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LJ Idol: Recency bias.
Jun. 9th, 2014 04:59 pmI need to call my dad. I need to, actually, answer the last email from him that's been sitting there about 2 weeks, the one where he floats the idea of moving in with me then immediately makes a joke out of the idea, which is what lets me he know he actually desperately wants to come stay with me.
It's almost Father's Day. The last Idol post was about Father's Day last year, before he went to jail and I saw him in that stupid fucking blue velvet cloak* in person for the first time. It was 3 years ago that was the worst (3? really? weird). I was still living with the Gentleman Caller, who was getting sick of the whole "crazy dad" situation, and it had culminated in February-ish of that year when we went down to so I could try and talk dad into going to the hospital, or at least support my family. Because of that fiasco, dad had sent some nasty emails and GC had washed his hands of it all (and rightly so), but also was actively an asshole about my continuing to feel emotions about this whole situation. In March(ish) dad got evicted. Mom had already left, and although she cleaned as much as she could beforehand, there was still some left to do. My brother had gone over to help toss things in storage and clean up as much as possible; this was when dad assaulted David (besides some corporal punishment as children, and one notable time when I was an adult, dad never lifted a hand to us), but David felt bad calling the cops and then found out dad had called the cops on him and it was sort of a mess, so... anyway. Dad was in a bad state. He had "friends" over "helping" and was selling stuff left and right, so David kept having to buy family stuff out from under dad's friends** in order to toss it into storage.
From there, dad went camping. First he started off in Medford but quickly got into an altercation with a younger gentleman down at the park where the Juggalos and hobos and junkies hang out, wherein the other man tried to steal dad's bike. Dad has studied aikido for years; he has, I believe, done 2 tests, so this is one of the weirdest things about the last few years - he never seems able to defend himself. He gets angry, puffs up like a rooster, then somehow ends up with a rib sticking into his lung or a broken face. Besides my brother, and David said it was a very odd half-hearted fight, I'm unaware of dad doing anything but getting beaten in situations where beating is an option. So dude tries to steal dad's bike, dad tries to get back, ends up on the ground with what turns out to be a punctured lung from a broken rib, requiring a week in the hospital with chest tube drainage. He made the front page of the paper.
From there, dad goes up to Cave Junction, which is this tiny town towards the middle of nowhere renowned for its lack of a police force and the area's general lawlessness. If you don't like authority and love drugs and have nowhere to live, it's the most logical residence. When dad had been evicted he had, as far as I know, asked nobody for help, which was a relief to most of the family I would guess. The sad part is, nobody offered - and it's sad mostly because not offering was the logical thing to do when he was out of control drunk and on drugs and physically aggressive, but to him, that would have been another kick in the teeth. So he does this very stoic "I've got it all under control and have a plan" thing, and even talks as though he's really looking forward to a summer of camping. I totally bought into that one, actually - partially because to me it's a very enticing prospect. World crashed around you? Go camp in a beautiful area, hang out with hippies and bikers all day, drink a lot, and smoke what you get for helping the medical growers trim their crops. Take a break, figure shit out, you know? Except this only would have worked for him if he'd cut the drinking/smoking part out, and that's what he refused to do.
So as Father's Day and his birthday draw closer, I'm getting more frantic, and GC is getting more visibly annoyed with the fact I can't/won't disown dad and frolic off to happiness, which is pissing me off more and more, so I make plans to go south and find dad. Phone reception being spotty, we'd hammered out a basic plan to meet, and I'd enlisted the help of Paulo to drive me out there, because I was afraid to be alone with dad. And dad ended up really liking Paulo. Every time dad would start talking about the portents of a recent comet (or meteor shower, I dunno), I'd get confused, dad would get disgusted at my ignorance and/or willingness to be lied to by the government, and Paulo would take another drag off his cigarette, nod, and know exactly what dad was talking about and make (what dad considered) enlightened responses. They'd been listening to the same late-night conspiracy radio show, apparently. The visit itself was uncomfortable. To put it mildly. Dad and I were both winding up inside, but I bought him food, gave him a backpack and some old archaeology magazines as a gift, and drove away trying not to cry.
I don't know at what point it occurred to me, but at some point I realized dad had hoped I'd be there to take him home. That he wouldn't have to ask, that I would welcome him immediately, perhaps even imagined how he'd resist once or twice, to save his dignity, then hop in the truck and leave his trash-filled campsite behind. That's what Paulo said, as we drove away -"His dignity's hurt real bad," and I think that's when the realization started to dawn. I'd just left my dad with a backpack's worth of canned goods, $20, and my castoff magazines, in the middle of nowhere, where he would soon get beaten up, his workboots and a bundle of stones stolen, and a broken zygomatic arch... my dad who was obviously malnourished, sunburned, getting eaten up by mosquitoes. But also my dad who refused to stop drinking and doing any drug he could find, so if I had brought him home would immediately have started all the same behaviors up again. Though the bright side of that would have been that I could call the cops on him without the eyes of my family on me, and perhaps gotten him to a hospital finally for the checkup we all wanted.
