Objects in the rear view mirror, pt 2.

I came to the realization this morning that the person who I am the most unhappy with about my youth is not mom or dad, but actually myself. I had the opportunity to completely walk away from my relationship with both of my parents when I was 18 years old, but fear and the desire to go to college with dad paying for much of it caused me to come right back to them.

My mom kicked me out of my parents house shortly after I turned 18, in October of my senior year of HS. She had attacked me earlier that summer, and in the course of doing so ended up breaking her knee. That morning she started a very nasty fight with me and I went to call my dad to see if I could get him to calm her down. When I did this she grabbed me by the hood of my hoodie with both hands and put me in a choke hold with one hand while beating the phone against my arm with the other hand. I did not touch her in return, but instead tried to walk away from her. She did not let go of me when I did this and she ended up falling and tearing all of the ligaments in her knee as well as breaking the bottom half of her knee cap off. My dad did not file charges against me because he knew that I was innocent in this case and it was his wife who was at fault. If anyone would have had charges filed against them it would have been his wife for assault, and he was not about to do that. After this incident of her attacking me she was looking for a reason to kick me out of the house. It took her a few months to find a good enough reason (in her twisted mind) to kick me out, but in the end she found one. The weekend that she kicked me out she grounded me on Friday night after work for not doing dishes, even though she had told me the night before that I did not need to do them. On Saturday she wanted to borrow one of my CD’s and I told her “no”, due to the fact that she had unfairly grounded me. This started another fight with her and she decided to kick me out of the house. So I packed up my things and went to live in the spare bedroom of a friend’s house.

As I said, instead of walking away from this, I let my dad talk me back into moving into my parents house shortly before graduating from high school. My dad made it clear to me in May 1992 when I moved back to his house that my mom did not want me back, but he wanted me back so that he could have his family back together. I moved back in because at the time I did not know that I had any alternative. My dad had always looked down upon those who worked in labor and had told me my entire life that I needed to go to college so that I could become “successful”, etc. I didn’t realize that I could have gone out and gotten a job to take care of myself. I let fear and a closed minded outlook on life control and manipulate me back into a situation that I had been begging God to get me out of since I was a toddler. Things never got any better with my mom because my parents definition of working on a situation is to lecture at me about how I am supposed to be without ever doing one bit of work on themselves. At this point the relationship between my mom and I has crumbled to the point where we no longer talk to each other.

25 years later I wake up this morning, in the process of peeling the onion and getting rid of the scar tissue of life only to realize that I had been holding this against myself for the past 25 years. What a kick in the gut it was to wake up and realize that I could have walked away from a seriously sick situation and instead voluntarily returned to it. When I called Nick to discuss this with him he was very quick to point out to me that 18 year old Michael did not know what 43 year old Michael knows. It’s very easy to judge 18 year old me by the knowledge that I now have. What is much more difficult to do is to forgive myself for not doing what would have been the best thing for my soul at the time. Now that I know that I have been carrying around this guilt and unhappiness with myself for the past quarter of a century I can forgive myself, let go of it and I consider that layer of the onion peeled.

I open myself up on this blog in order to encourage anyone that reads this to never let fear of the uncertain to rule your life and keep you in an unhealthy situation. There is always an answer, if you are willing to look for it hard enough. If you ever find yourself waking up beating yourself up over a decision you did not make earlier in life, I encourage you to forgive yourself. You have already carried the burden with you long enough and it is not serving your creativity, so let go of it and move on with life. To quote William Wallace’s father in Braveheart: “Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow your heart.”