My brother and I have been writing about our feelings or the lack thereof with our father, there is still something I am missing in our dialogue.
When I wrote the second time, I was addressing the fact that my brother was disappointed with the kind of father he had.
We also talked about my usage of the words dad and father when speaking about this man and it opened up another point.
What is the meaning of dad and father?
Dad – an informal word for father.
Father - A male person whose sperm unites with an egg, resulting in the conception of a child. b. A man who adopts a child. c. A man who raises a child.
While reading them, the last part is where he failed; he didn’t raise us, he lowered us.
My brother would like me to write the word dad (dad) to emphasize the lack of being one. Or perhaps use biological dad.
For the past 4 ½ years when I would speak of my father I would call him by his name, I could no longer referenced him with dad.
It would be nice if there was a new term for this, for a man who lowers his kids, who makes them less than who they are.
The word dad was like a swear word to me, like a mouth full of disappointment, and my tongue couldn’t form the word to slip it past my lips, it had broken my heart.
His formal name came easy, it ripped the title from his back.
It seems like a betrayal to yourself as a child, to use that name for someone who hasn’t acted like a dad, but rather used the dad term for priveledges of a sick disease.
In fact I had read somewhere that pedopiles who abuse their own children are seen as lazy, for they don’t even have the energy to leave their homes.
You see some pedophiles don’t have home grown little girls, they have to construct elaborate ways to have the opportunity to be with little girls.
I guess that makes sense and it makes us seem like we were grown for a set purpose and then became residual garbage. No wonder my brother feels so useless, he wasn’t even ‘special’ for a short period of time.
I felt this odd jealousy or a oneupmanship between my brother and I.
Is it better to feel used, abused and damaged or to never be seen at all?
About six years ago I read a book, “The Hidden Messages in Water,” by Masaru Emoto and here is a portion of what he says.
I have the impression that the act of looking at water crystals is an act of creating life. This is because when you look at the crystals, the water changes its appearance moment by moment. Your gaze has a special energy of its own, and while a gaze of good intentions will give courage an evil gaze will actually take it away.
A family that subscribed to our magazine conducted an interesting experiment. They put rice in two glass jars and every day for a month said “Thank you” to one jar and “You Fool” to the other, and then they tracked how the rice changed over the period. Even the children, when they got home from school, would speak these words to the jars of rice.
After a month, the rice that was told “Thank you” started to ferment, with a mellow smell like that of malt, while the rice that was exposed to “You Fool” rotted and turned black.
I wrote about this experiement in the book that I published, and as a result hundreds of families throughout Japan conducted this same experiement for themselves. Everyone reported the same results. One family tried a variation of the experiement: like the others they said “Thank you” to the first bottle of rice and “You fool” to the second bottle, and then they prepared a third bottle of rice that they simply ignored.
What do you think happened? The rice that was ignored actually rotted before the rice that was exposed to ‘You fool.’ When others tried this same experiement, the results were again the same. It seems that being ridiculed is actually not as damaging as being ignored.
To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy. The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.
I think this experiement has the potential to teach us a very important lesson. We must take care to give our children our attention, and to talk to them. Speaking words of kindness and love should begin from the time of conception…..Masaru Emoto.
This book came to mind immediately and I recalled this experiment, but what I didn’t recall was the one jar of rice that was ignored.
So in the oneupmanship, my brother wins. He rotted first. I never knew that they hurt worse. Wow.
Being abused you get attention, which is better than none at all. I know this has to be why we feel guilty, for we wanted the attention so bad.
Imagine what we do to just get attention, to just be seen, just so we are not ignored.
Neither one of us can call him dad, we both feel the title doesn’t fit, I just wish there were a title that did.
What do you call a man like our father?
What term can possibly fit that?
Estranged father?
Ex-Father?
I looked up divorce from father, and while glancing at the different sentences, one word caught my eye. Uncontested.
What I feel most is that he didn’t contest his worthiness as father, he didn’t protest at all, how sad to find not one place where we could call you dad.
The scales tipped uncontested.
