You're a good dude, and I'm sorry that you had a crappy childhood, terrorized by a violent narcissist. Thank you for sharing an interesting, well-written story with us.
Also, as a Jewish guy from Israel, the Hitler admiration is a truly hilarious and bizarre example of how antisemitism spreads in crazy ways to places that have 0 Jews in them. Sure, my grandmother lost her family as a teenager to this trend, but the WTF of this is is too weird to not be funny.
One of the most difficult things about my childhood is that it doesn’t really pattern match a lot of stuff. So I just usually don’t talk about it in real life.
Amazing story. The ending was really touching for me. I really liked what you wrote about forgiveness. It's not about forgetting what someone did, or thinking they didn't do anything bad in the first place. It's about understanding the weight of the horrible shit they did but still not hating them, still seeing them not as an enemy to be punished but a friend gone astray. It's when you help someone, not because they deserve your help, but because it's the right thing to do.
Wow, what a story! You grew up rough, I had to grow up too and mature early being in the neighbourhood I grew up in, an island where crazy is allowed to let loose and tourist traps are a boon. I find this piece quite relatable.
And I can understand your trauma from crazy stuff most especially the one with the turd. See, I have had a turd flung my way more than once which is embarrassing to admit. Drive by shooting is also quite common and for silly reasons too and my uncle, thank goodness he was beheaded on another island before he could do more harm, was a psycho who tortured my mom and his younger siblings, tried to burn them once as they slept or have them jump whenever he swung his machete in his sick twisted game of Dance while I swing.
You are wonderful to have managed to pull through such a past. It was also great how your siblings have someone that looked after them. I have a complicated relationship with forgiveness but I do understand your point.
Nowadays, I do my best to shrug off that negative emotion and see life as a whole.
Two uncles to be exact, one on each side of my family. Both their own kind of crazy, but yes, coincidentally, they both lost their heads. One from a drunk argument, the other was rumored to be an execution.
It's okay, we all have our own course in life and how we go about it differs. I always believed that it never really is a straight path but is made with loops, twisted corners and even dead-ends where we have to move back and find a new path to follow along. So I understand, I sometimes have a complicated relationship with forgiveness too.
Guy - It is a wonder, a miracle, that souls (such as yourself) with self-awareness & intrinsic (if not immediately operative) moral sense, sometimes rise up from the murky, ancestral swamps of unexamined lives and repetitive, impulsive reaction. And you take that humble, muddy foundation and alchemize it to art. Blame it on childhood reading of Fantasy and Sci-fi?
Responsibility and, eventually, forgiveness. Real forgiveness not “it was all just okay from the start, nothing bad happened, and I don’t have to think about how this will work if it continues happening in the future” forgiveness.
I learned how to not hate people who did bad things but still have good boundaries.
This is such a marvelous essay. You've earned me as a follower from it, and I'm sure I won't be alone in that.
It definitely tracks in my experience that racism is on average worse in all nonwhites. They don't have the industrialized racial guilt fed to them from birth that's become endemic to the Anglosphere. Indeed, they're tonicized by virtue of their nonwhiteness, and it regularly takes them in strange directions, though thankfully the Mikes of the world are still minorities. It just underscores how stupid and intolerable the whole "only white people can be racist" platitude is. Such a statement can only serve as an enabler and accelerant for racism.
Really curious what the prompt was for the picture. "Scared Mexican chefs in a restaurant kitchen with a confused octopus"?
I’d copy and paste but it was a surprisingly long bargaining session to get it to finally give me what I wanted.
You're a good dude, and I'm sorry that you had a crappy childhood, terrorized by a violent narcissist. Thank you for sharing an interesting, well-written story with us.
Also, as a Jewish guy from Israel, the Hitler admiration is a truly hilarious and bizarre example of how antisemitism spreads in crazy ways to places that have 0 Jews in them. Sure, my grandmother lost her family as a teenager to this trend, but the WTF of this is is too weird to not be funny.
