Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2006-07-01 01:02 am
azurelunatic) wrote2006-07-01 01:02 am
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End of a cycle.
"When I grew up, if there was yelling, I was afraid I was going to get hit."
Dead silence followed. I had been telling a friend why I flinched away whenever she raised her voice. It came out rather bluntly, but that's what it all boils down to. I can't deal with certain expressions of anger when all my insides are flinching away in anticipation of a beating.
It was never hard enough to leave a lasting bruise, that I knew of. It was never on the chest, on the hands, on the face. It was just an old-fashioned spanking on the bottom with the palm of his huge hard hands. It was painful, and left us screaming in pain and fear. His temper and strength were fearsome to small children, especially when we saw him just lose control and throw toys in the stove and rip furniture apart. There was the very primal fear that perhaps this time, next time, he'd lose control all the way and rip us apart. Later, we learned that when he'd seen us cowering and shrieking in fear in front of non-members of the family, he'd stopped spanking us entirely, and left his destruction to objects. I don't know what we thought then. Perhaps we thought that we'd just gotten too big to be spanked. We were still afraid when he went into a rage, and that fear lasted a very, very long time. As I learned, I am still shadowed by it today.
We never feared Mama's spankings. Disliked, avoided, cried over, but never feared. I have given high-fives that have left a harder sting than one of Mama's spankings, but they served their purpose. We learned that certain behaviors would earn a well-deserved punishment from Mama. We learned that normal childhood bickering that wouldn't even earn a spanking from Mama might make him descend in wrath upon us without warning. Mama taught us the warning signs of his temper, how to watch for the warning rumblings of earthquakes so we could hide in time from the sudden eruption. Mama taught us that he was a good man, and tried really hard. Mama taught us to not provoke him.
When I was fourteen, I vowed that I would never have children. I recognized his same temper in myself and knew that I did not have the control necessary to keep it from bursting out. I vowed that I would never make his mistake and inflict myself and my temper upon a defenceless child.
When I was sixteen, I stood up to him. I had a temper of my own, a direct copy of his temper in a younger body with less impulse control and more stupid per cubic inch. My sister and I picked a sniping match over a batch of cookies, and he started to erupt. He marched over with the intent of destroying the object of contention, the cookie dough. He has always been a large man, and I was not a large teenager. I ignored this. I stood in front of him, got in his face, and scolded him in full cry like he was a spoiled five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I was so angry that I did not care if I got hit, even though he had not raised a hand to us in years. I stood my ground with hackles raised and spurs at the ready. I was younger, stronger, angrier, and absolutely right. I was not about to back down.
He deflated and slunk off to sulk outside somewhere. Since that moment, he never tried to intimidate me with his anger again.
I had hoped that being stood up to and stood down would have made a lasting change. But I later heard that he still used his temper like a bludgeon when I was safely away, after I left for college.
At length, I learned real control of my temper, rather than just temporary lava flow control. It was forced upon me when I became roommates with my heartsister and her small son, my virtual nephew the Little Fayoumis. I feel I could have a child of my own, now. It would be safe. It has ended with this generation.
Dead silence followed. I had been telling a friend why I flinched away whenever she raised her voice. It came out rather bluntly, but that's what it all boils down to. I can't deal with certain expressions of anger when all my insides are flinching away in anticipation of a beating.
It was never hard enough to leave a lasting bruise, that I knew of. It was never on the chest, on the hands, on the face. It was just an old-fashioned spanking on the bottom with the palm of his huge hard hands. It was painful, and left us screaming in pain and fear. His temper and strength were fearsome to small children, especially when we saw him just lose control and throw toys in the stove and rip furniture apart. There was the very primal fear that perhaps this time, next time, he'd lose control all the way and rip us apart. Later, we learned that when he'd seen us cowering and shrieking in fear in front of non-members of the family, he'd stopped spanking us entirely, and left his destruction to objects. I don't know what we thought then. Perhaps we thought that we'd just gotten too big to be spanked. We were still afraid when he went into a rage, and that fear lasted a very, very long time. As I learned, I am still shadowed by it today.
