I wanted to please and placate him, because as long as Daddio was laughing and smiling, I believed , we would be safe. I was the entertainer in the family. I wanted to keep everything light and fun and joyful. And while this psychological response would later bear artistic and financial fruits, it also meant that my little nine year old brain processed Daddio's abusive episodes as somehow being my fault.
As much as we all suffered under Daddio's militaristic views of love and family,nobody suffered more than my mother. If two people being in charge meant everybody dies,then that meant my mother could never be in charge.
The problem was that my mother wasn't the type of woman to be commanded. She was educated,proud,stubborn and as much as we begged her to please be quiet ,she refused.
Once,when Daddio slapped her, she egged him on.
"Oh,you're such a man! You think that hitting a woman makes you a man,huh?"
He hit her again, knocking her to the ground.
She stood right back up,looked him in the eye,and calmly said, "Hit me all you want ,but you can never hurt me."
I have never forgotten that. The idea that he could hit her body but somehow she was in control of what "hurt" her? I wanted to be strong like that.
Reklam
For me ,the border between fantasy and reality has ways been thin and transparent,and I've been able to step in and out of each effortlessly.
In order to feel confident and secure, you need to have something to feel confident and secure about. We all want to feel good about ourselves, but many of us don’t recognize how much work that actually takes.
Internal power and confidence are born of insight and proficiency. When you understand something, or you’re good at something, you feel strong, and it makes you feel like you have something to offer. When you have adequately cultivated your unique skills and gifts, then you’re excited about approaching and interacting with the world. And what I learned from Paul was that being good at something allows you to be calm in a storm, knowing that you can handle whatever comes. There is a great Bruce Lee quote that resonates with me. One of Lee’s students once asked him,
“Master, you constantly speak to us of peace, yet every day you train us to fight. How do you reconcile these conflicting ideas?” And Bruce Lee responded, “It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.”
Rapping didn’t just win me the approval I desperately craved from my peers; it gave me a sense of power. But I knew it was fleeting; it demanded my constant attention and nurturing. I knew I was good, but I also knew that I had to work.
It wasn’t going to just come to me. I had to go get it.
I didn't lie about my perceptions,my perceptions lied to me. I would get lost ; sometimes I would lose track of what was real and what I had made up. It became a defense mechanism - my mind wouldn't even contemplate what was true. I would think , what do they need to hear to be ok?
While I took extra special care to please my father every chance I got,harry mimicked my mother's behavior. Starting at a young age,he preferred to just stand up and take the beatings.
Reklam
Reklam