"F to the U, Old Man"

I've coached freshman football for four years, and like every other experience that forced me to reconcile myself with the world, it wasn't sought.  This year, in particular, forced me to acknowledge my entry to the final decade, or decades, of my life.  I've been forced to acknowledge that fear is still an excuse to hide what's beautiful in me.  Fear still preserves the solitude that insulates me from Love, and the fulfillment of genuine connection I deserve.   

I have had eight of these critical "decisions" intrude upon my adult life.  None were considered with sincerity before their appearance.  All have forced the acknowledgement of "truths" upon me that my intended path was designed to avoid.  Here's my list of them:

1. Getting married.
2. Fatherhood.
3. Choosing to be a Stay-at-Home-Dad for the 12 years generally considered one's "prime earning years".
4. Commuting from Long Beach to Santa Cruz on a frequent, and consistent, basis (with Aaron during his first year of life), so I could be present in my mother's cancer-imposed, last year of life.
5. The death of my mother.
6. Getting divorced.
7. Finally refusing to accept my siblings perceptions of the person I am as "The Absolute Truth", and leaving all of them, and their ultimatums, when they banned together in the habitual McAnerney dysfunction of dismissing an individual (either physically, emotionally, or both) who threatens the denial their identities were built upon.  We all did it. No shame around it, no judgment.  It's what rises organically in families like ours, and you see it replicated in family after family with a shared dynamic.  
8. Coaching freshman football, and participating in building a new community paradigm for evaluating relationships between limitations/achievements, and failure/success.  This years freshmen owe part of what they achieved to the expectation of it, that's woven itself through the fabric of our community.  And they owe the rest to themselves for doing the required work, and adding their link to the chain.

Each of those events forced me to choose between the fictional self-perception written by my birth family, or the authentic self-perceptions I've fought my whole life to preserve.  My whole family knows which is true.  Ironically, the knowledge of what's true perpetuates what's false.  I know this because one of my brothers broke rank, and told me, three years ago.  

We were at Winchell's, and I asked if he was aware that Dad used to beat me.  He said he did, and that he actually saw one happen through the space of a not-quite, closed door.  I asked him what he did after witnessing it. The honesty in his response healed a lifetime of seeking validation from people too weak to give it. 

 He said, "Pat, when I saw what he did to you I told myself I'd never allow it to happen to me."

So, I asked him how he did that.

"I did what everyone else in our family did.  I blamed everything on you."

And why'd you do that?

"Because you were the only one who wasn't afraid of him, Pat.  Because I knew no matter how badly he beat you, you'd still get up and tell him to f#*# off."

I thanked him for allowing me to keep my truth for once, and then to ease the pain he carried, I said, "You did the right thing."

He looked at me in shock, and told me the guilt of never talking to me about it literally made him ill,  and using me to protect himself, had damaged him to the core. He thanked me, sincerely, for not 'getting mad'.

I said if we had had this conversation a few years earlier I probably would have.  But I'd already had a couple of those accidental decisions made for me, and excavated the lessons buried within them. 

I said, Dude, when you're in a war zone you do whatever you can to survive it.  I said he was right about me being able to take what he gave.  He was right that I'd still get the last word in with "F You!!"  

And then I thanked him again.  I told him those beatings ate a hole in me for 40 years.  They left me confused, and eliminated a lot of what was accessible to me, in the world.  When they happened, all I felt was fear.  When they stopped, confusion. 

See, I felt like I was a good person, a beautiful person.  But then he'd come in and do that.  You don't do something like that unless the person deserves it.  I mean, how else can you find permission to do it?  And since no one who knew of it intervened, they must have thought I deserved it too. 

The whole thing was a set-up.

"What?  What was a set-up."

My childhood.  The whole f#*$ing thing was setting the awareness I had of myself against what the people who loved me were saying, and setting up the battle I'd have my entire life.

"Until this exact moment," I said.

"I was confused about a lot of things growing up.  But I never doubted how much I could handle, or that I'd have to die before I'd let you take what I KNEW was good in me."  

And if every thing I took kept you unscathed, I can feel like it was worth it.  

The entire conversation took about 15 minutes to have.  The preparation to have it, took 40 years.

So, you do the math: 

I've had family voices in my head for 50 years, reminding me I'm nothing special. 

And life keeps intervening with suggestions about what to do next, the most recent, of which, brought me here, to help build a football program on the philosophy that there are no limitations except the ones you agree to, or impose.  It brought me to a place where the philosophy is the exact opposite of the messages in my head, and gave me a role to play in developing it.

Then it brings in the best freshman class we've seen, and removes my job, so I'm right back where I started, battling my conflict.

But,

I have support.

I have time.

I have a group of boys who stand up to everyone who stands across from them, 

a group of boys who support each other.

And I have this ache in me that I've had FOREVER,

to just write everything down.

For the first time ever, I do.

And the same thing that always happens,

happens.

Words come out effortlessly, 

and in order, like what they're here to say

has been prearranged.

I just need to punch keys.

And re-examine my life,

and the fear in charge of it.

I need to examine the limitations in my life, and ask if I put them there.

I need to make a choice between alleviating insecurity with a traditional life trajectory,

Or waking up excited about the possibilities inside of me again.

If I don't, life will.