We never feared Mama's spankings. Disliked, avoided, cried over, but never feared. I have given high-fives that have left a harder sting than one of Mama's spankings, but they served their purpose. We learned that certain behaviors would earn a well-deserved punishment from Mama. We learned that normal childhood bickering that wouldn't even earn a spanking from Mama might make him descend in wrath upon us without warning. Mama taught us the warning signs of his temper, how to watch for the warning rumblings of earthquakes so we could hide in time from the sudden eruption. Mama taught us that he was a good man, and tried really hard. Mama taught us to not provoke him.
When I was fourteen, I vowed that I would never have children. I recognized his same temper in myself and knew that I did not have the control necessary to keep it from bursting out. I vowed that I would never make his mistake and inflict myself and my temper upon a defenceless child.
When I was sixteen, I stood up to him. I had a temper of my own, a direct copy of his temper in a younger body with less impulse control and more stupid per cubic inch. My sister and I picked a sniping match over a batch of cookies, and he started to erupt. He marched over with the intent of destroying the object of contention, the cookie dough. He has always been a large man, and I was not a large teenager. I ignored this. I stood in front of him, got in his face, and scolded him in full cry like he was a spoiled five-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. I was so angry that I did not care if I got hit, even though he had not raised a hand to us in years. I stood my ground with hackles raised and spurs at the ready. I was younger, stronger, angrier, and absolutely right. I was not about to back down.
He deflated and slunk off to sulk outside somewhere. Since that moment, he never tried to intimidate me with his anger again.
I had hoped that being stood up to and stood down would have made a lasting change. But I later heard that he still used his temper like a bludgeon when I was safely away, after I left for college.
At length, I learned real control of my temper, rather than just temporary lava flow control. It was forced upon me when I became roommates with my heartsister and her small son, my virtual nephew the Little Fayoumis. I feel I could have a child of my own, now. It would be safe. It has ended with this generation.
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Anyway, he grabbed me from behind at the shoulder to turn me around, I had not heard him yelling at me over the walkman, and reflexed and rammed my elbow into his face hard enough to lay him out flat three feet from where he was standing....he never touched me again after that....I felt horrible, but he hit the trigger and the gun went off.
I know I would never shake a child in that manner, but I could see myself loosing my temper and saying very hurtful scarring things, I am good at finding that sore spot in the psyche and flaying it open...and I also fear perhaps spanking to hard and violently in anger.
Recently while watching a friends VERY trying 2 and 1/2 something girl while they were in the process of moving I found that maybe....I wouldn't be as bad as I think. She got angry because I would not give her candy without her mother's permission and she reached out and pinched my arm VERY VERY HARD, right on top of one of the lipid tumors that sit over nerve clusters...I wound up with a bruise that covered my whole arm. I shot up out of the chair knocking it over and froze glaring at her and the response that came out was "I am so angry at you I will hurt you if you stay here. You go somewhere where I can't see you or hear you, you go to your room and you stay there until I don't want to hurt you anymore, do you understand?"
She did....and it surprised me that J'Endra (for that is who it was) could respond to the situation that rationally, because her auto response to any physical pain is to annihilate whoever is hurting us, if at all possible. We've kicked an OBGYN clear across an office and into a wall on reflex before....
But it still doesn't change that the body is not capable of caring for me, much less a child anymore....my days of considering children, no matter how much I would enjoy teaching one and watching them grow, is long passed.
I'm glad though you were able to get through to your friend, and you were able to parse out why and what it is exactly that triggers that reaction in you. Sometime it just helps knowing.
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If you're self-aware enough to recognise your own faulty behaviours, I don't think there's anything that has to be set in stone - and you've certainly shown that you're keenly aware of your own self.
My father was like this, to an extent
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That's a profound moment.
A friend of mine has kids she simply does not discipline. At all. Ever. They do whatever they want, whenever they want, and that includes going into the refrigerator and pouring food directly onto the floor, punching, kicking and biting their mother, the works.
One day, thefive year old, who weighs about eighty pounds (he's actually only SLIGHTLY overweight, but he's VERY tall), was PUNCHING AND KICKING A PREGNANT WOMAN IN THE ABDOMEN.
I have never wanted to beat a child so badly in my life.
I didn't.
I don't know HOW, but I didn't.
I simply held him down - I didn't sit on him, I didn't hold him down hard enough to hurt him - I simply restrained him from PUNCHING AND KICKING ME, which he tried to do next, and very calmly told him "this is inappropriate behaviour and you need to stop acting like this".
