In the Shadow of a Beast: A trip to the beach

A Trip to the Beach

I grew up in the shadow of a beast. I felt powerless and thus, drew in on myself, hiding in places where the beast could not find me. I stayed out of the living room. I spent time at friend's houses. Fortunately for me, hiding was easy, seeing as the beast I hid from rarely looked for me. But when he did I could not flee.

I remember one such occasion where I was trapped by the beast. It was visitation day and the beast decided that it would be a good idea to take me to the beach, a normally calming and tranquil place, but on that day it was just a backdrop to tyranny. The drive there was only 20 minutes or so but it felt like a blurry lifetime. I was about thirteen that day and I had been honing my selective attention skills for some time by then. This skill came in handy anytime my beast of a father decided it was time to tell me "how it is". He would rant about how evil the world is, how my mother was a liar who was stealing his children and how all of our hatred of him was the result of brainwashing.

I sat, trapped in the car, on the way to a remote part of the Oregon coastline, with a knot in my stomach and words passing through my head like a dark fog. The full content was lost but the message was clear. His hate and malice for my mother, himself and life drove through my selective attention filter and I knew that either he was evil or I was. How else could such poison exist to warrant such verbal anger?

We made it to the beach and there was at least something more to distract me from the incessant diatribe of a man with only frustration and hate in his heart. It wasn't much but I remember walking down the trail to the beach and feeling a slight sense of relief in seeing the ocean but mostly it is a blurred memory. I retreated inside myself and bottled up my anger and resentment for the beast and knew that there was little I could do. He had a "right" to my presence and attention so I did what I could to ignore the words and emotions.

Later in my life, when in conversation I would find that my attention had wondered and that I was not listening I tried to understand this instinct to ignore someone even when looking right at them. I realized that this selective attention mechanism was a defensive operation developed over a decade of being trapped by my beast of a father and forced to listen to his vitriolic rhetoric. If I didn't want this mechanism to ruin future relationships I had to understand what caused it and to recognize that it was no longer needed. I had to consciously recognize when my mind would wander while in mid-conversation and then bring my attention back to the person talking in order to engage in the conversation. I realized that I really enjoy a good conversation where I am an active participant and that comes from listening.

I still get a little nervous when speaking my mind and engaging in a meaningful conversation. Just asserting an opinion can be exhilarating for me know which is a sign of the lack of power I had growing up. It is important that people are not taken for granted or treated as dumping troughs for other's negative emotions. It is important to be present and allows your needs to be expressed in a conversation. If you are not part of the conversation then you become a ghost and not sticking up for yourself can lead to resenting yourself and those around you. Sometimes it is important to say, "Hey, I'm not in the mood for your depressing, angry words right now."

Another outcome of being in the shadow of a beast is that in withholding my expression, for good reason when I was younger, is the creation of imaginary conflicts in my head. Now, if I predict a potential conflict I will reliably have a continuous debate in my head with those that I might need to convince of my argument. I will try to predict all possible sides and argue them relentlessly in my head assuming that I need to prepare for a verbal battle. The sad part is that it creates stress and detracts from life because my predictions are almost always wrong. Almost all of my adult interactions have been pleasant and reasonable but because of my early life, I imagine otherwise. I take a defensive position and ready myself for a battle that I can now choose to not have.