#is it ok for middle aged women to hit on them? you weirdos

[rigginsstreet]

karen wheeler is a trash bag hope this helps

[maybejustlaurie]

Daddy

Well, fuck. I’m getting old and I haven’t mentally dealt with something that I fear has undermined me, and will continue to undermine me if I don’t address it.

I have an issue with feeling rejected. If I feel I’m not loved completely and unwaveringly, I have historically pushed people away and sought love and / or attention elsewhere.

My first memory of this is in primary school, year 4 or year 5. There was a girl in a grade above me who saw through the little shit I had become by that age (7 primary schools by that age, i had learned to NOT bother making friends) Sharn Skinner. Bless your sweet soul, I still remember clearly you playing cricket with me using a wooden ruler and a barbie shoe, while you took time to write to my mother telling her how sweet I was.

And of course, given the feeling I had but was not yet conscious enough to identify or articulate: that I was not loved / cherished / cared for, I crushed hard on this girl. Massively. Made a right 11yo tool of myself. But I see now that I was just reaching out for the care I had felt, and wanted more of.

I’ve rationalised certain things to myself over time: that my single mother had me at 18, no partner, and she did her best. That she struggled with an undiagnosed mental illness, and self medicated smoking pot. That she truly grew and filled her role of mother over time. But honestly: she was a flawed human like the rest of us, and some of her failings were just what they were. There were highlights and lowlights. Some of the lowlights will feature here, but that’s not to say she was a bad person, bad mother, or that I don’t miss her sincerely today, nearly 2 years after her passing.

I remember when I was 4 & 5 years old, playing in my room in a sydney suburb alone often, due to the low-hanging cloud of pot smoke due to mum & her friends smoking it up. She was smart enough to not want me breathing that.

There are swings and roundabouts with some things. I became smart. I learned to read early (credit to mum on that one), and would read to myself getting lost in fantasy when I was alone. Later in life I would read the Brittanica Children’s Encyclopaedia from cover to cover. To this day I have a broad general knowledge!

When I look back at my childhood behaviour I can’t spot any serious misbehaviour until we moved to Northern NSW.

In Sydney, where I was born and raised until I started year 2 at school, I had friends on the block who I could go outside and play with. We would ride our small bikes up and down the street as fast as we could. I still remember one of those boys had a ‘70’s style Harley-handlebar bike, it was slow off the line, but boy could be motor once he had some speed.

I had my grandparents, 2 uncles and an aunt (none all that much older than me) in the same suburb. Great grandmother and grandfather just a couple of suburbs over. I would even visit my paternal grandparents, I remember their harsh cockney accents, my aunt Dy being a complete sweetheart.

Then we were up there, first on a cattle farm my uncle was managing, then in our own house in the closest town, which had maybe 300 people. That was… ok. Not a lot of kids my age, but really only a few streets in size, so easy enough to play with other kids when I wanted. Evenings, the younger/more social adults went to the sole town pub. Mum made friends with the kitchen staff, and I remember I used to get raspberry lemonade for free. There was also a cocktail arcade machine (the low ones you’d sit on a stool at) and I remember playing pacman or galaga until I ran out of 20c pieces, and drifting off into daydreams until it was time to go home.

It was in this town mum met my future stepdad. Clearly something went on, because we suddenly moved out of town first to a caravan on a friend’s property, the to an old wooden farmhouse in the middle of a cane field. No car, I remember mum meeting me at school, and walking the 7km back to the farmhouse with her. I remember times being poor and mum fretting about food. I was young, but I didn’t miss the fact that money was tight.

Then we moved, moved, moved. Many places I’d go to more than 1 school as I first went to a public school, and once my great grandmother (a devout catholic) kicked up a fuss, then to a catholic school.

My Stepdad was an alcoholic at this time, and physically abusive. He hit mum, he hit me, he played favourites with the children he had previously. I remember one time when I was around 12 or 13, lending my BMX to his son, a few years younger. Now, I didn’t really want to, because he wasn’t great on a bike, but I knew I’d get hit if he went inside and created a fuss because I wasn’t playing nice. So I let him have a ride, he stacked it, hurt himself, and my stepdad came at me, fist swinging. He must have realised mid swing and pulled the punch, as I didn’t go flying across the yard. But the message was clear: that boy was more important than I was. I think it was about this time I really started acting out. Ran away from home (yawn), started stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down. Shit, I remember going on a rampage in town with my neighbours (from a km down the road) one day and literally stealing a remote control car, and even a ladies pay packet out of her car. I’m sorry, lady. If I knew who you were, I’d send you a large sum today to make up for the terrible time I’m sure you had without your pay. :(

There were a number of notable lowlights: getting cast as the secondary lead in a school play only to miss rehearsals due to whatever level of intoxication they had, getting busted down to a small role, and eventually not even taking part. Missing soccer matches due to people being too drunk or too busy socialising to take me the 12km to the field. I only ever played home games, away was just out of the question. On the many house moves we made in that time, one was to a women’s refuge, one was to government provided housing for abused women.