Plus, there was GC at home. GC, who for months I'd wanted to kick out but for lots of reasons that, honestly, only other abused people can fully understand, I'd let stay there. If I'd shown up with dad, it would have been an instant shitfest with GC. But even then, maybe he would have left. Maybe we would have broken up way before the bad stuff happened. Or maybe he would have seen that empathy and compassion can be good. Or, more likely, we would have slumped along in resentful hatred for awhile, so that's a dead-end to think about. So on the one hand, I didn't feel safe with dad, and I was on the breaking point of stress as it was. On the other hand, I think I did the wrong thing by leaving him there, on a couple levels. Now when he's real mad at me, that's what he throws in my face, that I "left him in the dirt" as he puts it. To get over the sting of that, I have to deal with the truth of the situation, and part of the truth is that even at the time, I felt I was making the wrong decision but shoved it aside because it was more comfortable at the time.
Now it's almost Father's Day again, and I still haven't answered that email from dad, asking if he can stay with me. Because the answer is basically no, even though it'll also be yes - as long as he goes to rehab first. Preferably also with a neurological workup and definitely followed by ongoing counseling. Even though in another sober email he recently said he'd been looking into AA, I can't bring myself to believe anything will change - even with AA. He needs something more concrete than meetings; he needs a break with this new reality to balance out the break with the old reality. Father's Day only serves to highlight how little anything has changed over the years. Maybe it won't be like this forever, and maybe it can change at any minute. I don't know if I'm being cynical or realistic here; it's hard to be objective about all this, to take a step back and analyze for any grain of hope. As of yesterday, he's officially homeless again. This is exactly the time for me to step up and be supportive - anniversaries are real hard for him, any reminder of how isolated he is makes it worse. This is a great time for me to balance what I see as past deficiencies. I even got him a Father's Day card (there's some ironically tragic shopping for you). Any time I think too long about how dad must have felt, there in Cave Junction, it feels like a gut punch and my heart imploding all at once. Even if dad never changes, I'm sort of thinking the only way to make that feeling stop is by continuing to do what I can. If I can get the courage up to just, you know, answer his phone calls or reply to his emails. Baby steps, right?
*No offense to people who like blue velvet cloaks. I myself would love a blue velvet cloak, which I think would be perfect for Faerieworlds, which I will not be able to afford to go to anyway. In the context of dad, a blue velvet cloak symbolically represents the complete turnaround in his life, sort of how, um... well, I can't find a metaphor. It's throbbing with symbolism, let's just say that.
**Someday I'll talk about my mom's role in this, but in a big way it's a lot more complex than dad's and harder to grapple with, but this is one of those situations where I look back and wonder what the actual fuck she was thinking.
It's almost Father's Day. The last Idol post was about Father's Day last year, before he went to jail and I saw him in that stupid fucking blue velvet cloak* in person for the first time. It was 3 years ago that was the worst (3? really? weird). I was still living with the Gentleman Caller, who was getting sick of the whole "crazy dad" situation, and it had culminated in February-ish of that year when we went down to so I could try and talk dad into going to the hospital, or at least support my family. Because of that fiasco, dad had sent some nasty emails and GC had washed his hands of it all (and rightly so), but also was actively an asshole about my continuing to feel emotions about this whole situation. In March(ish) dad got evicted. Mom had already left, and although she cleaned as much as she could beforehand, there was still some left to do. My brother had gone over to help toss things in storage and clean up as much as possible; this was when dad assaulted David (besides some corporal punishment as children, and one notable time when I was an adult, dad never lifted a hand to us), but David felt bad calling the cops and then found out dad had called the cops on him and it was sort of a mess, so... anyway. Dad was in a bad state. He had "friends" over "helping" and was selling stuff left and right, so David kept having to buy family stuff out from under dad's friends** in order to toss it into storage.
From there, dad went camping. First he started off in Medford but quickly got into an altercation with a younger gentleman down at the park where the Juggalos and hobos and junkies hang out, wherein the other man tried to steal dad's bike. Dad has studied aikido for years; he has, I believe, done 2 tests, so this is one of the weirdest things about the last few years - he never seems able to defend himself. He gets angry, puffs up like a rooster, then somehow ends up with a rib sticking into his lung or a broken face. Besides my brother, and David said it was a very odd half-hearted fight, I'm unaware of dad doing anything but getting beaten in situations where beating is an option. So dude tries to steal dad's bike, dad tries to get back, ends up on the ground with what turns out to be a punctured lung from a broken rib, requiring a week in the hospital with chest tube drainage. He made the front page of the paper.
From there, dad goes up to Cave Junction, which is this tiny town towards the middle of nowhere renowned for its lack of a police force and the area's general lawlessness. If you don't like authority and love drugs and have nowhere to live, it's the most logical residence. When dad had been evicted he had, as far as I know, asked nobody for help, which was a relief to most of the family I would guess. The sad part is, nobody offered - and it's sad mostly because not offering was the logical thing to do when he was out of control drunk and on drugs and physically aggressive, but to him, that would have been another kick in the teeth. So he does this very stoic "I've got it all under control and have a plan" thing, and even talks as though he's really looking forward to a summer of camping. I totally bought into that one, actually - partially because to me it's a very enticing prospect. World crashed around you? Go camp in a beautiful area, hang out with hippies and bikers all day, drink a lot, and smoke what you get for helping the medical growers trim their crops. Take a break, figure shit out, you know? Except this only would have worked for him if he'd cut the drinking/smoking part out, and that's what he refused to do.