To which he screamed like a man being flayed alive.
His mother, of course, said "give him what he wants".
Uhm, no.
After about maybe seven minutes, he quit screaming. Quit punching, and quit kicking. And I let him up.
And he has never behaved like that around me since.
And to this day, I do not know how I didn't hit him.
But that was my Zen moment.
And I understand.
Congratulations!
Indeed: this was one of the most moving and thought provoking Live Journal entries that I've EVER read.
Really. Truly.
Congratuations on breaking the cycle. And you've given me a great deal of food for thought for managing my own anger and thinking moreso about even how my tone can negatively affect others.
Great read and thank you ever so much for sharing this with strangers like me.
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I realized that there was all this energy in me, and it was only clouding my vision and my purpose. I pressed my hands together and told my anger to go somewhere where it could be useful.
My anger left me, leaving a feeling of peace in its wake.
Since then, I've tried to use my anger the way it was intended, as a tool, rather than letting it master me. Anger at something righteously wrong gives great strength. Anger dredges up the wrongs that the civilized self wants to ignore, but that still must be rectified. I learned from him that no matter how angry one is, one can hold it inside for a limited time and give warning for it, though his warning was inadequate, and he never attempted to use it usefully after that I could see as a child. If I can, I give notice that I am so angry I don't trust myself to think straight (or just get the hell out) and then go write it out, so I have a record of the blast and I'll know afterward what the most vital things that are pissing me off are.
If I cannot get away, I go cold. I fear becoming violent so much that everything I say and do is under such tight control that I hardly feel human. I have an alter for that, Dagger.
I don't think Dagger has ever fully been let loose with the anger. I suspect that she would only allow ourselves to do so in case of emergency. Dagger does not make a good Quaker. She makes a far better white knight.
Re: Congratulations!
He broke the cycle just as much as I did: he's recounted several times that moment he had when he realized that he was repeating his father's mistakes for no good reason.
I believe that the capacity for rage that I have has a strong genetic as well as learned component, and that each generation of my bloodline will have to struggle to overcome it, but that I can teach my children about it from a young age, so that someday the fear and horror of a completely unleashed rage will be only scary family legend.
Growing up like that has left me with a sensitivity for anger. I can't bear to be around people who are angry all the time. They may not notice it, if they're living in a simmer of bitter old anger, but I have to be away from it. I lost what could have been a friendship over it; I couldn't even fully articulate it to myself, but it boiled down to the fact that I couldn't stand to be near them because they fairly oozed a latent anger that was just waiting to snap out at the nearest provocation.
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Awareness is powerful.
Re: It's interesting how family "cycles" can shape our characters in ways we don't see or realize so
I have a well known anger management problem and I shudder when some people equate my temper with that of my father who was a good man, but also a very violent, scary and angry man --- esp. if he had been drinking. I once had a therapist who, quite easily, noted or argued that my anger problems could be directly related to the behavior he "modeled" for me as, for instance, one of my earliest childhood memories of him is when he started beating my mother because I was sick and she had failed to or had forgotten to give me some prescribed medicine and my father totally freaked out about it and started smacking her around.
Yes: that is one of my first memories of my life. I don't even remember how old I was. I just also remember feeling, in some way, kinda responsible for it (as in, "Well if I wasn't sick then Mama wouldn't have to remember to give me my medicine and Daddy wouldn't beat her for forgetting and then blaming her for my being sick. . .' or whatever. . .)
But the good news is that I now, thanks to that therapist, have some important insight on how, yes, my father's behavior and anger management/violent problems had/has a great deal to do with my lack of control over my anger or emotions sometimes.
The good news?
I'm a lot better than I used to be. I try to, every day, embrace Sun Tzu (author of "The Art of War")'s argument that it is "best to win WITHOUT FIGHTING AT ALL.") Yes. Sun Tzu cited that advice as the most important thing of all so as to avoid war and while he's referring to military battles, I find his advice helpful as it relates to dealing with personal relationships, too, if that makes any sense.
Again: thanks for sharing this.
Perhaps you'll never know or understand how or why it was so important for me to read something like this.
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One of them is Never Spank While Angry.
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Re: My father was like this, to an extent
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Know thyself
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