Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Every marathon that has ever been run; every mountain that has ever been climbed; every journey that has ever been ventured; have all begun with a single step. For most of my life, that first step has either been in the wrong direction, or fear has kept me from ever taking it at all. It seems so much easier to just remain motionless in the uncomfortable hell you know than to step out into the vast unknown where anything can happen. You can fail. You can have your heart broken. But the thing that is most certain, is that you will never know what might have been, if you never take that step.

I grew up in a household where my Step Father ruled with an iron fist. This fist was conveniently wrapped in manipulative colored tissue paper designed to weaken whoever he was attempting to conquer at the time. With my Mother it was either cold and black or rose colored and tender paper, whichever was necessary in the moment. But with me, it was typically the color of a cancer patient’s gray skin or a college kid's pale yellowish vomit.

The older I get the more I come to see how this man, like a drunken potter, shaped my views of life, the world around me and unfortunately myself. His dirt caked hands shaped the wet clay as his feet worked the pedal. Word by word. Phrase by phrase. Dismantling any semblance of self esteem this child may have had, to form me into another terrified, insecure, little boy in a man’s body; in a world filled with terrified, insecure, little boys in men’s bodies. I still can hear the words he would use to propagate this into being. Very vivid and descriptive words that I still regurgitate some 40 years later whenever I am feeling particularly self loathing as I often do. “You are so stupid!”. “What is wrong with you!”. “This is why nobody likes you”. “If only you could be more like your brother”. Or the one I’ve been saying the most lately since being fired from my job, “You are such a loser, just a bum”. Every time I say these things to myself, I am reminded of their origins and it seems to make them sound even more believable.

I have been so incredibly brutal to myself throughout my life, recycling the words that people have spoken over me, back to myself again and again. As if they were some unstoppable Biblical prophecy that once spoken could not be altered. Like a pebble thrown into a pond, the ripple effect of these lies was not contained within the boundaries of my own skin and skull. They spread out into everything and everyone around me. How could they not? Every relationship I have ever had, whether friend, or co worker or lover was somehow shaped by these beliefs of myself. How could this one love me, if I am completely unlovable. They must be lying. That’s what they are, they are all liars. And so the story goes. I lost my job because I am a loser and destined to fail. I lost my wife because I am not as good of a man as my brother, and no one could possibly even like me, never mind love me. I have no friends because I can’t get close to anyone, because if I do, they will only run away once they see the REAL me. My relationship with my young daughters is strained because of my fear that they will be embarrassed of me, because their Daddy is now just an unemployed “BUM” and will only ever let them down. The words that were spoken over me, becoming a blanket of self prophecy that unless something changes, I will eventually pass along to my girls. And my girls, so full of youth and love and innocence, will pass on the family recipe to the world, the ponds around them.

I want nothing more than for that to never be. I want nothing more than for those lies to die and for this generational curse to be broken right here, right now, today. I don’t want my worst enemy, let alone my children, to suffer under the weight of such cruel and tragic labels. Labels and lies which will envelope every aspect of their lives and bleed into every relationship they will ever have.

So I will begin with me. I will make ME, the first step in my journey, my marathon, my mountain climb. I will choose to love my children more than I have learned to hate myself. I will do this, by first being kind to me. I will not speak lies and death over myself any longer. I will speak life and truth. Dr. King once said that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”. I will choose right now, this day, to love myself. With all my hurts and warts and fears and failures. In spite of my past and present, my sadness and shame. I will no longer try to expel the darkness with more darkness or the hatred with more hatred. I will love me even when it hurts to love me. Even when everything in me wants to believe the lies I hear screaming in my head daily, the same ones I've listened to all my life. I will choose to let love drive out the hate and light drive out the darkness within me. I will choose to be kind and love the rock that makes the ripple, which will eventually affect whichever pond it is thrown into. And perhaps, just perhaps, my daughters will grow up with a better understanding of how lovely and wonderful and awesome they really are. And perhaps, the ponds where they find themselves being tossed into one day, will feel the ripples of their light and love. A light and love that was passed on to them from their Daddy, and the world around them, in even the smallest of ways, will be forever changed for the better. I hope I will be there to see it. The truth is, I probably won't. But one thing is certain. I will never see it in this life or the next, unless I have the courage to love them enough to take that first step.