"I Don't Know How You Can Stand It"

Or, as it was put in another way today, “how can you live the life you do?”

Some days I’m not so sure myself how I can stand it or live the life I do. But, if I need to be introspective on it the answer becomes quite clear. I can do it because…

It is as it is.

And, I can write here, without any doubt or hesitation, that it is the life that God intended for me.

That is what gets me through each day no matter what the day may put before me.

Even today.

Today brought what I knew would eventually come. I just don’t know that I expected it quite so soon. You see, when I conveyed my story yesterday about the van and my father I left out a very important point. I was damned if I did…and damned if I didn’t.

If I kept my mouth shut and let my father follow through with his intentions, which I learned today were more than to just look at the van, it would have eventually and inevitably come back to bite me in the ass. As I pointed out yesterday, this conclusion is based on previous experience.

However, if I spoke up, as I did, that too would inevitably be held against me. This of course brings back the questions – “How much is too much” and “where is the line”

Today, it came to bite me in the ass…and bite it did. Very, very hard.

With the current vehicle situation, my mother had asked me today what my plans were for the girls this weekend. Obviously, since hers is most likely the vehicle that will be used to transport them if necessary. I told her there wasn’t much on tap except perhaps a trip to Blockbuster if she was willing to do so. Later, I had remembered something else. The local Masonic Lodge has a breakfast once each month and it is something the girls and I have taken to doing. And, they love it. Driving home from Siggy’s today, I saw the sign reminding me that it was this weekend.

So, I called my mother to mention it to her. A few moments into the conversation it began.

“Well, Matt, I don’t know what happened between you and your father yesterday, but…”

And it was there I cut her off, because nothing happened. There was no yelling, no arguing, no name calling, no pushing. It was a simple conversation. One, perhaps, that he did not like. But, it was nothing more than a conversation.

Now my head was reeling. Was this really going to happen? Was this really the direction we were going to take this? Is it true that because I told my father to stop working on the van we couldn’t even discuss the possibility of having breakfast together?

Really?

So I engaged.

I told her what happened. Simply put, I told him to stop fooling with the van.

“And why did you do that?”

“Because I didn’t want his help. I had things under control and was working on it. He didn’t talk to me about it. He just took it upon himself and I wasn’t going to give him another opportunity to do something ‘nice’ for me only to have it thrown up in my face at some later time when someone gets a bug up their ass about me – like he did with the air conditioner money.”

“No one gets ‘a bug up their ass’ it’s when there’s a fight…”

“Exactly my point.”

Now I need to take a moment from the story about that moment to point out that it’s very interesting to me that she didn’t deny that things get thrown up in my face, but instead made the correction that it happens during a fight. And, believe me that it was easily discernable by her intonation that what she was implying was that it happens whenever I ‘start a fight.’

But nonetheless our tale continues. I pointed out to my mother that it wasn’t really dad’s problem to get involved in.

“It is our problem. You’re driving our car.”

“Oh. The how come when Brenda (my oldest sister) just borrowed your car he didn’t go up to her house and jack up the car and ‘make arrangements’ ?” (As she had told me my father was doing with my van…”He was making arrangements to get it fixed.”)

“Because she has a husband.”

“So what? And that’s my other point. You’re acting like/ assuming that I can’t take care of this myself. If anyone had bothered to talk to me before you started ‘making arrangements’ you would have found out that arrangements were made and a plan was set.”

“Well you said three weeks before you could fix it.”

“Yes. I said, ‘up to three weeks, depending on how things worked,’ but that was before I had a chance to look into things more. But, again, if someone had bothered to talk to me you would have known that.”

You see it turns out that the plan they had was for them to just take the car to the garage, get it fixed, pay for it and then I would pay them.

Has no one learned from this in the past?

That is precisely how the trouble always begins. Without consulting me first they were just going to take it upon themselves to put me in a position I did not ask to be in which would burden me with stress and worry that I did not ask for and when it doesn’t play out the way they expected it to – it would be my fault.

And THAT is why I stopped him yesterday. Yet, somehow, I am still the big prick in all of this. (And, in the end, I kind of am….maybe…)

And I pointed this out to my mother.

“You folks just keep calling me a prick. But while you’re doing it, remember that I am ‘the prick’ that always comes to the table with a plan for peace and you’re the people that keep turning it down. Even before the events that sent me to prison, I was the one looking for a solution to the problem. And you folks refused.”

This conversation ended with the favorite escape of, “I’m at work. I don’t have time for this now.”

Now I’m just a little pissed. Everything I had suspected about the day before had just been confirmed. Dad took it upon himself to assume that I couldn’t handle the problem and he was going to “fix it all.” And, because I stopped him , I became the ‘bad guy.’

So I headed home. I could have let things stand as they were, but that’s not the person I am. When I see something like this in my life I confront it. I believe that’s how you solve problems and disagreements. You hit them head on as honestly and openly as you can.

Now there is nothing in the definition of confront or confrontation that insinuates that it must be a fight.

To face, especially in challenge: Oppose

To cause to meet; to bring face-to-face

To meet face to face

Nothing in there says to me that a confrontation must be a fight.

Sadly, the truth of the matter is, there is no resolving this, because they don’t want resolution. Not as far as I can tell. What they want is to fight.

So I came home and headed into the living room, where my father was sitting and watching TV. I wanted to set the record straight and to find out exactly how I became a prick in this situation.

