Sunday, July 24, 2016

DEATH WISH

 
One time, after an extremely violent confrontation with my father (and believe me there were many), he handed me a loaded gun and told me to kill myself.

He didn't actually tell me. He begged me. Said he wanted to see me dead, wished with his whole heart that I would do it.

Our horrifyingly turbulent history was filled with similar scenes (and scenes far worse), but somehow this one managed to penetrate my coat of self-defensive armor. I was very used to his cutting verbal abuse - - and even more used to his vicious physical attacks, but this was a new ambush. The words stung hard.

I still have that gun. And the bullets. 
I never want to grow old. I never want to be sick, feeble, and helpless. The glory days of my youth are far past. Someday.....perhaps someday.....the gun will serve a noble purpose.....

I had a serious death wish in my youth. In retrospect, I don't think I ever really wanted to die. My true goal was to expunge the abject pain and misery in my life - - to end the eternal chaotic nightmare in which I was ensnared - - the direct result of my father's insane abuse.

I had stayed under his suffocating shadow for too long, mainly to protect my mother - who was as emotionally wounded and physically immobilized as myself. Two emotional cripples, clinging desperately to the nothingness that was our existence.

I never wanted to die, but I wanted to kill the emotional agony that was devouring me.
One impossible night, after a terrifying scene, I locked myself in the bathroom. Grabbed a pair of scissors, viciously hacked at my wrists until the alarming amount of flowing blood brought me to my senses.
In truth - I was hacking at my father's evil soul.... 

I've written about that final night many times before, but I'm mentioning it again in a pitiful bout of beer drinking and remembrance.

That final physical scene with my father, when he tried to break my neck, choked me into unconsciousness, knocked me through the plate glass back door. I landed outside on hard concrete, amid sharp and bloody pieces of glass.
That night I got his gun, planned to kill him when he was sleeping, but lost my feeble courage....

And what, you might ask, caused my father to inflict such violence? We were having dinner. He was drinking too much beer. He started an argument about the cost of electricity. Warned me not to turn on any lights. I foolishly defied him. I got up and turned on the dining room light.

You don't dare defy my father. Ever. 

It took weeks for my physical wounds to heal. After that I took off for Hollywood and embarked on a long, slow death of self-destruction. It was my method of escape. Escape from the ugly bitch of reality.
Escape was always my main objective.

The freedom that I craved wasn't possible without becoming an entirely different person than I really was. Booze and drugs helped me abandon  my timidity, self-consciousness, fears and inhibitions, and aided me in becoming street-wise tough. I wasn't tough, but could admirably fake it.

Booze, drugs, one-night stands. Casual sex and back alley quickies. Serious "relationships" that never lasted. Lots of them. Copious amounts of malt liquor, washed down with whiskey or vodka. 

Soon the potency of booze worn thin. I started pouring whiskey or vodka into my malt liquor. Then, in an extended dimension to the lethal cocktail, I'd add pills - sleeping pills, tranquilizers. Anything available. 

I marvel that I didn't die. In fact, these many years later, I look back at my toxic youth in absolute jaw-dropping astonishment.
 
I played rough games with dangerous people. I thoroughly enjoyed endangering myself. The wild, shameless, unconventional, colorful, lurid, fantasy backdrop of Hollywood only served to enhance my unholy journey.....

.....and I learned how incredibly easy it is to lose one's dignity and abandon one's soul.



These were a few tiny glimpses of my turbulent past. It's a modified version. The expanded version would be too scary.
Most of my readers have heard this before (there are occasional yawns). I repeat things for the newer readers. 

26 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to actually believe it.

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  2. While I don't fear death, I do wish a vampire would bit me and turn me so I can live forever. Thanks goodness your still here. I think maybe you should made him one of those "special cocktails" Men like him only seem powerful when they go after smaller or younger , when in reality their weak. My father was't no where near your father. He just had a awful temper and no patience, very authoritative, a servicemen, much like Archie Bunker without the charm. In the last years we grew closer. when he died, my mother popped champagne, and went downtown to dinner and party with her girlfriends, while the next day we went on a shopping spree. Everyone deals with death differently dear. But she did say to him once, lay a hand on my son once, and I'll kill you. But luckily he wasn't the physical type. And him being older and me developing, I think he knew I'd laid him out flat. I don't know how you used restraint. But would give you a huge hug for living through such terror! Literally. Not knowing when or where your father would attack, or while sleeping...is scary as hell.

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    1. "Like Archie Bunker but without the charm" - - haha I like that!!
      My father is now deceased...and after he died all the suffocating hate that I harbored miraculously vanished.

