God Bless This Mess(13)
My dad provided for us. Over time he went from owning his own salon to opening a series of schools in the Paul Mitchell cosmetology franchise, where he taught all kinds of other people how to be hairdressers, too. This was a man who at one point was sleeping in his car while he tried to save enough money to find an apartment. He should have been hailed as one of those great, all-American success stories, since he started from nothing and pulled himself up by his bootstraps again and again. He kept a roof over our heads and food on the table—even though he’d complain and even yell at times about how much my mom spent on groceries every week. I’m not sure why he got so angry about money all the time, since his businesses did really well. People thought we were rich, though we weren’t, and that caused them to look down on us in a way because we had some nice things but my father wasn’t a doctor or a lawyer. And to be looked down on when he worked so hard made him mad. When he did come home, he was exhausted, and that made home life hard. Maybe it’s because he’d been made fun of, too. Maybe it’s because he’d been poor as a kid. I’m not sure. But he did well enough, especially with my mom’s help, that my parents were able to buy me pretty much anything I ever wanted or needed.
It was weird, though. There was always tension around money. My mom would take me school shopping, and we’d come home from the mall with multiple bags full of clothes sometimes. But then when my dad came home and wanted to see what we bought, my mom would tell me to bring out only one bag. We had to hide all the rest so she wouldn’t have to hear it from him!
There was good reason for that: when my dad got mad, it was awful.
My dad has changed a lot in recent years, and has mellowed out a lot overall, but back then, when he got mad it was almost like he turned into a different person. When he was fun and silly, he was the best! But then a switch got hit, and the anger was just so completely out of nowhere, and out of proportion compared to anything that had happened. Like, if we spent too much money in any given week he told us we were going to have to live in a refrigerator box.
My parents got into fights at night often, fights I’d hear from my bedroom. And sometimes they would carry on the next morning, while I was getting ready for school. I walked on eggshells. I didn’t want to be the reason they fought. And I don’t think there was any part of me that wanted to be in a marriage after witnessing that kind of anger and bickering.
*
Throughout most of my childhood, my dad’s focus was on work. When he got home, exhausted, it felt like he wouldn’t really listen or seem to care about much of what we were up to. But then something would grab his attention and he would get mad that he didn’t know what was going on, insisting that we “didn’t tell him things.” He would yell at Mom for that. And she would never just let him yell at her. She would argue back. Because that’s what she always did. Even though she gave up a lot for him, she still had that feisty, rebellious mountain blood in her. The arguments would escalate. They would say the most horrible things to each other.
How can you say horrible things and yell horrible things at the person you love, and then come back from that? Again and again?
How is that even love?
When I was in high school, my dad left for two weeks and stayed at one of his businesses. On his way out the door that morning, just as I woke up for school, he yelled at my mom that he didn’t love her anymore, that he was “done.”
Two weeks later he came back, and everyone acted like nothing had ever happened.
But I didn’t forget. I held the weight of their relationship, even as a kid, because my mom would share things with me about what the relationship was like, and what he would say to her. But what can a ten-year-old do? What can a fourteen-year-old do? I was treated more like her confidante than her child sometimes. I know now how unhealthy that really was, but I wanted nothing more than to make the fighting stop, to make her happy, to make him happy.
Is it any wonder that I did everything I could to be the peacemaker? I didn’t want to be one more reason for the dysfunction in the family. I wanted to be the reason for everything to be okay. Which meant: How many 100s could I get on tests? How many As on my report card? On some days, being the star student was enough of a distraction to bring peace to the family.
My parents’ relationship had a direct effect on my relationship with my brother, too. My brother, Patrick, was two and a half years younger than me, and I resented him so much. He was always doing something “wrong.” He was a rambunctious kid, a toddler, he didn’t know any better, but night after night he would stand in front of the TV. Like, right in front of it. And my dad would yell at him, and then it would become an argument between my parents, because my mom would just tell him to let Patrick be. She always had something to say.
The way I saw it back then was Patrick’s misbehaving caused fights, which made me try even harder to do anything I could to not cause fights.
Once he was a little older, we found out that Patrick had trouble with his eyesight. That’s why he was standing in front of the TV. He just wanted to see it! Later in high school, he was also diagnosed with ADHD. Looking back on it, none of us should have been so quick to judge his behavior. He was just a kid! But back then my dad insisted that his behavior was my mom’s fault. And the fact that Patrick made them get into arguments made me want to take out all my anger on him. And I did. Not only did I tell him to go away all the time and try to keep him from playing with my friends, but we’d get into physical fights when he refused to move, or wouldn’t listen to me. And sometimes I was really aggressive.