As it stands, at the end of year 10 as mum & stepdad were separating (triggered in large due to a government intervention over his physical abuse of one of my sisters) I asked to be sent to boarding school. I tell the story to people that it was an academic choice, as I was doing well at school and my young siblings made it hard to study. But in reality, I was desperately lonely, and I disliked spending time around the adults in the household. It wasn’t my young siblings’ fault I was distracted. It was the fact I was used as a babysitter and had to keep them quiet as best as I could. Impossible to focus on schoolwork while keeping 3 children between early primary school and toddler happy.

As an adult I’ve had a better time. I’ve been free to move back to Sydney, which I always viewed as home. It was the place things felt normal, the place I had friends and felt loved. I’ve made friends who are smart weirdos like I am, with dark humour but genuine and caring sides to them. They are few and far between, but I love them wholeheartedly, and I feel that in return from them. Never judgement; always understanding and care.

Romantic relations have not been as easy. Anyone who has shown a sign or a period of not being fully into me, I’ve pushed away. I’ve been so sensitive to not being a focus as a child that I can’t handle not being a focus as an adult. I’ve dated some absolute sweethearts and still been a horrid person pushing them away because I’ve dwelled on some item that I felt didn’t show me what I wanted and used that as an excuse to ditch them. Now, I’m not saying all were saints, some truly did treat me poorly, but I know there are examples of amazing people I just didn’t jump in with both feet with because I’m STILL, TODAY so damn scared of being treated as unimportant, as second best, of reliving some of that childhood trauma.

It’s ok, I tell myself. You’re an adult now, it’s all in the past. Except it’s not, that shit is still in my head, and it was there for so much of my childhood that it’s part of me. It defines many aspects of who I am. Smart loner with attachment issues. Great worker until he develops an issue with his boss (parent/power figure) and makes waves. I mean, fuck. It’s there to see, I see it.

So out of all this I’m left with a question: WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU, DAD?

I know my mum could be a right bitch to deal with. Trust me. I had to deal with it. For years, many times alone.

But we had times of being nearly homeless. We lived in a refuge! We had times of being hungry. There was no housing stability. There was abuse. There was so much questionable activity and there was drug haze in our loungeroom for a solid 12 years.

I’m sure if my mother felt she had an option, there were many occasions on which she’d have left my worthless POS stepdad. But she had no money, no family nearby, she was abused. There was no fallback, no safety net. She first had a son to provide for, and later several children to worry about.

Shit, even if you hadn’t fulfilled YOUR RESPONSIBILTY in paying child support, I’m certain there was a time when I was maybe 13 when mum called Joan and Sid to reach out for help. I remember because she was too ashamed to call herself and made me place the call. I remember someone picking up, and I responded automatically “nan-dad” - which is what I remembered calling my grandfather when I was younger. It was Dy on the phone, and she laughed when I said that. I didn’t hear the conversation once mum took the handset, but as an adult I know exactly what that call would have been… and yet our situation remained the same.

For that absence when it counted; I’m not sure I’ve ever forgiven you.

Now, I know full well that forgiveness is for the self, not for the other person.

But it’s so hard to reconcile my childhood with the fact that, even if not as a constant, you weren’t even there when it counted.

What kind of human being does that to their own?

I recently reached out to some of my siblings; the children you had after me, and I was shocked to find that they’ve heard a lot about me. When you weren’t there, when I never got to speak to you, even though I asked for you by name. (I remember knowing you as Keith, not “dad”)

I’ve honestly found it difficult to progress the conversation after reaching out to my siblings, I’m so scared that I’ll just say something like “oh, so he was a dad to you? What was that like?”

I need to deal with this. To eliminate the issues it creates in my personal and professional lives.

But I also need to say a sincere FUCK YOU. Life was hard without you around, and it’s sincerely un-fucking-cool to know that some of the darker periods would have been better if you’d just stepped up to the responsibility you had. You fucking coward. Mum could be horrible, but you had a son. Becoming a parent means that person is more important than you. End of story.

Even if I didn’t have an “always dad” a “sometimes dad” would have really changed things. It would have allowed my mother to escape some of her worst situations (regardless of how how much she’d created them herself). It would have given me a voice of reason in some traumatic times where I had no real adults to turn to. It would have given me more stability when that’s what any child needs in life. Learning to NOT make friends is not a lesson any child should learn. Stealing not just because you’re acting out, but because you’re truly going without is not a lesson any child should learn.

*sigh*

It’s good to get that out, but now I know I need to dismantle this anger, this disappointment, and the end results of the maelstrom this creates in my mind.

And to any partner I’ve hurt by pushing them away unnecessarily: I’m truly sorry. I know it’s a massive movie cliche, but I can say with certainty: it wasn’t you, it was me.

I’ll try, really try, to accept the love that I see and not judge everything through the lens of missing (physically or metaphorically) love.