One of the most difficult things about my childhood is that it doesn’t really pattern match a lot of stuff. So I just usually don’t talk about it in real life.
What an amazing story- and what a writer you are!
Thanks Molly, this was an important one to me because I’ve found myself just getting grumpier as I get older.
Amazing story. The ending was really touching for me. I really liked what you wrote about forgiveness. It's not about forgetting what someone did, or thinking they didn't do anything bad in the first place. It's about understanding the weight of the horrible shit they did but still not hating them, still seeing them not as an enemy to be punished but a friend gone astray. It's when you help someone, not because they deserve your help, but because it's the right thing to do.
Yep, that forgiveness piece is like pulling an infected sliver out of your soul. You think the hate is holding you up but it only ever holds you down.
Wow, what a story! You grew up rough, I had to grow up too and mature early being in the neighbourhood I grew up in, an island where crazy is allowed to let loose and tourist traps are a boon. I find this piece quite relatable.
And I can understand your trauma from crazy stuff most especially the one with the turd. See, I have had a turd flung my way more than once which is embarrassing to admit. Drive by shooting is also quite common and for silly reasons too and my uncle, thank goodness he was beheaded on another island before he could do more harm, was a psycho who tortured my mom and his younger siblings, tried to burn them once as they slept or have them jump whenever he swung his machete in his sick twisted game of Dance while I swing.
You are wonderful to have managed to pull through such a past. It was also great how your siblings have someone that looked after them. I have a complicated relationship with forgiveness but I do understand your point.
Nowadays, I do my best to shrug off that negative emotion and see life as a whole.
Whoa! Your uncle was decapitated?
I’ve got zero highlanders among my uncles.
I’m sorry I’m stuck on this instead of the positive emotion of seeing life as a whole.
Two uncles to be exact, one on each side of my family. Both their own kind of crazy, but yes, coincidentally, they both lost their heads. One from a drunk argument, the other was rumored to be an execution.
It's okay, we all have our own course in life and how we go about it differs. I always believed that it never really is a straight path but is made with loops, twisted corners and even dead-ends where we have to move back and find a new path to follow along. So I understand, I sometimes have a complicated relationship with forgiveness too.
Wow what a story. The way you write about it reminds me of Pat Conroy’s book Prince of Tides.
Guy - It is a wonder, a miracle, that souls (such as yourself) with self-awareness & intrinsic (if not immediately operative) moral sense, sometimes rise up from the murky, ancestral swamps of unexamined lives and repetitive, impulsive reaction. And you take that humble, muddy foundation and alchemize it to art. Blame it on childhood reading of Fantasy and Sci-fi?
I’m not that great and I promise it took me a long while to sort out my feelings on this.
You have a marvelous talent in the way that you write your truth. I love reading your stories. Thank you. 🙏🏼
It helps to keep in mind that the world is really weird
Wow.
That’s a hell of a story.
I would hand you my credit card right now to read your memoir. You are an amazing writer.
Scott Adams says trauma takes a lot from us, but it never leaves without tipping. Would you say that learning responsibility was the tip it left you?
Responsibility and, eventually, forgiveness. Real forgiveness not “it was all just okay from the start, nothing bad happened, and I don’t have to think about how this will work if it continues happening in the future” forgiveness.
I learned how to not hate people who did bad things but still have good boundaries.
This is such a marvelous essay. You've earned me as a follower from it, and I'm sure I won't be alone in that.
It definitely tracks in my experience that racism is on average worse in all nonwhites. They don't have the industrialized racial guilt fed to them from birth that's become endemic to the Anglosphere. Indeed, they're tonicized by virtue of their nonwhiteness, and it regularly takes them in strange directions, though thankfully the Mikes of the world are still minorities. It just underscores how stupid and intolerable the whole "only white people can be racist" platitude is. Such a statement can only serve as an enabler and accelerant for racism.
Astonishingly compelling piece of writing. Thanks for that.