I am listening to an audible book as I stand in line six feet ahead of and six feet behind other shoppers waiting to get into Trader Joe’s to pay 2 dollars for an orange and 5 dollars for a half gallon of milk and gluten-free! tuna. I am reading one of Alice Miller’s books. She was a psychologist, psychoanalyst and philosopher whose work describes how families are built to create broken people. Her work was apparently stuffed into a hole somewhere along the line because the books are 20 and 30 years old and the deluded sense of society she describes still prevails.
This book could be titled The Damage Done by the Fourth Commandment. It resonates with me. I don’t know if I ever loved my parents. I needed their attention, approval and love. I needed them in order to live but I don’t think I ever loved them. Dad was a drunken raging shit and Mom was a manipulative narcissist, more of a performance artist than an actual parent. Sorry Mom, but this is the truth.
You’re not supposed to hate your parents. When my parents said they loved me I knew they didn’t because they didn’t behave like they did. Someone broke them before they got to me and I’m sorry for that, but I am not required to love them because of that. You are supposed to appreciate whatever they do because they let you live indoors. In my experience, if you don’t honor your parents because they don’t deserve your affection or respect you are told to forgive and forget. This is bullshit.
How do you release rage if you never acknowledge it and its causes? You cannot invest in a lie and move on. You can acknowledge what was, feel the truth of it and then move forward.
I was supposed to love my parents no matter how badly they behaved, whether or not I felt loved. But home is where I learned to accept being bullied. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the great education, for the nice house, the nice clothes and for the nice neighborhoods and for the trips. You made it possible for me to dream of better, but you were neglectful and abusive and no, I don’t love you. And once I can say all that then the rage fades.
And once I say my piece there’s another step. You need a healthy witness to your truth. Otherwise you will remain an infected piece of a sick body that rejected you but left you so diseased in heart, mind and body that you cannot recover. In this sickened state, it is possible to achieve goals, get a job, finish school, get into debt, and saddle yourself with other unhealthy relationships so you can continue the pattern, but you will not heal.
All this comes to my mind now because I see my society in failure. My county is ruled by people who seem to come from the same kind of parents who made me. I live in a system and in a society ruled by a heartless and senseless sense of profit that is incapable of evolving. I think we need a healing trend. Covid is simply taking advantage of the hurt we’ve inflicted on the world and on ourselves. Good. Now that we can see the damage done so clearly let’s recoup. Let’s tear it all apart and start fresh. Let’s remove anyone in power who is too weak and afraid to hear the rising sounds of people in need who can be helped if we radically step into the new. Let’s revolt towards the better days. We might never get another chance like the one we are being offered now. Let’s not returned to the way things were if we can help it.
Am I scared, you bet, but I am also excited. History has shown that times like these can bring about great changes. Exactly what I don’t know but think about what you like about having a little more space and time to yourselves than you did a month ago. What ideas are germinating as a result? What can you see clearly now that you couldn’t three weeks ago? What doesn’t matter anymore to you as a result of hoarding toilet paper, canned spinach, rice and Laura Scudder’s Peanut Butter?
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