Topic 28: Walking On Eggshells
May. 20th, 2012 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
java_fiendOnce again, I lay my entry upon the altar of the mighty Idol gods. As always, may they be kind and generous...
If there was one constant in our household growing up, it was the volatility. My father was the emotional equivalent of Mt. St. Helens… quiet and seemingly dormant at times, capable of massively violent eruptions that obliterate everything in his path at others. You never knew when the next blowout would come or what would cause it, but you knew it was coming. It was always a matter of when and not if. If nothing else, I suppose you could say that it kept things from ever getting too boring.
Pretty early on, we learned when it was safe to speak, when it would be prudent to keep our yaps shut, how to be careful about what we said and how we said it, when it was best to tiptoe through the house and how to not draw unwanted attention to ourselves. And most of all, we learned to spot the warning signs of an impending eruption. Little things from the way our father opened the front door to the sound of his footsteps to the sound of his breathing were enough to tell us whether it was safe to come out or if we should hunker down behind closed doors, keep our heads down and hope we weren’t noticed as we waited for the storm to pass. These days, I feel like I’m able to read people and their body language pretty well so I guess something good came out of it all. Silver linings, eh?
Well one summer day when I was about eight years old, tensions in our household were running a bit higher than normal. Our father had been laid off from his job (and by laid off, I mean fired for having a sucktastic attitude) once again. Having completed our chores, my sister, my uncle* and I were laying low while our father squatted in a broody silence behind his closed bedroom doors… getting higher than a proverbial kite, I’m quite sure. The house was quiet for the most part but that undercurrent of tension was buzzing through everything. The tension was absolutely palpable, sort of like the feeling in the air before a particularly nasty storm rolls through the land.
Eventually, being the kids we were, bound up with so much energy and angst and being trapped in such an oppressive and uncomfortable environment, we finally snapped. I don’t know who fired the first shot or even what triggered it anymore. All I can recall with clarity is that my sister and I did what we did best at the time… engage in yet another epic knock-down, drag-out brawl. The shouts and screams were flying every bit as fast and furious as the punches and kicks. Our uncle rushed in from somewhere to separate us and restore order quickly… though not quickly enough to avoid the Eye of Sauron from falling upon us.
We all froze when from the back of the house, we heard the bedroom door being flung open so hard, it crashed into the wall behind it with a sound like a cannonshot. Footsteps, heavy and angry pounded up the hallway toward us. The three of us looked at one another, knowing that we’d just unleashed the beast.
“What the fuck is going on out here?”
Though phrased… rather screamed, as a question, all of us knew that it wasn’t really a question and that an answer was neither expected nor really wanted.
The three of us… my uncle, my sister and I… stood nearly shoulder to shoulder in the foyer facing our father who was red-faced, the veins in his neck bulging with his nostrils flaring in that way that let us know that he WAS. NOT. PLEASED.
When he shouted the question at us once again… daring us to be stupid enough to speak in the face of his fury, I’m sure… the three of us, almost in unison simply shrugged our shoulders but remained silent. There really wasn’t much we could say in the face of such irrational rage… nothing that would help us anyway and would likely just lead to even more irrational rage.
A string of profanities and a lengthy outraged diatribe followed the initial eruption and I know that in my mind, I was counting down the moments until the blast was over. These events, though intense, were often short-lived. Once the initial bluster had blown itself out, we were dismissed with cutting remarks about how we disgusted him or what terrible kids we were. Charming things like that.
But not that day.
No, that day, our father had managed to work himself into quite the lather. Instead of his rage dissipating and burning itself out like it normally did, it continued building and building. When I realized that, I knew things were going to take a really bad turn. He ordered us to stay “exactly where the fuck we were” and to not move an inch or that there would be hell to pay. None of us was stupid enough to defy him. Undiluted terror has that effect on kids, I suppose.
He marched off to his bedroom and when he returned, he was carrying one of the many rifles he possessed. A really big and nasty, wicked looking one that I was sure could blow a hole the size of a Volkswagen in somebody. My level of outright terror jumped to levels I’d never known and really, haven’t known since. There are no words that can portray how scared I felt in that moment. I was absolutely sure that he was going to kill us all right then and there. It was absolutely surreal.
