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Oh boy…
My Dad wants to talk to me from inside the slammer. I don’t want to talk to him just yet.
He contacted my poor mother having read that most recent NY Times article about Asperger’s Syndrome. Therein lies the problem. He’s focusing on the negative, something I’m not necessarily trying to hide, but something I deal with on a regular basis, and choose to accept.
I have overcome my so-called “disability” due to willpower, though I still have a tremendous amount of trouble with it sometimes. I will always be first to admit that, but this is a-typical behavior for him. He always used to use my “illness” as an excuse for everything, telling everyone I met that I had it beforehand. He crippled me before I could even show people who I truly was, before they had an understanding of the man in the iron mask.
Point is, there is still unfinished business between he and I, but I am not thinking about it. I’m just trying to comprehend my existence, my talents and abilities, and my mental stature.
That’s all I want to do.
- H
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One Year Later…
To begin, for those of you that don’t know, my Dad is a crooked cocksucker of a man. He lied to, cheated, and ruined everything my family had. Though he is not the sole person responsible for the agony, his decisions were the ones that lead to the downfall and ultimate collapse of my family structure, and in part why I act the way I do.
3 days ago, Oct. 29th, marked the 1 year anniversary of his incarceration. I have not spoken to my father once, other than through my 2 letters(both of which are on here), and I intend not to keep any line of communication open.
My mother told me last week that she thought I should keep just a crack open, and to let the possibility of reconciliation be an option, as doubtful as that was. She has changed, my sister has changed, and I know that I have changed.
I’m in college, I have my own apartment, I have lots of friends, a pretty decent social life, weed, solitude, and satisfaction. I’m in a reasonable position, the most reasonable I’ve been in in years. It was all sparked after a massive depression and reevaluation of my affairs. I lost almost 3 years of my life waiting on something that I knew would never happen, and I have completely turned it around. I am so humbled by the fact I am going to school, that I am building a future for myself, that I will, in fact, have the possibility of accomplishing my goals.
I ask for very little when it all comes down to it. I am a simple man with a deep thought process. It does not take a lot to make me happy, and the joy that just being around people brings me is enormous. I will say that I do have trouble with isolation, and I know I always will, but at least I am well aware of it.
My self-awareness has never been better. I recognize the world, see the beauty which exists within it, even in the stagnant moments. I was so depressed until I saw the light, and the change began. There’s still a lot to address underneath the surface, but I feel as though my father is fading into distant memory, and that’s not so bad.
The constant, endless march of time continues. It erases the landscape, rebuilds, and the process repeats. This moment in time will forever remain, but will the emotions be forgotten?
- H
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The Inevitable
Folks, what I bring you this time is something that I wish to share with the world now that I have shared it first with those closest to me.
This past weekend, I decided to write a letter to my Dad. After the last communication, I still felt that not everything had been said, not only that, it was a very intense thing for me personally.
A lot has happened since that time, and I felt that I needed to close the door and say what needed to be said in so many words.
What I wrote to him is as follows:
Old man,
I pity you. You are so helpless and lost, thinking that you still control those around you, even though you have no power left. I am not one to back down from a fight. I did not take action for years. I watched you make reckless and thoughtless decisions, unwary of the climate, and lost in your own little world. You were handed a length of rope, but took a mile, and became emotionally distant. You were a fool, and you are still that fool as far as I’ve heard of recent.
There are many things I wish I could say to you, but attacking you with words will not bring me the peace that I so desperately wish. I am no longer restrained by you, and though I seek vengeance and justice for your actions, I realize that this is not the best course of action. The best thing for me to do to preserve my sanity and sanctity is to step away, but not before I release myself from the bonds that hold me so. I am not the fool my father is. I know when to hold my thoughts, and when to fold them equally as much. I have journeyed to the corners of my mind, searching for answers to the greater questions that burn within me, but I find no solace. I am tormented by you, in the back of my head. You that would treat me as the fool, put the blame on something I cannot control, and push my opinions to the side.
I am smarter than you. You always belittled me in front of others, blaming my Asperger’s, saying that I was wrong when I knew that I was right. I warned of the coming tide when things were bleak, but you, in your blind ignorance, pushed forward, like a pig about to be slaughtered. In vain, you tried to fix things by throwing money you did not have down the toilet, to the point that our family was stricken with poverty. You gave up, but I will not.
I have not communicated with you in months, and the only thing that I did was to tell you of your consequences, to not have a relationship with your blood. I am the heir to the Abrams name, but it is not what drives me. I have to bear the shame of knowing that my father is a crook, a liar, a thief, and a manipulator. You eat the souls of those around you, filling your belly with the love and sacrifice of others, but not returning that love in kind. I don’t even think you know what love is, but it is obviously not the lines of bullshit you fed my mother, my sister, and I.
