PRISONER EXPRESS

Earnest excavating began for me on a beautiful sun shining day. There was a cool breeze out, stead in the trees and as Amber rode her bicycle and I watched her, I also was reflecting. It had been a very trying and rough few years for me at the time and I did not know why and needed to find out. Now, looking back, I see more clearly the many displaced emotions that had so many conflicts and problems within my family.

My family consisted of my wife and her three daughters from a previous marriage and then Amber, who we had together. The first few years were an awesome growing experience for us all. We all had internal conflicts and problems, but mine were obviously severe enough that they were bringing about the worst in all of us. Then for a few years, I had been very controlling, clingy and very strict and this no doubt was all very deep seeded. This had been causing stress within the family. The bitterness and anger, the hurt and the pain I held inside was bursting out at random times seemingly for no reason. At one point my wife had loaded all the girls in the car and left, but I managed to convince them to come back home after two weeks. I really loved my family and did not want to lose them. Several months later she left again, only this time without Amber. I had managed control yet again, but she and the older three girls were gone. I could not escape the pain of this loss and though Amber seemed OK, I also knew she could not escape the pain either, we needed our family. I was, at this point, realizing that I was learning about true love, real love. I now know it was this love forcing the bursting out of so much I had for so long harbored. This love was abnormal for me, I was used to running from this type of connection, especially when the going got rough, yet I could not run now. I had to endure, finally, to fight for this love rather than the usual escapism, but none in this family could read this, not even me. Again I managed to get them back home and work through this. This woman, my friend, my wife, the mother of my child, who I was really growing in love with, is the only person I have ever remained faithful to even now. I wanted more than anything to make this work, yet had no clue as to how. I had no prior patterns of stability, something had to change and it had to be me.

I was still unaware of who I was, but on this day as I watched my daughter and saw the smile on her face as she was riding her small bicycle with the training wheel, things changed. We were conversing as to whether or not she was ready, confident enough, to remove the training wheels and as she passed by she said to me “You know daddy, I am getting bigger.” As I stood in front of the garage she would ride in circles around it and be out of sight intermittently, however before she would appear again, she would resume the conversation knowing I was there listening to her, just as she also knew when to stop talking after she had passed me for yet another round. It was in these intermittent bouts of time after she had passed me and was out of sight that so many memories began to become as darkened clouds around me, but when she came back around, it was like the sun shone brightly through them.

At that time I was forty one and a half years of age and she was five and a half and I was prompted to dig into myself, even as I stood there, to gain a better understanding of the fears that came with the clouds, the memories. I had recognized the two extremes of rearing that had affected me, ultimately my whole family, the abusively strict and the uncaring and I had to find the median of these two and add love to this median if I were to ensure I could be there for my family in a healthy and supportive way.

It was this day, this time that I began to dig into who I was versus who my daughter was and who we were becoming as a family. I had until this day been running from childhood abuse and trauma inside and outside my home. Though running far and fast, I was only able to cast aside some of that from my mind, but after almost thirty seven years of running and escaping it all seemed natural, just the way it was, but inside me was a war going on! This was myself, that innocent give year old, my core of goodness, of love, at war against so much that was generational and that coming from multiple attackers from different people, different societies, different cultures and I was in what is termed escapism. At this time I was tired of running, leaving behind too many instances, possibilities of stability, real love and I wanted this to stop. I did not want this to continue in me or through me to yet other generations. I had displaced so much, but unconsciously the pain was affecting me, altering me, and those I love, pushing them way. I was verbally abusive though to me, these were merely words and I was so calloused to such abuse that it was normal, especially in comparison to the physical abuse I had endured. In my mind I was very lenient, but the verbal abuse cut, the control and strictness pushed away the love and created in its place bitterness, therefore mirroring to me what I was. Too many of us on some level do this, even unconsciously.

As I looked at my daughter, I saw her innocence and that she was full of love and tenderness and though I shared this in my heart, it was oppressed by so much pain and hurt and I was so used to escaping it that it was natural to not face this, but seeing these darkened clouds and that they were not only over me but also over my daughter, my family, I could no longer run or hide, for this was the part that was so subtly destructive. It had been destructive in other relationships which had failed, it had been destructive in my current relationships with my wife and the girls.

Upon pursuit of an answer and direction I was engulfed with pain and confusion and began to realize the severity of the abusively strict rearing and how it had conditioned me and who I had been and also my daughter, not to mention all of whom I love. As I have learned through research, even with very little available and unable to obtain counseling during the past three years, it became apparent to me the importance of emotional stability and for the most apart, the whole of societies are in need of this realization, in need of digging deeper into who they are as it does reveal so much to know, to aid us in more healthy and positively constructive lives. We must seek all the components of who we are to make reasonable decisions, consciously on a daily basis.