“I wanna set the record straight about yesterday…”

Now I was not mean. I did not yell. I was firm and to the point, yes. But, I was not mean. I did not yell. Yet, somehow, before I knew it, the fighting had ensued. In fact, it took me almost 15 minutes to say what I had originally gone in there to say because the fighting started before I could actually get it said.

Once again, I am unsure where we crossed that line, how we bridged that gap between confronting an issue, having a disagreement, and a full-fledged fight. And, once again, I was the prick. Later in the fight he told me that I was the one who came into the living room and ‘jumped his ass.’ He even went as far as to say that I came home and jumped his ass about the van the day before.

“But I didn’t. I didn’t yell. I wasn’t mean. I didn’t carry on. I was firm, yes. But I wasn’t mean. And, if you consider what I said today and yesterday to be ‘jumping your ass’ you are a bit more sensitive than you should be.”

Oh and it was a fight. A fight like all the others. Name calling. Pushing. Insults.  (From both sides. There are no innocents in this.)

The fight ran the same gamut as all those before. We didn’t stay on topic. We jumped to everything else – all the problems that are Matt. Well, he jumped. I followed and occasionally attempted to bring us back to the focus of this particular fight.

Three times in this fight he asked me why Jessi left me. Finally I had to ask him if he was bringing that up because he thought he was hurting me by doing so.

“Where are all your friends? I have lots of good friends who like me. Where are yours? They abandoned you. Why? Because you’re a prick.”

“Yes. I have had friends leave my life. But they have all been replaced by better friends.”

And later…

“Why don’t your sisters like you?”

“I don’t know.” (After all, I never did anything to any of them. With the exception of Tara I barely see them.)

“Because you’re a prick.”

And on and on.

At one point this is what was said to me:

“Just so you know, I have a license to carry a gun and I could go upstairs and get my gun and shoot you. And, it wouldn’t matter because the cops have you on record.”

Is this man actually convincing himself that it would be ok to murder me? Bear in mind this is not the first time my father has told me he was going to shoot and kill me. It was the second. The first time he did so in front of my daughters. But that was about three years ago and was brought on by me telling him that if he kept pushing me the way he was I would have no problem sharing his dirty little secret with his wife.

“If you do that you would destroy my life and I would get my gun and shoot you and then shoot myself.”

“So what you’re saying is that if I called Diane right now and told her you would go get your gun, right now, shoot me and then yourself right in front of those two girls?”

“Yes.”

All of this being said with my daughters right there in the room. Of course, no one ever heard, until today, that that exchange had taken place, because if they knew they’d want to know why. Then I’d have to tell them, and for some reason I was still willing to protect his secret. That will did eventually leave me and as far as I know it is as far out in the open as it can get.

And, of course, after that fight I was…The Prick.

But I digress. Back to today.

Now I was no better in this fight when I told my father that the best thing he could do for himself and everyone else around him is to lay down and die. Because he is obviously miserable and if he is going to live in misery he is not doing himself or anyone else any good. (A fact I pointed out to my mother a few weeks back when she confided in me that “he really is not happy and he thinks a lot about dying.” “Then perhaps he should.”)

And all the while this is going on I am still coming back to, “Why? Why do we do this? Is this really the relationship you want to have with your son?”

Though the question was never answered the response was clear. This is how it will be until we are both no more.

But why?

“Why do you want to hate me so badly?”

Again not an answer. Merely a dismissal, a change of topic.

I was told I am pathetic.

And round and round we went. The same routine as always and never actually resolving the actual issue of that started the fight. I still don’t know or understand how me telling him not to work on the van made me a Prick nor do I understand why it would spawn all of this.

It turns out, as I would later discover I was right in stopping him. More right than I even understood at the time. For later in the day, after the fighting was done, the emotions purged and the mind cleared an answer came. An answer I sought the very day the starter stopped [working.] (Sorry…I just really liked the way that ‘starter stopped’ sounded.]

When the van stopped working I went to the only place I knew to go – God.

“Why? Why are you doing to this to me now? The timing couldn’t be worse. What the fuck are you thinking?”

Nothing came. For three days, nothing came. Then today the answer was there and, after I heard it, it all seemed so obvious. All things in their time, I suppose.

“Think about it Matthew. If you had continued on the path you were on you would have eventually taken the van to the garage and paid for the starter as well as the labor involved. Because things changed and you were left with no way to get the van to the garage you were forced to seek other options. Along the way you learned that in reality you could do the work yourself – perhaps with the help of friends – and save yourself at least $75 in labor costs that you don’t have to spend.”

But, of course. You see. Everything really does happen for a reason and God’s plan is always better than our own even if we don’t understand it when he puts it in motion.

And, if I had not stopped my father, he would have continued on with his plan which would have, in the end, cost me that same $75 God had been trying to spare me all along.

And that is what ‘Tomorrow’ has brought.

It is here that I must make a quick public apology to my friend who I made an example of in yesterday’s post. It seems she was upset by me ‘calling her out like that.’ So much so that she wrote me another letter today to clarify, apologize, and basically make sure that there were no hard feelings.

I assured here there were not nor had there ever been. I was merely using it as an example. True, at first it was hard to swallow. After all, it was the same old rhetoric that I have heard time and time again from varying sources. And, though it is practical and looks very good on paper, the simple fact of the matter is that that is not the course my life ever follows no matter how hard I may try to make it do so.

Despite all of the chaos and disorder of the day,  know that tonight I will lay down and I will sleep and I will do so in and at peace.

And so, my friends…

For now, and for always, from here in Geistopia, I am your beloved Rev wishing you Peace, Love, Light and Freakishness.