy, they all missed the point. Every coin has its flip side.
When your dad’s main focus in life is alcohol, and your mum is struggling to try and put food on the table, there’s not a lot of time for supervision. My brother and I were virtually free to go where we liked and do what we liked. There were no curfews, no need to say where we were going and no need to be home at a certain time. Dad and Mum had other things on their mind, like the next beer and survival. “Interfering” in our lives was low on their agenda. So long as there was no call from the police or irate neighbours, we enjoyed absolute freedom. For a boy, with a bike and a few dollars in his pocket, that freedom was intoxicating. When I observe my own sons and the close way they and their wives monitor their children’s every move, I realize how lucky we were. Fortunately we were never abducted, sexually abused, or killed in some terrible accident, though we came close. And when we did it was just another good story to tell. We wouldn’t have swapped our freedom for close supervision, ever!
And yes we often witnessed some ugly adult behaviour, but we had our ways of coping. When Dad lapsed into one of his filthy dry-drunk moods, it had no place in our bedroom where my brother would mimic him, biting down on his bottom lip, twisting his features into a ghoulish masks and repeating all Dad’s favourite expressions: “I’ll do you! I’ll do you!” “Go that way, go that way!” “You bloody no-hoper kids.” “I’ve had it with you.” “I’m wiping you all, all of you!” With exactly the same intonation, venom and passion. Adults creeping around the rest of the house in the funereal atmosphere created by Dad may have been concerned about the poor kids witnessing such a terrible rage, but in the kids’s bedroom, the new Billy T. James was holding court, and I would be in the death throes of hysterical laughter, sides aching, hardly able to breathe, begging him to stop.
It’s an amazing tribute to the power of ego that my brother and I, far from thinking we should be pitied, actually considered ourselves superior to kids from normal homes. Whenever we went to stay with relations we were disgusted by how easy they had it. Everything was so nice, correct and predictable. No drama, no tension and parental love of such monumental proportions, relatively speaking, it appeared to us smothering and sappy.
We may have come from a home where the food cupboards were often completely bare, a home where charitable organizations often called with food parcels. We may have been sent off to school on our first day in second hand uniforms. We may have lived in a state house in the poor part of town. Our dad may have sold vacuum cleaners or worked as the usher and cleaner in a movie theatre. But in our minds, we were better than others. We were better because we were tougher. At least that’s what we thought. Those rich saps with their easy living, what did they know about tough. It was the age-old poor man’s badge of honour: toughness, and our egos drew endless consolation from it. So much so that people pitying us confounded us. They didn’t get it.
We wanted nothing to do with anyone feeling sorry for us. We were okay, thanks, in the way a boy is always okay with all he knows.
But of course we weren’t. The adults were right and their concerns were warranted. A loveless home is not good for a boy. We were damaged, albeit at a subconscious level. At the time, with all the inborn adaptability of children, we coped. Part of that coping mechanism was believing nothing was wrong. It was only later, while in close, intimate relationships we were found wanting: all those unconscious, unexamined scripts established during childhood came back to haunt us.
Wanting to Break Out
One of the hallmarks of a family in which children are raised to do well is surely predictability : “certain certainties”: a time for meals, a time for bedtime, a time when the family can expect dad to return from work; food in the cupboards, shelter for the night and parents to watch out for the children’s best interests. It’s the matrix from which children can launch out into a world and deal with things that are not predictable and certain.
My childhood was unpredictable. I never knew when Dad would come home, whether he would come home drunk or sober, whether he would come home alone or with friends for an all night party. I could never predict how he would react to anything. And my mother was just as unpredictable. Living with Dad put Mum under enormous strain trying to survive on what little money was left from Dad’s drinking. She was completely distracted and on an emotional roller coaster. And as for food, shelter and parental support, it was a roll of the dice.
I did what all human beings do: I adapted and learned to live with the unpredictable. In fact my whole system evolved to actually like and need it. Paradoxically, unpredictability became the one predictable element of my childhood. Living with adrenalin and that feeling of being on edge became a habit. I wasn’t aware of it at the time but I realize now a part of me needed the drama and the excitement of unpredictability to feel “normal”.
As an adult that became a problem. I had to adjust to living with people who valued predictability and routines. They did not need to turn their worlds upside down and break out from time to time. Getting drunk or stoned did not appeal to them. They were happy to inhabit predictable lives free from drama. They finished their studies, they stuck with their jobs, they gained promotions, they stayed in relationships, and they didn’t have any record with the police.
I felt like a prisoner in their world. I needed to break free. Getting drunk did it from time to time. But that wasn’t enough. After two years of university, I couldn’t take it anymore and took to the road and found what had been missing in the life of the traveller. The road was full of the unpredictable. There was no routine. Members of my tribe were there. They, too, had found the calming effect of the road and I met and travelled with others whom I am sure grew up in alcoholic homes just like me, though we never talked about it.
Life on the road didn’t corner me and show up my flaws. Any time things got tough, I moved on. Any time a relationship aroused that wounded spirit it was hasta la vista. There was no real pressure to deal with my issues. Until I fell in love with someone who wanted a normal life. Someone who wanted to settle down in one place. Someone who wanted a close, intimate relationship with all the vulnerability and honesty that goes with it. Someone who wanted to raise happy, well-adjusted children. And that’s when all that woundedness I had kept hidden started revealing itself, and I was cornered. And I loved her so much, I had to stand my ground and try to deal with it.
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
Well if we’re talking overcoming the influence of an alcoholic father, then the answer to that question is: everything! There’s no way I could have changed without my wife’s constant and unbreakable love.
