I love my kids-all of them. But I don't love them as much as I should; the way a father is supposed to love his children. I can't. I learned that years ago. Who's that scratching their head? I can hear the fingernails raking over the scalp. "What's that you say? You don't love your kids?" No, that's not what I said. What I said is I don't love them as much as I should. But make no mistake, it was a conscious effort on my part-a decision made out of necessity.
Love is a very, very, powerful emotion. It drives people to do some very unacceptable things. It can also motivate people to do very positive things as well-but that's not the focus of this blog entry. In the 80's, my son and I were separated for almost 6 years. His mother took him and disappeared. I've written about it in previous blogs and many of you might have read about it, so you know the story. During the first year of his absence I drowned my pain in alcohol. I don't remember very much during that first year, but I do remember a pain so intense, I wanted to, and probably would have done harm to his mother. Her saving grace was I didn't have a clue where she was. I was close to the brink of insanity and there's no telling what I might have done had I gotten a hold of her. After the first year, I found things to distract me but there was still a burning rage deep inside me. Years later, I decided that I had to put a lid on the love I have for my children. Their mothers could always weaponize that love and use it against me-and boy did they.
I had to make a choice, a very difficult choice. Either I allow the love I have for my children to be used against me in such a way that I could do harmful damage to someone and lose my freedom, or I control the depths of that love. This might be the first time some of you are hearing anything similar to this, but I'm certain there are more men out there who've experienced this same transformation. Imagine being faced with that dilemma-no one said life was easy.
Women who weaponize children and use them against their exes are the worst terrorist of them all. Worse than the 9-11 terrorists? Yes. Allow me to explain: often this type of terrorism goes unreported and in some cases is even sanctioned by local government. The damage is far reaching. It creates a riff between the paternal parent and the children. Eventually he has to let go. He has to put some emotional distance between himself and his children. Perhaps there are alternatives, but I don't know what they are. In my case, I had no way of knowing my son's mother would disappear with him so I was completely unprepared.
Certainly this behavior isn't against the law-it flies below the radar. In fact when the mother of my 2 daughters did the exact same thing (even after knowing my son's mom had pulled this stunt on me), the police department refused to get involved.
We live in a society where men aren't supposed to show their emotions, so many do as I did and suffer in silence or self-medicate themselves with alcohol and other mind/emotion altering substances. Some lash out, but the majority just try to deal with the pain alone. I know that many of the decisions I made after my son was removed from my life were decisions to try and eliminate the pain. It's like being on fire and grabbing anything within reach to try and extinguish it. I got with the wrong woman, made two more children out of wedlock, and just sunk into an even deeper hole. I became the perpetrator to my own victim. Self-destruction wasn't my intent but it was definitely my destination.
The real question now that I've said all of that is just how much do I love my children? Okay, I'll admit the first paragraph was seasoned with a little sensationalism-I do love my children with all of my heart. But there is a room that exists within my emotions that has a door that I open, enter, and close behind me. I become emotionally unavailable to all who attempt to reach me. Behind this door, I feel absolutely nothing (that's not true, I feel safe). I could watch someone die and feel no sympathy for that person-I literally shut down all of my emotions and become numb. I developed this place out of necessity-I had to find a way not to care, otherwise I would behave in an irrational manner that would have surely led to my incarceration.
I don't think fathers should be forced into creating such rooms. They have a profound affect on the children. My daughters all think I'm an emotionless man. I normally stay in the middle. Not getting too angry, not showing much happiness-almost robot-like. Sure, I tell them I love them all the time, but I think they think it's just something dad says because everyone else does.
I've lived in this country practically all my life, and I've had to deal with a myriad of enemies. I've had to deal with employers who were against me; a judicial system that categorizes me by color first; had to struggle for survival every day as an enlisted person in the United States Air Force-and that is no exaggeration. The racism I witnessed and experienced in the Air Force was unbelievably brutal in that the military justice system requires less burden of proof than civilian courts. It's a lot easier to charge and convict a member of the military under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) than it is your average citizen. It was emotionally easier and in some instances, like a chess game, for me to deal with the military racists. They repeatedly attacked, and I successfully defended-every single time. But having to deal with people who are supposed to have a modicum of compassion for you attacking you in places they know you're most vulnerable is far worse. It should be considered a crime.
These women knew that I loved my children unlike I ever loved anything else on the earth-and they weaponized that love and used it against me. And for what? Because I exercised my right to freedom and decided I couldn't be with them anymore? One I left because she was an alcoholic with a tendency to be extremely violent and reckless when drunk. The other I left because she believed a man was someone you tormented, attacked, schemed against. In her own words she once told me, "Men don't feel pain like women-it doesn't hurt you all as much." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that eventually you're going to have to put some distance between that person and you.
My children and I all have, what I consider, a working relationship. We express love for one another, enjoy spending time together, and experience a genuine warmth towards one another. I smile deep inside and feel so fortunate that I survived those early years and to have come out on the other end still possessing the ability to feel for them-but I know that I keep one hand on that doorknob and at the first sign of trouble, I'm ducking behind that door. I wish it didn't have to be that way, and perhaps one day I'll feel comfortable enough to board up that room, never to enter again and experience the freedom associated with never having to worry about them being used against me again. Wow, this is probably the first time I've thought about it consciously, and what an emotional mess I must be. Many women I've dated say I sometimes become unreachable-and I know that I've used that door with the women in my life as well. And it makes perfect sense to me, but I'm sure they have no idea why all of a sudden a wall is erected and they are on the opposite side of it. I don't know if words are enough to explain it all to them.
Anyway, that's my story and it's sticking to me. If I could find a way to shake it, I'd be telling you an entirely different one. But as it stands, that's the only one I've got to tell.
TPOKW?
Addendum
In writing this entry, I just realized in the process of shutting down emotionally, I killed my own passion-passion for love, for art, for life. There had to be an innocent bystander. My passion became a casualty of the war. I guess I've learned the hard way that we are shaped by our environment and we should choose our environments wisely.
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