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  3. Fabulous post! I often wondered what my life would have been like if I became aware and sexually active in the year 2000. When I was young, if your parents loved you, you had shock treatments for being gay. If they didn't, they just kicked you to the curb. This is why equality is so important. There should be no self hate or self destruction.

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    1. Thanks! The mode of thinking was so different and barbaric long ago. Good intentions destroyed a lot of people. Fortunately my father never gave a damn about what I did in my private life, and didn't care who I had sex with. I'll write more about this (hopefully) in my next post.

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  4. You did the best you could with what you knew and learned and endured. You were emotionally lost and beaten but you survived and you even found those creative, intelligent pieces of your soul that you nourished. None of us wants to die weak and dependent (and not all of us will), but grasping on to life with both hands to the bitter end--he doesn't win. The bastard doesn't win!

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    1. There were countless times when I thought the bastard would win - - it's fortunate that he didn't. We've ALL gone through our own private hell, and it's a miracle that any of us survived....

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  5. I'm so very glad you didn't ... and, you haven't!
    (Powerful image you've chosen toda.)

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    1. I'm a coward at heart much of the time.
      I just happened to find that image right before posting this, and thought it was extremely appropriate.

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  6. No yawns here although not my first reading of what you had to endure. Did you ever get any inkling of what caused your father to act out the way he did? Any siblings that had similar tendencies? It's amazing you not only survived your father's abuse but also your self destructive behavior once you escaped from home.
    I hope you never reach the point where you are even tempted to use that pistol.

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    1. Fortunately my past is far from me...but it still haunts me when I least expect it.
      You should be heartily congratulated for not yawning.

      I'm going to write more about what made my father "tick" in my next post.

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  7. Dignity is a practical abstraction, a very necessary one, and is mostly associated with self-esteem, but too little attention has been given to its equally important counterpart, self-compassion. You are a kind man --kind to your cats, I know, and kind in your comments to me. The blows you suffered in the past also deserve kindness, a life-affirming self-compassion --really a new frontier in healing. Not something we got taught last-century. I'm just learning now.

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    1. I'm not always as kind as I'd like to be, Geo. Very often that old self-defense mechanism in me rears its ugly head. I react negatively without thinking first. Even after all these years, self-compassion isn't always easy to utilize.

      I'm just learning, too....it takes a helluva long time.

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    2. Regarding your comment on my previous post - -
      anyone who can read my poetry four or five times deserves congratulations. Many thanks!

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  8. Replies
    1. Unfortunately , honesty is often painful. Many thanks, John.

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  9. Great post, although as ms martyr said I knew what you had gone through. Love the "awesome" (sorry, the (non-existent) devil made me do it!) memento mori image you found for this.

    I may not suffer from a "death wish", but I have frequently wished I had never been born. If you can see the difference, congratulations: you have more perception than most shrinks I've been forced to see. I will admit to a lack of "impulse control", and agree with that diagnosis. It makes me laugh that many medications I now take warn of possible suicidal ideation; I just think of England and tell the doctors what they want to hear. The way I've come to terms with it is that three people have to die (of natural causes!) before me: my parents and my lover. Statistically, this is probable, due to age. After that, I have promised to have a "Serious Conversation" with my best friend before taking any action. While I may enjoy getting to know the adults my brother's children become, what worries me is that something independence-altering, such as a stroke, can happen suddenly and without warning. Then I would be hard pressed to act on my final plans.

    Sorry this was so long! ~~~ NB

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    1. I fully understand all that you've said, yet I feel that responding in any detail would be insufficient. I always worry very much about the future and - as you said - I worry about suddenly not having the physical or mental ability to have any control over it. I have an uncanny knack for suppressing important things....

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  10. Jon,
    It's a wonder that you survived all that physical and emotional abuse. I don't think I could have done as well as you have had. However, you did survive and are stronger.
    Ron

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    1. I'm doing infinitely better now, Ron, but there were many wasted years when I was completely destroyed. I've only written a small fraction of what I endured.

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  11. I think you summed up alot when you said you lived to 'kill the emotional agony that was devouring you.' And you are right it is so easy to 'abandon one's soul' with carelessness in youth.

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    1. In bad situations, different people react in different ways. My reaction was always to escape from reality. Reality was far too brutal to deal with. That's probably the coward's way out...but I didn't care.

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  12. I fully understood this post. No matter what, for the most part, I have always been a Pollyanna kinda person. I know... doesn't make sense. Still, when I was a teenager, I tried to commit suicide, too. I didn't really want to die... I wanted my father to "get help" so HE would change. Nothing romantic about suicide... I still remember how awful it was to get my stomach pumped.

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