Instead of blowing holes in us though, our father tossed the rifle to our uncle and told him to shoot him. To kill him. He said that he didn’t “want to live with such ungrateful, disgusting, horrible little fuckers” anymore, that he’d rather die than spend another day under the same roof with us.
A tense standoff continued and I would be lying if through all of my fear and terror, there wasn’t the smallest of voices in my head whispering that I wished my uncle would do it. Part of me wanted him to do it, to pull the trigger and put an end to all of this forever. Some may think that makes me a bad, horrible person and who knows, maybe I am. But I would suggest that they spend a day in my shoes and live with what I had to live with before making that judgment.
Obviously my uncle didn’t pull the trigger. Our father stalked off, sickened that he’d have to spend yet another day with us. My uncle quickly put on the safety, unloaded the rifle and stashed it. The storm passed and indeed, hours later our father acted like nothing of note had even happened that day. Which was pretty standard operating procedure around our house. Years later, I learned that he’d pulled the same garbage on my mother, tossing a loaded handgun at her and told her that he was done and wanted to die. Only, she didn’t catch the gun, letting it hit the floor where it apparently went off and blew a hole in their headboard that was there for as long as I can remember. That’s family lore anyway. Part of me wonders if she actually tried to comply with his wishes and just missed. Our father was a man with a flair for the dramatic, alright. So I guess he had that going for him.
Over the years, some folks have told me that they think I’ve stretched or exaggerated the accounts of life with my father. To which I inevitably reply that that I’m not opposed to exaggerating to tell a good story. In this case though, I don’t need to stretch the facts. The truth is often stranger and more brutal than any fiction I can possibly create. Though episodes like this can possibly explain, in some small measure anyway, why I write the things I choose to write.
Editorial Note: *My uncle, though older than both my sister and I, is much younger than our mother. She had raised him since he was a child and he was raised with us like another sibling rather than as an uncle due to the state of their own family relations being so utterly horrific.
This has been my entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 28: "Walking on Eggshells". As always, thank you for stopping by to give me a read. Your support over all of these crazy weeks means more to me than I can possibly say. Thank you so much, guys! When (IF) the polls open, don't forget to swing on by, give some of the other fantastic pieces a look and spread a little voting-love around!
If there was one constant in our household growing up, it was the volatility. My father was the emotional equivalent of Mt. St. Helens… quiet and seemingly dormant at times, capable of massively violent eruptions that obliterate everything in his path at others. You never knew when the next blowout would come or what would cause it, but you knew it was coming. It was always a matter of when and not if. If nothing else, I suppose you could say that it kept things from ever getting too boring.
Pretty early on, we learned when it was safe to speak, when it would be prudent to keep our yaps shut, how to be careful about what we said and how we said it, when it was best to tiptoe through the house and how to not draw unwanted attention to ourselves. And most of all, we learned to spot the warning signs of an impending eruption. Little things from the way our father opened the front door to the sound of his footsteps to the sound of his breathing were enough to tell us whether it was safe to come out or if we should hunker down behind closed doors, keep our heads down and hope we weren’t noticed as we waited for the storm to pass. These days, I feel like I’m able to read people and their body language pretty well so I guess something good came out of it all. Silver linings, eh?
Well one summer day when I was about eight years old, tensions in our household were running a bit higher than normal. Our father had been laid off from his job (and by laid off, I mean fired for having a sucktastic attitude) once again. Having completed our chores, my sister, my uncle* and I were laying low while our father squatted in a broody silence behind his closed bedroom doors… getting higher than a proverbial kite, I’m quite sure. The house was quiet for the most part but that undercurrent of tension was buzzing through everything. The tension was absolutely palpable, sort of like the feeling in the air before a particularly nasty storm rolls through the land.
Eventually, being the kids we were, bound up with so much energy and angst and being trapped in such an oppressive and uncomfortable environment, we finally snapped. I don’t know who fired the first shot or even what triggered it anymore. All I can recall with clarity is that my sister and I did what we did best at the time… engage in yet another epic knock-down, drag-out brawl. The shouts and screams were flying every bit as fast and furious as the punches and kicks. Our uncle rushed in from somewhere to separate us and restore order quickly… though not quickly enough to avoid the Eye of Sauron from falling upon us.
