Nobody Knows The Troubles I've Seen

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It's not such a happy day for me this morning. The weather has a lot to do with it. A cool front from the east dropped down out of Virginia and spread out over the coastal plains with a dreariness that permeates my bones. My bones seem to have taken a major role in my life now.

The rheumatoid arthritis is another permeation that chills my soul. It forces me to deal with it. My visit with the budding rheumatologist at the Durham VA Hospital was not a joyous occasion. She tolerated me and just waited for me to leave. I could just feel her parents expecting her to become a doctor for the sole purpose of making them proud.

She probably has one of those "Tiger Mothers" the Asians seem to spawn and ship to America. "There is no joy in Muddville..." The "good grades" crowd lend the appearance of living a dictated life that they take out on everyone else. I guess I hate the education system more and more as time goes by.

My parents openly admitted that the security of holding a government job is the reason they became school teachers. Damned Great Depression. Their holding public jobs was horrible for me. I was forced to conduct myself in such a way as to not bring the public eye on them so they wouldn't get fired. That was not such a pleasant way to grow up. I ran away from home when I was fifteen. I wasn't successful because I didn't know how to provide for myself without becoming a whore or a slave. When I was eighteen I joined the Navy.

I claimed that I joined the Navy to see the world, and I did, I wanted to see how other people lived. The main reason I joined the Navy, however, was to get away from my parents and their incessant ambitions for me. They "worked hard" not to provide for themselves and their children, but to give their children a chance to "be somebody", with all the debilitating implications that their children were not. That one could only "be somebody" if they earned it through "hard work". It wasn't enough to live and let die.

I'm no better. I married two women both of whom had college degrees. I guess I thought, despite myself, that for a woman to have a college degree meant that they were smart. They were not smart. They married me despite the fact that I didn't have a college degree because I was smart. It didn't appear to make the slightest bit of difference that I was crazy, and openly admitted it, and proved it because I was smart enough to pull it off. But then, they wanted our children to be smart by "working hard" to provide them with a college degree. That's dumb.

I'm dumb too. Even though I'm smart. I could have been a contendah if I hadn't had to dumb down to fit my parent's mold. It was when I read one of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas that I began to realize that I really hated my parents:

55 Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me."

http://www.gape.org/gapes/prispevki/atranslationofthegospelofthomas.htm

This saying is the opposite of what I was taught Jesus said in the King James Version of the Bible. The Protestants who formed the village who raised me from the First Baptist Church, got their version from the Roman Catholics who altered the original saying to suit their needs. I knew the first time I encountered it while participating in an e-mail discussion group about the Gospel of Thomas it was correct.

I reckon it was because I hated my parents for forcing the education issues they were obsessed by that I turned to religion when I was nine years old. In my mind I was just a tool they employed to convince the people they wanted to impress that they were good parents and good people who were worthy of teaching their children to be good children like their own. I hated all of those hypocrites as a child. None of their ambitions had anything to do with love and compassion.

Most of my life up until the time they died was directed toward proving to them that I was a human being who was capable of enjoying life without being used to get them what they thought would make them socially desirable and recognized people. I failed in my efforts to save them and my siblings. I failed in my efforts to save my own children. I failed in my efforts to save myself... maybe. I ain't dead yet. '-)

There is a slight chance I could save my grandchildren, but I'll never get the chance. They have to live up to my ex-wives and children's need for them to become social monsters too. My oldest daughter of my second marriage wrote back only after I inquired that she's taking my grandson who is barely two years old to a therapist because he isn't using words yet. I wrote back that made me feel good that he doesn't talk yet, and the longer he could hold out the better.

She didn't write back. She doesn't trust my judgment because her mother was totally intimidated by her mother who was crazier even than me. My grandson doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't have anybody on his side. He doesn't have an advocate who will let him be to find his own way. He'll go inside and stay there and be dependent on institutions the rest of his life as punishment for not living up to her expectations. No blame. He's too young to know about Prince Chi. His mother is too educated to care.

It was revealing to me when I went for my walk with my brother's dogs yesterday afternoon. I didn't understand it at first. They didn't run out ahead and scout the perimeters as usual, but stayed close. Too close. I could hardly walk because they got into my path and stood there looking back to see if I would continue along the path I always take on our walks. Then, I heard my nephew shooting his guns, and I understood their fear. It's like dogs act during thunderstorms.

Later, I remembered when I committed myself to the State hospital to find out if I was insane for hating my parents. I didn't know I had to do that to follow the docetic Jesus. I was taught that I had to love and respect my parents or I wasn't a good Christian. The big lie. In the insane asylum there were people who followed me and stayed close to me like the dogs did yesterday.

They were skinny little men with darting eyes. One of them walked ahead of me about ten paces and another one walked about ten paces behind me. Like the dogs they were always looking, looking to see if I kept going down the big institutional halls. One day I turned off unexpectedly and caught the second one and demanded to know why they were following me.

He explained that they were paranoid schizophrenics and that I was the only person in the hospital they were not afraid of. They were like dogs caught up in an eternal thunderstorm or like people caught up in wars and situations they couldn't control. They were like my ex-wives and the woman I dated for a while from Pennsylvania who later admitted that she was bi-polar. When she was up she was bossy and arrogant. When she was down she clung to me like a dog in a thunderstorm.

I didn't get to be the kind of person that frightened animals cling to easily. I went through all the terrors and heartbreaks and the dark nights of the soul. I never did it intentionally to gain the good end, but because I didn't have any choice. Visitations do that. That I survived what I endured is a miracle to me, and only to me, because nobody knows.

The truth is that I'm not as kind as I could be to people who cling to me because of their own fear of life. Eventually, I drive all of them off because, like with the dogs who want to stay so close by, they cause me to stumble over them, I need my own space to contemplate my own life. There is nothing I can do to alleviate their fear or to protect them from themselves.

They have to go through their own "dark night of the soul" under their own auspices. I have tried for decades to be there for them, especially my ex-wives who then cling to our children as their protectors. It's a hard row to hoe knowing they will eventually turn to other people when I can't give them what they want that I suffered for, and then hate me as a fraud because I'm not the miracle worker they preyed for.

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