THE FEAR THAT CHANGED ME AS A CHILD BY S.D VASSALLO

Like most people out there, several things invoke fear in me.  Snakes, for one.  “Why did it have to be snakes?”  I always wear boots and carry a good, stout walking stick when I go hiking in case of the twisty little demons.  Not that I would ever really need those items if I ever encountered one.  Five’ll get you ten if I see the snake first, I’ll be a quarter mile away and booking before it gets so much as a chance to prepare for striking.

To a lesser extent, spiders and wasps.  Well, make that any stinging nuisance.  I’m braver around them than I am with snakes, but there’s still a good dose of fear.  My wife still chuckles at the remembrance of me leaping wildly off a step-stool after a spider that I tried to hit with a rolled-up newspaper and missed came falling from the ceiling towards my head.  Not one of my better moments.

When it comes to stories and movies, several things give me the creeps.  The creepy girl ghost from The Ring is probably the worst.  I think I could have an easier time facing a fully transformed werewolf armed with nothing more than a pocketknife than I could deal with a ghost girl crawling out of my television set.  Demonic clowns also give me the willies.  If I was driving home from a carnival and kept seeing a clown standing off the road and waving at me along the way, I’d probably keep on driving.

There’s really only one thing, though, the fear of which changed me as a child and strongly influenced me up through adulthood.  My father.  He was, to say it gently, a drunken abusive bastard.  I mean that colloquially and am not inferring that he was illegitimate at birth.  All through my childhood, I was on the receiving end of his punches, back-hand slaps, and kicks.  I endured being picked up and thrown against the wall.  As bad as the physical abuse was, though, it paled next to the verbal and psychological abuse.

My earliest memories of the man were images of his face, inches away from my own, his eyes glaring at me, his mouth set in a perpetual angry sneer, as he debated what my punishment would be for whatever I had done to set off his hair-trigger temper.  It’s funny the things I focused on in those moments, the images that seared themselves into my brain.  I remember staring at his face, not directly at his eyes, that would have been too terrifying.  Instead, I looked at his mouth.  For some reason, a white bead of spittle was always on his bottom lip, and I remember thinking he needed to wipe his mouth.  I also would stare at his nose.  His huge, hook-shaped nose that reminded me of a bird’s beak.

His words fell on me like bricks.  They ranged from a detailed stating of the latest offense that had angered him, to a graphic description of what a pathetic little waste of life I was and how he was ashamed to call me his son.  All delivered in his deep, angry growling voice.  In spite of the pain, I was thankful when he quit talking and slapped me hard enough to knock me to the ground.  The flaring pain on my face and the concussive sound of the slap were not as bad as staring at his face, terrified of what was going to happen next.

I never knew the feelings most other boys my age experienced.  The awe and love and respect they had for their fathers.  The enjoyment they got out of spending time with their dads; going fishing, playing catch out in their backyards, maybe going to see a movie or a game or something.  As far back as I can remember, the only emotion I felt concerning my father was fear.  Fear that later grew into hate.  Other kids I knew dreamt of going fishing with their fathers.  I dreamed of taking a hammer and smashing his bird-beak of a nose completely flat.  By the time I was seven, any love I might have had for the man had been beaten out of me for good.  All that was left was the fear and hate.

I was scared to death of him.  The times he got in my face, all I could do was stand there quietly.  Often, he would ask me a question, but fear stilled my tongue and prevented me from answering.  My silence brought physical punishment as much as whatever had set him off to begin with, but I never was able to push past the fear and speak.  I just stood and stared and waited for the blows to fall.

As the years went by and I grew, the fear was joined by a new thought, a resolve to resist.  I wasn’t brave enough to resist him physically.  Though I often wished I was big enough and strong enough to be able to fight him off, that thought remained a fantasy.  I could, however, refuse to do what he wanted.  I could refuse to allow him to dominate or control me.  I learned the art of passive resistance against the brute.

One thing that made him angry was my silence.  I remember many times in his presence where I sat or stood quietly and he would become angry.  “Talk,” he would scream at me, in his brutish way of trying to get a conversation going.  He’d never read Dale Carnegie, apparently.  I stayed silent on those occasions, some out of fear, some out of the determination to resist.  Invariably, his anger would bubble up and I would end up on the floor, the skin of my face stinging from the pain of the slap.  But I never talked.

