Painfully Self Aware

There was a small incident today which served to show me that the abused can become the abuser.

My father and I are estranged and have been for fifteen years or so. It's a long, mostly boring, story so to be quick and spare you the gory details, let's just say that he was a man who was a slave to his personal demons. His perceived inadequacies led him to make dreadful decisions which he justified through emotional manipulation, battering and fabrication. There was a time when I was very angry with him. Now that I am a parent myself, when he does enter my thoughts, I feel mostly pity.

This morning, Olivia had a swim lesson and immediately afterward, Dylan needed to be rushed to his volunteer job at the aquarium. There wasn't time to go back home after the lessons and collect him so Dylan had to get up earlier than usual and come with us.

About midway through Liv's forty minute lesson, Dylan had had enough of the viewing room at the pool and asked if he could wait outside in the car. I tossed him the keys.

Tulsa is hot in the summer. It is scorch the lungs, sweat out of the shower, unrelenting, Las Vegas, hot. Dylan turned on the car fan in an effort to stay cool and in doing so, he drained the car battery. Dead.

After her lesson, Olivia and I came flying out of the building and rushed to get into our seats so we could beat the mad scramble of cars in and out of the swim school. I turned the key in the ignition and of course, the car engine wouldn't turn over. I lost my mind and berated Dylan until he was in tears. Then, disgusted with him (because of the tears), I turned away, called Dallas and asked him to help me. Without hesitation, my husband dropped whatever he was doing in his workday and came to our rescue. This was not the first time.

It wasn't the fact that he came to help. What jarred me back to my senses was that while my fourteen year old son quietly sniffed beside me from my assault, my husband got our car running again in two minutes, without complaint, with grace, with kindness, devoid of stress. He didn't emotionally punish me because I'd inconvenienced him. You see, he loves me more than that.

Dallas's picture was in stark contrast to the one I had drawn with my son, moments before. Raising a teenager is hard, for sure, but my intolerance, my lack of empathy, my impatience and my rage are not Dylan's problems until I force them onto his fragile psyche. He can sometimes be quite unkind, didactic and sarcastic with his sister and I've always thought my ex's behaviour was to blame until this morning when I realized that Dylan's single largest influence is me.

Today, I stared into the rearview mirror and saw my father staring back.

I didn't feel pity. I felt ill.