The damage you caused to me psychologically is insurmountable. I have spent months trying to repair the damage, to remember repressed memories, and to understand why I am the way I am. I am filled with rage more than anything. Guilt has no place in my heart, though I feel the burdens, the voids still left within my very person. But I have pulled myself out of my hole, I have worked diligently to prove that I am not my father’s son. I have cut off contact with your side of the family, I got straight A’s my first semester at film school, I have friends who truly love me for who I am, and I have impressed upon others my tales of your foolish demise. My therapy is to share my emotions with the people who care for me the most, and those that are but strangers. I wish to teach them, implore them to not make the same mistakes that you made, and that I made trying to wrap my head around everything.
I have immerged victorious. I have broken the lineage. I will not conform. I will only be Henry, and that is all I can be.
You seem to be grasping at lost hopes and dreams, a false reality of your own making. You deny your psychological issues, you deny your loved ones entrance to your heart, and you say whatever it is another wants to hear to get what you want. You are constantly in a state of go, a perpetual movement and excretion of corruptibility and gullibility. You have lost yourself.
My hope is that our lives never converge again. If I had my way, I would prevent you from manipulating my sister and my mother, but alas, I am not in control of their lives as they are not in control of mine. I am in control of my future and my destiny. I am free to do as I please, to see the world with my own eyes. I have broken the cycle, and I have become who I was meant to be.
I hear that you are afraid of me. You should be, but you should also know that I want to stay as far away from you as I can. You still have the bold nature to send me a birthday card, one which I have not opened, nor will open.
Regarding my mother, you have broken that woman. You have destroyed her, but she is rebuilding. It will take longer for her, but at least she is trying. I have hope for her that I do not for you. Your divorce from her will be a most happy day for me, a proof positive of everything I once wished. You cannot grasp her any longer, and you will not grasp me. I warn you however about my sister. If you so much as try and manipulate her, I will come after you with the Hammer of Thor, and I will not be merciful. She has been tainted by your darkness, and if you pull her further into your pit, I will jump in with the ferocity of a Mother Grizzly protecting her cub.
At last we come to the reason for this communication, the last for a very long time, maybe ever.
For years, you laid the foundation and the setup for your failure. Whether you did not see, or you did not understand is irrelevant. You, and you alone have to live with your fate, and you have to accept the actions that you took. Without this, you are only a shell, a body without a soul. I truly wonder if you will ever come out of your psychosis. Your mother has not, but you don’t have to be like her. Trying to appease a woman who is the world’s biggest cunt is not how you should live your life. She gave you life, but you don’t have to give it to her willingly as you have on so many occasions. You should have fought her as I fight you now, for she is not God. She is a foolish old woman who never discovered what life meant to her. I see now that my lost soul comes from your blood, and the blood of those who you’ve cut down in your conquest.
I loved you once Dad, I really did. I thought you were the coolest, smartest, funniest guy in the world. But you changed, and you changed so rapidly, and gave into the darkness, and were so close but so distant. You gave up on yourself when you should have fought to keep your humanity. Greed drove you into madness, and into the cell you now inhabit. It is this greed that will continue to swallow you whole unless you fight, and discover what is truly important in this world. Do you not wish to make peace? If not for anyone, at least for yourself?
In the end, though I cannot forgive you, I do feel sad for you. Not because of what you did, or where you are, but what you have done to your family and yourself. I pity you.
Now it is time for me to step away, back to my life rich with happiness, and to let you ponder. Do not send me any letters, email me, call me, anything. I will not answer, and I will not budge. I have not left you out in the cold, you brought it upon yourself through your actions.
Goodbye.
Melancholy, but truth.
- H
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Truthful Tuesday
Yo,
So I keep seeing these blogs about “Truthful Tuesday” but to be completely honest (ironically enough), I ALWAYS tell the truth.
But if there is one thing I have to be truthful about, it’s that I had a MASSIVE crush on someone while I was going through my shit last year and earlier this year. I’ve let them go because I know I’m not the one, but I’m still looking for that “special someone” to come into my life and show me a good time.
I get so damn lonely being by myself, but I hate being called by my mother because I really want to hang out with someone I like that ISN’T family. God she pisses me off sometimes. But this all being said, I know she’s only trying to help, but she goes about it the wrong damn way. Our relationship is fucked up because of the whole situation with my Dad, and she has as much to answer for as he does because she wasn’t around either. She was lost in my Dad and her alcoholic tendencies, trying to deal with her own problems. I just want her to back the fuck off, and let me go. I’m not 5 years old anymore, and I’ve been living on my own for 2 1/2 years now, which has worked out fine.
So I guess I haven’t been COMPLETELY truthful about some things, but it’s more like there’s information I haven’t chosen to share than actually hid.