I learned to repress my emotions.  For one thing, an emotional response on my part ran the risk of incurring more abuse, and so I kept my feelings buried out of fear.  But I also was determined not to give the fucker any satisfaction.  I kept my face blank.  I stayed silent.  And I kept my fear and my anger buried.  I also learned not to cry.  I was terrified of him, and I did not have the means to resist physically, but I’d be damned if he was going to see me cry.

When we played Backgammon and I made a move that he didn’t think was good enough, and he jumped up and backhanded me hard enough to make my head slam into the wall behind me, I kept my silence and managed to keep my eyes dry.  When I was ten and I didn’t want to go see a movie with him and he kicked me in the back, just above my tailbone, leaving me a nasty bruise, I quietly stood there and refused to respond.  When he got in my face and declared me “a poor, pathetic waste of life,” I quietly waited for him to finish and walk away in frustration, and then I went my way.

I shut my father out completely.  By the time I was ten, not only did I keep my feelings buried, but I refused to talk to him or share anything about myself.  I hated him and I determined that he was not going to get anything from me.  I remember he began calling me the “mystery man.”  He wanted to know more.  He had lots of questions, about my schooling, my friends, if I had a girlfriend when I reached the age where that became a possibility, what kind of movies I liked, etc., etc.  I either stayed silent or I gave vague answers.  He could beat me, he could scream at me, he could call me whatever names he chose, but he would get nothing from me.

One of the last times I saw my father before I graduated high school was when I was 16.  My parents had been divorced for a long time and he was living out of state.  He wanted me to come out to spend a couple of weeks with him, and I agreed.  I don’t know why.  I could have said no, but I assented.  At the time, it had been a little over a year since I had seen him.  I think maybe I felt things might be different.  At any rate, I went to Colorado to spend part of my summer at his place.

Things hadn’t changed.  It took two days for the old cycles to begin again, and I spent the time counting down the days, hours and minutes till I would be back home again.  The last night I was at his house, he confronted me with the notion that I should spend more time, that I should stay another couple of weeks.  I said no, there were things back home I wanted to do.  The man got angry and began shouting at me.  I didn’t respond, I just stood there silently as I had learned to do.  He finally got in my face, screamed that I was no longer his son, and then he hawked and spit in my face.

I didn’t respond.  I stood there staring back at him and he finally walked off, muttering about how I had disappointed him in every way.  I went to the bathroom, got some toilet paper and wiped the spittle off my face.  The only emotion I felt was relief.  And a bit of joy.  The old man didn’t want me for a son?  Good.  I had ceased thinking of him as my father years prior to that moment.  We parted ways and save for a couple of occasions, I never spent time with or around him again.

The fear I had of him growing up affected me greatly in my life.  I had learned to repress my emotions.  Mostly out of fear of him, but also because I was afraid of my own emotions.  I saw what my father did with his emotions, the abuse he would dish out, the violence he would engage in because of his angry temper.  I was scared that if I gave voice to my emotions, I would become like him.  I was afraid of what I might do or say if I gave voice to my feelings.  So I kept them bottled.

As an adult, it took me a long time to learn to open up and express my feelings.  Whenever something happened and there was any kind of confrontation, I stayed silent.  When I felt challenged, my instinct was to stay quiet and wait for things to blow over.  That trait stayed with me through my life, and it caused problems between me and my wife.  There were times when we had arguments, and instead of responding, I just stood there quietly, afraid to give voice to my thought and feelings.  I was scared to say anything.  Along with the traits I had developed out of fear, I also dealt with the notion that my opinions, thoughts and feelings didn’t matter.
I had listened to my father declaring to me how worthless and pathetic I was throughout my childhood.  As an adult, when I found myself in a confrontation with someone else, even when it was a minor, harmless affair, I didn’t believe my thoughts deserved any consideration.  I was afraid to give voice to them.  So, I stayed silent.
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I finally found a counselor and underwent therapy and learned how to deal with my feelings and how to open up.  My wife also helped me, especially as I was able to share more about my childhood and what I had gone through.  I’m a lot more open today and am more able to express myself.  It still takes work, though.  The marks I received in my mind and soul from my father will probably be with me till the day I die.  But I won’t quit working and trying to improve.  I’ll be damned if I go to my grave nothing more than the product of his rages.