Once I married and had the responsibility of children, the first thing I had to work on was perseverance. There was no way I could leave a job, hoist up the backpack on my shoulder and hit the road every time things got tough. I had a wife and children counting on me.
“I will not quit” became my mantra, and I looked for inspiration anywhere I could find it. My go-to-theme in literature and movies became perseverance. I watched films like Papillon and drew inspiration from a man enduring hell and never saying die. I read books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the Gulag prisons and imagined myself there, refusing to give up. I trained for marathons and ran for hours without giving in to the body’s call for mercy.
And gradually I managed to change that default button that always headed for the road when life tested me. It was an epic battle waged in the silence of my heart. All I had ever seen as a boy was a father who went to the pub when things were tough. So often, in my mind, I imagined hitting the road and going back to the carefree life of the traveller. I listened to old Bobby Dylan and the traveller in me was stirred.
I cut off my hair and I rode straight away to a wild, unknown country where I could not go wrong.
Because I knew he was right. In an unknown country, you can’t go wrong: no one knows you, no one holds you accountable. And I sang along with him: Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore. You may not see me tomorrow. With all the romance of the traveller in my heart. I longed to be free. But hung in there.
And then it became apparent, I had other work to do on a side of me I never really knew existed: a cruel, merciless side. If my wife hurt me, especially if she accessed old hurts from my childhood, I withdrew from her, for days. Would not speak. A cold, cruel silence I struggled to break from. When her love eventually broke the deadlock and I came back to myself, I hated what I had done and resolved never again. Easier said than done. I seemed powerless to change.
The oddest things could spark it. If she kept me waiting, she would return to cold fury. The response was over the top, unwarranted and irrational. My work as a counselor put me in touch with reading on the subconscious and I realized that abreactions are triggered by hurts from the past. What did it remind me of when my wife kept me waiting? A good question and one I immediately had the answer to: all those hours I had been left to wait in a car while Dad drank with his mates in the pub.
Slowly, over years, I drew back up from the past all the hurts of my childhood, like dormant volcanoes, resting in the subconscious ready to erupt with the right pressure from within. That was important. They lost power over me as my wife listened and loved the little boy still trapped in all that hurt.
The whole intricate process of healing a wounded spirit is long and complex. I’m sure there’s a spiritual element to it. I know forgiveness is important. Suffering is part of it, too. The older I get and the more I realize how Dad suffered the easier it is to forgive him. But the absolute essential in the process is someone’s love. If you have that gift you’ll make it to a new way of being, free of hate and hurt and cruelty.
So many of us from alcoholic homes never find that love or if we do we drive it from us with our wounded behaviour. And although we left home determined never to end up like our alcoholic parent we often do: alcohol and drugs ease the hurt. Ask an alcoholic or a druggie to stop and they’ll want to know what you’re offering as an alternative. The only alternative worth considering is love, love so powerful it can endure the cruelty of a wounded heart. Beyond human comprehension really. I found it and will always regard it as my greatest treasure. It has had almost everything to do with freeing me from the influence of an alcoholic father.
Manning up to the Hurts
What is the point of we children of alcoholics discovering those hidden, unconscious scripts and digging those deeply buried past hurts? Psychoanalysis has gone out of favour among therapists these days because research shows it does not effect change. Cognitive theory and behavioral modification have been proven to be more effective. Which begs the question: is digging up past hurts and revealing hidden subconscious scripts a waste of time?
Looking back on my own personal journey I agree that unearthing material lodged in the unconscious did not change my behaviour. I had to work on my attitudes and scripts and set up new ways of behaving to short circuit the way I was wired as a child.
And yet, I am pleased I came to know those hidden subconscious scripts driving so much of my behaviour. By knowing, for example, I was scripted to seek approval and inclined towards overachievement I was prompted to change it to: I am acceptable as I am. I do not have to overdo things.
Learning to talk about the hurts did not change my reaction to people unwittingly triggering them. I had to work on modifying that behaviour, the old silent treatment my Dad had taught me so well had to be changed for a willingness to keep relating to those who had hurt me. However, by talking about the hurts from my past, I did manage to quieten and comfort that little boy trapped in all that pain and those hurts lost their power over me. They healed over, leaving only scars.
So easy to write stuff like “learning to talk about hurts” but that process was an epic struggle for me. Like David I was armed with seemingly puny weapons while pitted against the Goliaths of pride, anger, shame in a society where a man doesn’t talk about being hurt.
I didn’t want to admit I came from a dysfunctional family. I spoke instead of my great-grandfather, the mayor of Otaki, of past family wealth, of family accomplishments. To find the humility to speak the truth, to let go as a man and weep tears I had kept locked in as a boy was a long journey.
I was also afraid of the terrible anger inextricably linked to the pain of a child’s perceived cruelties and injustices. Like the boy in the fable who removes the thorn from the lion’s paw, my wife had to proceed carefully and I was afraid of how I would react if she made one false move.
And I prided myself on being a bona fide member of New Zealand’s rugby culture. Rugby players never talk about personal hurts. Ever. Can you imagine it. Approaching the ref during the after match function. “Ah, ref, I was more than a little hurt by the way you kept penalizing me. Felt like I was being picked on. My dad used to do that.” Or talking to the coach after being put on the bench. “Ah, coach, I’m feeling rejected here.” No, it’s not going to happen, but a wounded spirit has to talk about it somewhere. The rugby way couldn’t be a family man’s way.
And in the end “seemingly puny weapons” like love for my wife and the desire to be free to be the best father I can be proved giant killers. But I don’t kid myself into thinking the battle is over and the giants completely vanquished. A scar can still be made to hurt. I have to be vigilant with those states that make me vulnerable. Hunger, anger, loneliness and fatigue are best avoided.