Contrary to abusively strict rearing is uncaring or too busy, too preoccupied rearing, also destructive and also an area we need to pay attention to, especially if in conjunction with the strict rearing. A very confusing combination for all. One of the thoughts that occurred to me was that I, though always being abused either verbally, physically, or otherwise, I realized that myself at my daughter's age almost six, and in 1969 I always had money. Not the change of coins, but that of paper, big money 75-125 per week that I had earned. I had a good many customers that I mowed their lawns and did yard work. I had begun by using the mowers of homeowners and I used a hatchet my grandfather had given me and taught me to use to edge walks and drives and with it I carried a broom. At first I just walked around with the broom and hatchet until I needed a mower for homeowner's lawns with no mowers, then I bought a used mower, a need of repair from a customer and I repaired it and began pushing it around town. I imagined my daughter carrying around a hatchet and broom as she knocked on doors asking to mow the lawn or edge a walk or drive, all this as she rode on her bicycle in circles around our garbage, the thought of her having that kind of freedom to walk around town knocking on door, almost six with that kind of money in her pockets, started me, right then I no longer believed, as I had till that moment, that I was just a go-getter, but instead that I had been running. Not only was I running into mowing yards for an escape, but also drugs, and seeing my baby girl and realizing that I too was a baby, a toddler making my way doing drugs even before six years of age, I saw myself at forty-one and a half for the first time as this child, like a camera zooming past and through all of my childhood and life, a period of almost thirty seven years, all in all an instant, I became aware. It was very specifically at this point that I had to conceal my face from my daughter as she rode back around. I was crying, hurting at this realization that poured over me, consuming me, drowning me. I forced myself to regain composure as she approached from the other side of the garage. I smiled, but as my daughter is a part of me she steered her bicycle out of its normal path, almost on top of my feet and stopped in front of me and said “I love you daddy” and reached for my hand. How badly had I already hurt her, her mother, her sisters, all of which I had begun to love on a level unexplored by me. How much had they loved me and I, unconsciously fighting off the pain of a lifetime, allowed the pain to get through me to them and their love.

It became a very desperate need for me to know the median, the right and the good, the healthy way to become and remain a happy family. I was so overwhelmed by what just a few minutes of realization had flooded my mind with the why's, the reasons of thirty seven years of running. Digging deeper into this abyss seems only to reveal more depth; however, I have become more emotionally stable and now have insight and direction to healthy happy living.

I have through this begun to accept more and more the pain and trauma of my childhood as a part of who I am along with the love and goodness within myself, the greater of myself. This progressive acceptance has allowed me to consciously and actively dig into all things that are a part of me. Only through this may I put in proper perspective the different parts of me, good, bad, indifferent to sum up the whole of me. A person who, I myself can love and share to become a healthy addition to others lives.

Each day I allocate time to the development of programs that I believe if were available, even in my positions of social office mandatory and attended by those who were around me in my younger years like teachers, social workers, police officers, parents, friends, guardians that many of the red flags that I had waved for years from the tops of hills so very vigorously, would have indeed been seen. Programs that teach us awareness of self and others and how to intervene and how to make changes through accepting what is and moving forward with everything into something better. We cannot change history, it is done, but we can work on a better tomorrow today. It has been three and one half years since that day and I will always cherish it and the following six months. Though far from healed, the healing had finally begun and I do owe it to my family, my wife and friend Joyce and the girls Candace, Kimberly, Catherine and Amber and the love they so painstakingly extracted from my heart beneath so much pain and suffering even if they had no idea, this love was the turning point well before that day. That six month period was a beginning of real digging for me in more ways than one, together we began to become a family, we dug up all around the house and trees to landscape our lawn, it was beautiful, the togetherness, the enjoyment of all we had accomplished. We also remodeled the bathroom and many of the projects became things we did together, we were becoming healthy. We had defied the odds of negative emotions, so I thought. I found that I had already sewn seeds of bitterness, and they were joined with other seeds of selfishness and bitterness and resentment from life prior to me and from other's negative seeds of influence currently. It had been three years now since I have seen or heard any kind of word from my family. Though I am now free from my past I am now incarcerated and have been for three years and am now doing my best to show the importance of seeking resolve instead of vengeance, seeking to love rather than to hate, because it does lead too many of us to too many years of lost life. I had lost thirty seven years due to burying emotions and though now mostly free from those and becoming more acceptant everyday through reasoning and living consciously, I live without those I love as they unconsciously keep their emotions buried, they continue to run, to escape without reasoning, acting on emotions based on misunderstandings. I had almost stopped this cycle. Now I realize the effects I and others have had on them, the effects others have had on me. Can this be overcome? Yes! Though only, by and through people, us gaining a collective and an individual understanding and self-awareness and this by digging deeper to gather more information to reason with. Who we are? Why we are? What will make us better? I have begun to answer these questions in depth and find an alarming level of faulty conditioning leading us to the most gross level of complacency, even intensifying this, our infection. What may I do this make a difference against such powerful mass conditioning and complacency of emotions and actions or inactions thereof? Standing with myself and focusing on maintaining stable and healthy responses to emotions of self and helping others who may allow me to help by continuing a positive effect on others.

Until that day with my daughter, I had no idea how severely I had negatively effected all who I love from present and past. I had no idea that I was for years carrying such pain and subjecting others to it, even continuing to reabuse myself with it. The effect my past had been on those around me was the firm foundation for our failure where I should have been the leader, the one rescuing or supporting us enough to build the right foundations. I had truly loved for the first time or probably best understood that finally, this love was strong enough to get through so many years of oppression, this love was pushing out my negative emotions, making room for itself. I was a walking internal war, holding strong to habit against a growing love, there is only so much of this a heart can take, as I lashed out at my loved ones, then held them tight, pushing and pulling them, completely unaware.

We all have a chance today to make a difference first in our own lives, then in the lives of others and that chance is going to require much effort to dig deep into who we are. There are vast amounts of many emotions that are a part of us that we are unconscious of or have become complacent with that affects our daily lives. It is our responsibility to each other as human beings to help one another instead of judging and criticizing the things we do not know the depth of, we must build up rather than destroy. We are a part of each other and must begin to, in every way, prepare ourselves to be ready for the chance, to understand or seek reasoning, to find reasons to help because it could be yourself or yours that need this help. I may not have been a man of much character before and may not have had what was needed before to be there for those who needed me, but if the chance ever does arise again, I will not fail. I find comfort in the acceptance of all of me and those who take time to know me now can also share this very comfort. Digging deeper is a way of life we should all begin to practice every day, for it is the way to build lives of character!