So as Father's Day and his birthday draw closer, I'm getting more frantic, and GC is getting more visibly annoyed with the fact I can't/won't disown dad and frolic off to happiness, which is pissing me off more and more, so I make plans to go south and find dad. Phone reception being spotty, we'd hammered out a basic plan to meet, and I'd enlisted the help of Paulo to drive me out there, because I was afraid to be alone with dad. And dad ended up really liking Paulo. Every time dad would start talking about the portents of a recent comet (or meteor shower, I dunno), I'd get confused, dad would get disgusted at my ignorance and/or willingness to be lied to by the government, and Paulo would take another drag off his cigarette, nod, and know exactly what dad was talking about and make (what dad considered) enlightened responses. They'd been listening to the same late-night conspiracy radio show, apparently. The visit itself was uncomfortable. To put it mildly. Dad and I were both winding up inside, but I bought him food, gave him a backpack and some old archaeology magazines as a gift, and drove away trying not to cry.
I don't know at what point it occurred to me, but at some point I realized dad had hoped I'd be there to take him home. That he wouldn't have to ask, that I would welcome him immediately, perhaps even imagined how he'd resist once or twice, to save his dignity, then hop in the truck and leave his trash-filled campsite behind. That's what Paulo said, as we drove away -"His dignity's hurt real bad," and I think that's when the realization started to dawn. I'd just left my dad with a backpack's worth of canned goods, $20, and my castoff magazines, in the middle of nowhere, where he would soon get beaten up, his workboots and a bundle of stones stolen, and a broken zygomatic arch... my dad who was obviously malnourished, sunburned, getting eaten up by mosquitoes. But also my dad who refused to stop drinking and doing any drug he could find, so if I had brought him home would immediately have started all the same behaviors up again. Though the bright side of that would have been that I could call the cops on him without the eyes of my family on me, and perhaps gotten him to a hospital finally for the checkup we all wanted.
Plus, there was GC at home. GC, who for months I'd wanted to kick out but for lots of reasons that, honestly, only other abused people can fully understand, I'd let stay there. If I'd shown up with dad, it would have been an instant shitfest with GC. But even then, maybe he would have left. Maybe we would have broken up way before the bad stuff happened. Or maybe he would have seen that empathy and compassion can be good. Or, more likely, we would have slumped along in resentful hatred for awhile, so that's a dead-end to think about. So on the one hand, I didn't feel safe with dad, and I was on the breaking point of stress as it was. On the other hand, I think I did the wrong thing by leaving him there, on a couple levels. Now when he's real mad at me, that's what he throws in my face, that I "left him in the dirt" as he puts it. To get over the sting of that, I have to deal with the truth of the situation, and part of the truth is that even at the time, I felt I was making the wrong decision but shoved it aside because it was more comfortable at the time.
Now it's almost Father's Day again, and I still haven't answered that email from dad, asking if he can stay with me. Because the answer is basically no, even though it'll also be yes - as long as he goes to rehab first. Preferably also with a neurological workup and definitely followed by ongoing counseling. Even though in another sober email he recently said he'd been looking into AA, I can't bring myself to believe anything will change - even with AA. He needs something more concrete than meetings; he needs a break with this new reality to balance out the break with the old reality. Father's Day only serves to highlight how little anything has changed over the years. Maybe it won't be like this forever, and maybe it can change at any minute. I don't know if I'm being cynical or realistic here; it's hard to be objective about all this, to take a step back and analyze for any grain of hope. As of yesterday, he's officially homeless again. This is exactly the time for me to step up and be supportive - anniversaries are real hard for him, any reminder of how isolated he is makes it worse. This is a great time for me to balance what I see as past deficiencies. I even got him a Father's Day card (there's some ironically tragic shopping for you). Any time I think too long about how dad must have felt, there in Cave Junction, it feels like a gut punch and my heart imploding all at once. Even if dad never changes, I'm sort of thinking the only way to make that feeling stop is by continuing to do what I can. If I can get the courage up to just, you know, answer his phone calls or reply to his emails. Baby steps, right?
*No offense to people who like blue velvet cloaks. I myself would love a blue velvet cloak, which I think would be perfect for Faerieworlds, which I will not be able to afford to go to anyway. In the context of dad, a blue velvet cloak symbolically represents the complete turnaround in his life, sort of how, um... well, I can't find a metaphor. It's throbbing with symbolism, let's just say that.
**Someday I'll talk about my mom's role in this, but in a big way it's a lot more complex than dad's and harder to grapple with, but this is one of those situations where I look back and wonder what the actual fuck she was thinking.