We all froze when from the back of the house, we heard the bedroom door being flung open so hard, it crashed into the wall behind it with a sound like a cannonshot. Footsteps, heavy and angry pounded up the hallway toward us. The three of us looked at one another, knowing that we’d just unleashed the beast.
“What the fuck is going on out here?”
Though phrased… rather screamed, as a question, all of us knew that it wasn’t really a question and that an answer was neither expected nor really wanted.
The three of us… my uncle, my sister and I… stood nearly shoulder to shoulder in the foyer facing our father who was red-faced, the veins in his neck bulging with his nostrils flaring in that way that let us know that he WAS. NOT. PLEASED.
When he shouted the question at us once again… daring us to be stupid enough to speak in the face of his fury, I’m sure… the three of us, almost in unison simply shrugged our shoulders but remained silent. There really wasn’t much we could say in the face of such irrational rage… nothing that would help us anyway and would likely just lead to even more irrational rage.
A string of profanities and a lengthy outraged diatribe followed the initial eruption and I know that in my mind, I was counting down the moments until the blast was over. These events, though intense, were often short-lived. Once the initial bluster had blown itself out, we were dismissed with cutting remarks about how we disgusted him or what terrible kids we were. Charming things like that.
But not that day.
No, that day, our father had managed to work himself into quite the lather. Instead of his rage dissipating and burning itself out like it normally did, it continued building and building. When I realized that, I knew things were going to take a really bad turn. He ordered us to stay “exactly where the fuck we were” and to not move an inch or that there would be hell to pay. None of us was stupid enough to defy him. Undiluted terror has that effect on kids, I suppose.
He marched off to his bedroom and when he returned, he was carrying one of the many rifles he possessed. A really big and nasty, wicked looking one that I was sure could blow a hole the size of a Volkswagen in somebody. My level of outright terror jumped to levels I’d never known and really, haven’t known since. There are no words that can portray how scared I felt in that moment. I was absolutely sure that he was going to kill us all right then and there. It was absolutely surreal.
Instead of blowing holes in us though, our father tossed the rifle to our uncle and told him to shoot him. To kill him. He said that he didn’t “want to live with such ungrateful, disgusting, horrible little fuckers” anymore, that he’d rather die than spend another day under the same roof with us.
A tense standoff continued and I would be lying if through all of my fear and terror, there wasn’t the smallest of voices in my head whispering that I wished my uncle would do it. Part of me wanted him to do it, to pull the trigger and put an end to all of this forever. Some may think that makes me a bad, horrible person and who knows, maybe I am. But I would suggest that they spend a day in my shoes and live with what I had to live with before making that judgment.
Obviously my uncle didn’t pull the trigger. Our father stalked off, sickened that he’d have to spend yet another day with us. My uncle quickly put on the safety, unloaded the rifle and stashed it. The storm passed and indeed, hours later our father acted like nothing of note had even happened that day. Which was pretty standard operating procedure around our house. Years later, I learned that he’d pulled the same garbage on my mother, tossing a loaded handgun at her and told her that he was done and wanted to die. Only, she didn’t catch the gun, letting it hit the floor where it apparently went off and blew a hole in their headboard that was there for as long as I can remember. That’s family lore anyway. Part of me wonders if she actually tried to comply with his wishes and just missed. Our father was a man with a flair for the dramatic, alright. So I guess he had that going for him.
Over the years, some folks have told me that they think I’ve stretched or exaggerated the accounts of life with my father. To which I inevitably reply that that I’m not opposed to exaggerating to tell a good story. In this case though, I don’t need to stretch the facts. The truth is often stranger and more brutal than any fiction I can possibly create. Though episodes like this can possibly explain, in some small measure anyway, why I write the things I choose to write.
Editorial Note: *My uncle, though older than both my sister and I, is much younger than our mother. She had raised him since he was a child and he was raised with us like another sibling rather than as an uncle due to the state of their own family relations being so utterly horrific.
This has been my entry for
therealljidol Season 8, Topic 28: "Walking on Eggshells". As always, thank you for stopping by to give me a read. Your support over all of these crazy weeks means more to me than I can possibly say. Thank you so much, guys! When (IF) the polls open, don't forget to swing on by, give some of the other fantastic pieces a look and spread a little voting-love around!
