My past, my present, my future Part 4
I am at the end of a year-long research study about white nationalism and sharing details of my past life with Pete, the researcher assigned to me. This study aims to gather data and provide information to the non-profits that fight against the far right by helping people transition away from that life, providing psychological help, and supporting them.
The non-profit Life After Hate recommended this study to me. I have started working with them in the past but dropped off due to the nature of the work and my inability to process my regret and pain effectively enough.
There is a certain level of responsibility for the current day. The sins from my past are still seen, and I don’t know how many people I could have negatively influenced to be a part of the white supremacy movement and if any of them are still active today taking part in the hate.
I am not playing the martyr role and blaming myself for someone else’s actions, but there will always be that part of me that feels I need to do my best to be an example of what life can be away from that toxic world.
I struggle with anger. I don’t lash out at people physically anymore and haven’t in many years. I internalize it. Therapy does help me process it better, and I have improved immeasurably in this area. I don’t always win these small battles as I need to be self-aware of my triggers, reactions, and speech patterns so I don’t shoot from the hip and lash out at people who may not deserve it.
Currently, I have two therapists and a psychiatrist. I have two therapists because they both serve a different purpose.
One is trauma-specific, and we are using EMDR to process it.
The other helps me navigate the day-to-day issues, and her treatment is highly outcome-based with homework, text check-ins, and mindfulness practice.
I have never approached therapy with a double-edged sword before, and I am grateful that my insurance company is amenable to it.
Sometimes, it feels overwhelming to keep digging into my head, but I can honestly say if I hadn’t taken those steps, I would not be alive today. I have attempted suicide once and thought about it numerous times. When the dark cloud of misery is over you, and you feel no reprieve, suicidal thoughts make their home somewhat regular.
It’s been seven months since a suicidal thought entered my head, and I will go into that day in a later installment.
Onto high school.
Well.
I just sighed because these years were the beginning of everything for me. Looking back at the tenth through twelfth-grade years and remembering a lot of it will be a nice bit of writing. I don’t know how many parts this will take, but please stick around.
These years were the icing on the cake, if you will.
My whole life, I wanted to play football. My mom didn’t want me to because I have a severe hearing impairment, and she felt the noise and impacts from the helmets would damage it worse. I know that isn’t true with my hearing loss now, but as a kid, I didn’t know any better.
She finally relented in my tenth-grade year, and I joined the team at my high school.
I had an uphill battle as I was joining a solid team that established a winning tradition and whose players mostly played since they were very young. I was a good athlete, but football was a sport I only played on an organized level starting that year.
I had watched football enough to understand the game, but playing was another story.
My tenth-grade year was also the year my dad’s cancer would take a drastic turn for the worse, 1989.
Before my dad entered the hospital for intense bouts of chemo, I had no idea he had cancer. Both parents kept it from me to protect me. Protect me from what? The truth? It is a decision that still upsets me because I would have been able to prepare myself for the day my father would die instead of having to spend those last few months trying to catch up, play a new sport, navigate high school life and my growing anger.
Nevertheless, the reality was such that my dad’s cancer was about to ravage his body, and our family was going to change. My mom was preparing herself for this, establishing a career where she was the primary income earner in the house so that when the time came for my dad to pass on, she could take care of me.
Me? Not knowing a damn thing until 1989, my best reaction was, “he will get better.”
My father and I never had a very close relationship. I think he would say that we did, and for a time after his death, I put him on a pedestal as a dad. Maybe I was trying to find some light, I don’t know, but the truth of the matter is that the only thing I ever truly learned from my father was how to shoot a gun.
There were never any heart-to-heart talks. It was an iron fist with no “lessons” to learn when I got disciplined. I remember being beaten with a leather belt one time for writing the word “fuck” on the sidewalk with chalk. The neighborhood kids dared me to do it, and I was very young and impressionable then, and they rushed to my house to tell on me.
Lovely memory, isn’t it?
Sure, my father took me hunting and was my baseball coach for a season, but I never enjoyed hunting and never learned anything from him as a coach.
He was my father, and now he is dying.
It was also the first time I ever saw him cry. I believe it was the day he was admitted to the hospital; he was sitting on the edge of the bed, still in street clothes. I remember the room was a little dim, but the outside light shone through the curtains. He sat there in silence and started to cry. I remember it vividly. I cried along with him as he hugged me.
I do believe my father loved me, and I wish he were here today so I could ask him so many questions. He’s not, and I can’t. I was left with whatever shell of a man remained to do the best he thought he could do in a time when men sucked it up, swallowed their feelings, and were emotionally distant.
During this period, I was at football camp. We did two-a-days in the intense summer heat. For those unaware of this term, two-a-days are when you practice in the morning, take a lunch break, and return to practice in the afternoon. Reading High School was then coached by a man named Jet Johnston. He was starting a winning tradition with our team.
Reading High School is immense in size, stature, and students. We were and are known as a basketball school. Football didn’t have the same respect as hoops, but now we are starting to develop it.
Practices were hard and brutal. Rookie players (sophomores) were hazed and harassed. That never bothered me as much as you think, as it was part of the sport then. I formed some solid friendships later in life with some of my ex-teammates, even though I was still mostly an isolated kid in those days.
I was still on the skinny side then, but I was fast. I wanted to prove myself. One specific moment in practice, I was playing on the dummy defense against the starting offense, and the guard pulled for a run. The guard was Izzy, and he was a tank. Izzy was one of those dudes who was built like a grown man and could hit. I wanted to prove myself, so I met him helmet to helmet, and we both got laid out. I don’t know if the impact knocked him out, but I was out cold. When I came to, not long after, the coach was standing over us, screaming at how great of a hit that was. I got up, was dizzy as hell, and stayed in the drill as a dummy squad LB.
I was concussed, but I never thought about it or was asked to stay out to get checked. Concussion protocols did not exist in 1989 at the high school level.
My father would ask about practice and games, but being new to the sport and still pretty skinny, I wasn’t getting playing time at varsity and only playing JV.
Before I continue this story, I want to end today’s installment on a higher but also somber note that leaves many “what ifs.”
My father came to one game, and it wasn’t because he didn’t want to go to any; it was because he was only allowed out of the hospital for one month before he would return. I will discuss more of this in part 5, but for today, know that the one game he came to, he traveled alone. It was over an hour away, it was freezing cold, and he sat in the stands alone to watch me play a JV game.
That moment does make me realize he loved me as a son, but as I said earlier, the circumstances of his life and how they affected his ability to be an emotionally healthy man will always leave questions and pain in the children he sired, wondering what could have been.
For those parents reading this, take some lessons from it and apply them to your life.
No, you are not your children’s best friends, but you aren’t just a parent. You are a role model, a provider, and an emotional safety net.
Your children should not be afraid of you and should not wonder if you support them, love them, or want the best for them.
What have you done today to help build a bridge of healthy communication between yourself and your children? What can you do better?
These writings aren’t for kids because kids are molded by the world they live in. They are for parents and adults to see how they can improve the world so that children are raised properly, steered away from hate, supported with love and genuine interest, and guided into an emotionally healthy life.
Part 5 is coming soon.