Other than all of that nonsense, I guess I just want to be around/with someone, but I need my space too.
- H
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The Other Night…
I starting writing this when I was fucked up after talking to @JenSquard on twitter for a while. I was upset, bored, lonely, and just decided to write about my feelings. This is what follows:
I’m starting this admitting that I am pretty stoned out of my mind. Some things I say may sound insane, crazy, or otherwise out of line. That’s a normal thing for me these days.
I thought I could be somebody. I thought I WAS somebody. But I was controlled. I had my freedom taken away from me by my own father. I was his puppet. I was sold down the river. I was treated like I didn’t know anything. Like I couldn’t take a shit without asking to go.
I’m not saying this was a North Korean prison by any means, but the humiliation… The anger… The repression of my own thoughts… Psychological damage does not heal so easy. It’s like I’m viewing the world in a new light because I haven’t been able to be myself for so long. Who am I? I don’t know.
- H
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A Very Personal Blog Post
PREFACE:Before I share something personal that I wrote, I want to make it clear that the opinions represented in this article are mine and mine alone, and have no bearing on anyone else. I wrote this as a coping method of dealing with the current issues I am having in my personal life, and this should NOT be taken is anything more than my opinion. The reason why I say this is because it deals with my Dad, and despite what I say about him, he’s really a great person overall, and this should not effect your opinion of him in any way, shape or form. This was written by me, FOR me, not for him, and not for anyone else. I am liable, and I am willing to accept the consequences if and when he sees this. I need to publish this. This is important to me.
Author’s note: This was originally written in my notebook, and I’m keeping it in it’s original form because of the flow it has to it.I’m writing this in my notebook in order to figure out who I really am. Why? I have no clue, but with the combo of Red Bull, Depression, and everyone in my life, I’m filled to the brim with conflicted feelings, and I don’t know how much more I can take.
I’m a little nutty, but you be too if you had the same situations happen to you for 7 years. I’m tortured by my constant feelings of self-loathing, and my endurance is constantly tested. I’m always trying to prove myself to everyone, just so I can feel some sense of self-worth. I don’t know how good I am at anything because I’ve never really received any compliments that meant something to me.
Let me explain: my father is a control freak, and a workaholic. He was always more concerned about making ends meet for us than actually spending time with us. He’s a genius, but also a corrupt bastard, a fraud, and an overly ambitious individual. I always had the belief that his ambition outweighed his abilities, and I’m pretty sure I’m right. Not only that, his business partners always seem to have a screw loose, and he is too trusting of them.
He is also incredibly impulsive, and doesn’t take time to weigh his options and the potential consequences. It blinds him, and he’s made poor choices because of this. I would have never dared telling him how I felt in the past, as his anger is comparable to a volcanic eruption. Now that I am older however, I see the man for who he is, and I don’t much like it. Our opinions vary, as he is more conservative, and I am more of a liberal, but I have never really felt like he respected me.
I’ve wanted to crucify him in writing for years, and now that I have a real chance to do it, I don’t want to. I feel it’s because it’s out of love, but what it’s really about is whom I am today. You see, he’s ruined my life, made me feel like I’m less than human, controlled everything I’ve done for the last 22 years, and embarrassed me at every turn, and I’ve rebelled. It is through this need to want my life that I have gained a valuable skill: Self-reliance. Because the situations I’ve been put in have been so terrible, and promises have been broken, I’ve had to learn to be independent. Through that independence, I have been able to explore myself, and find out what life was all about.
He put so much emphasis on my Asberger’s growing up that the need to prove I am in control became imperative. He always introduce me as someone with Asberger’s, therefore handicapping me before I even got a chance to open my mouth. This also instilled a feeling, a need to prove myself constantly, to overcome this obstacle he placed in my path. I feel to this day that people still don’t take me seriously because of my so-called “learning disability”.
It’s taken me years to get over most of this torment he unknowingly caused, and the anguish has been unbearable. Now that’s he;s going to be gone for a while, I have time to keep searching for my path. I’m currently unemployed, live with a roommate, and I’m just struggling to survive. Hopefully things will change rapidly, but who knows what will happen.
So here we are, at the present. I realize that my Dad is just an incredibly misguided man, and that he was only trying to do his best with what he had. At times, it was good. He was great when I was a child, but bitterness set in as I got older. He was around physically, but not emotionally.
Though I cannot forgive most of the mistakes he has made, I do have to thank him. Because of those mistake, and the constant struggle I’ve had, it’s made me stronger than I ever thought possible. It’s made me who I am today, and I’m definitely happy about that.
What I want him to know is that I love him, and the journey he is making will be tough, but also a necessary one. Personal growth is key, and it is the best advice to give. Never stop looking for who you are.
I know I won’t.
- H