Tell the Truth, Tell the Truth, Tell the Truth.

This was the inscription in someone’s book I read once, quoting someone else. I’ll have to look up who. But it occurs to me this morning.

So, it is true that by vomiting out my thesis and the actions therein that I have opened up lines to things that I didn’t have access to before. This morning, I got to see one of them.

A while back, I’d written here about an "individuation meditation" I’d done regarding my mom. It was an exercise out of that Calling in The One book, and it was helpful and powerful and sad, but freeing, then.

This morning as I went in to meditation, I thought to go one place, and instead was drawn to go elsewhere. So, I did. I ended up at Ocean Beach, basically the end of the continent hemmed in and eroded and maleated by the wide Pacific Ocean. There stood a large figure. It was my dad.

I’ve written some here about his ability to throw me off course, with his demands that I live according to his ideas of what is right, or with his pure denial of facts about his life and our mutual familial past. Maybe I’ve even glanced at some of the violence that occurred when my brother and I were young. But I don’t really talk about it. Hence, the title.

The truth is, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what I hear in others' lives, and I discount and play down the ability that man had to scare the … nearly scare the life out of me. He is a large man, at 6’3”, with a larger voice, fiercer eyes, and my brother and I would tense at the sound of his car pulling into the driveway, as if getting ready for battle defenses.

There is a story that I've been told, that when I was about 7 or so, in the middle of an altercation, I turned to my dad and said we were too old to be hit anymore. – No seven year old should ever have to say or feel that. And my brother at 4, then, shouldn’t either.

These are, granted, my own interpretations. But, my father, abandoning physical violence, started in simply using his voice to holler. And his hollering shook the foundation of the house. -- Although there are some poignant moments in my past when he took up that old tool of intimidation again. … He was not a pleasant man – though you may not know that in public. You probably sense you don’t want to cross him, but he’s like that Scorpion in that legend – it’s in his nature to bite.

And then, too, it’s not in his nature to bite. He’s scared. He never had proper fathering, never knew how, had his own shame about being a bastard child, and then hated his step-father. He grew up in the army. Learned how to make beds and keep time and everything in a row and in order.

Children are not on time or in a row or ever in order. This frightened him. I know that now.

But, in my meditation, the phrase that I repeated several times, as I sobbed a bit in real life, was, You don’t have the power to kill me any more.

…

See, because, last night, I wrote a mini G-d letter, and asked for some guidance on earning income, what I should do. And the letter back asked, What do you want to do? I cannot produce vagueness.

What a novel question: what do I want to do?

And so when I went in this morning in meditation to find some answers within myself to this question, I found myself face to face with my dad. My dad who has wanted me to live life to his rules for a very long time, even though it’s years since I’m out of his house. I still feel the stamping thumb of a demand for “normalcy” or whatever his idea of the “right” kind of life is for me.

So, that’s what this morning was about. Of course I haven’t really been able to consider what it is I want to do in my life, if I’m continuing to struggle against what his ideas are for my life. My therapist has tried to instill this in me over several years – Molly, this is your life. It hasn’t made sense to me. I haven’t known what that’s meant. When I’m trying to struggle against the idea that I might be swatted or, as the fear puts it, killed, of course I don’t have the time or wherewithall to consider what I want to do with my life. First things first, right? Survival.

To move from the stance of survival to the stance of growth means to move out from under the fear of elimination. It’s a “fancied” fear at this point – but it makes my heart flutter and tells me to stay hidden and to stay safe. Which is what I’ve done for a while, and doesn’t fucking work for me.

I invited him to leave. I told him, as the exercise in the book suggested, that I was sorry I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be, and that I forgive him for not being what I want him to be. That without his anger, he’s just a scared old man, and a scared little boy. I have compassion for the little boy. And I need to learn some right-sizedness around the man. To begin to step into my own britches is to believe that they belong to me. In the face of anyone else – good or bad decision, right or wrong, lost or found -- this is my life.

I don’t know how to do that yet, but inviting him to stop throttling me is a good start.