I Feel Helpless, Impotent
I went through most of my life feeling unredeemable. In some way, wholly other. Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, without a heart. And with that defect, without a moral compass, basic human goodness. There’s a back story to that. In part, an upbringing that was undermining. I have never really written that narrative. It almost doesn’t feel right. I have shared a few pieces here, and every time, I just feel weak. So many have suffered so much more.
But it is what it is. A sense of basic goodness, human decency, was something that was not only not gifted to me at home. It was something taken away. Eroded. Back to my earliest memories, I really didn’t have a fighting chance. I remember my mother being suicidal when I was a wee one, her telling me I was incapable of loving anyone, when I begged her to stop. Even as young as six or eight she would grab me and shake me. Telling me all men were pigs, that she’d kill me herself if I ever raped a women. I could up on.
The crown jewel being my mother “faking” my report card marks so that she could punish me, ground me. I remember visiting my mother a few months before she died. There was a bunch of old stuff for me, including old report cards. I went through them as we chatted. I couldn’t find the bad marks. And I couldn’t find the teacher complaints. My mother confessed. She had made it up— “to keep me from getting a big head”.
Other family too. The details don’t matter.
Miraculously, I ended up keeping my heart, and becoming a kind and decent man. Now in my fifties I am just coming to see that, largely though the grace of people I serve in volunteer work. I can help people. The language matters: I can. I am able. And I do help people. The wife of one of my hospice clients told me that I had not only showed her exceptional kindness, but I had renewed her sense of human goodness— the very thing I had long felt I was pathologically without!
It was my love who first challenged me to throw away my narrative of redemption. I had always told my story as one of the broken irredeemable man, who, by some magic, was made whole thanks to the love of the women in his life. Some truth there, sure. But the real story was of the cute loving kid who never lost his heart. Tell that story my love says….
I have run from that story because it really had an ocean of grief at the bottom of it. All the people I was unable to protect, help, save. Despite what gifts my heart and mind might have afforded me. Some were beyond my capacity to save. Like my late wife, who died after years of being on NIH clinical trials for a rare genetic disease. Who was utterly tortured every second of her life running up to her death. Anxiety, uncontrollable body motions, sleeplessness. Others not mine to save, like the woman my date and I just found, drugged on the floor. A victim of a recent sexual assault. Or my friend murdered in college by her domestic partner. Or the women a friend in college date raped. Or or or…
All the people in my circle I couldn’t save, couldn’t help. I grieve them all. I feel helpless. Impotent.
But it is what it is. A sense of basic goodness, human decency, was something that was not only not gifted to me at home. It was something taken away. Eroded. Back to my earliest memories, I really didn’t have a fighting chance. I remember my mother being suicidal when I was a wee one, her telling me I was incapable of loving anyone, when I begged her to stop. Even as young as six or eight she would grab me and shake me. Telling me all men were pigs, that she’d kill me herself if I ever raped a women. I could up on.
The crown jewel being my mother “faking” my report card marks so that she could punish me, ground me. I remember visiting my mother a few months before she died. There was a bunch of old stuff for me, including old report cards. I went through them as we chatted. I couldn’t find the bad marks. And I couldn’t find the teacher complaints. My mother confessed. She had made it up— “to keep me from getting a big head”.
Other family too. The details don’t matter.
Miraculously, I ended up keeping my heart, and becoming a kind and decent man. Now in my fifties I am just coming to see that, largely though the grace of people I serve in volunteer work. I can help people. The language matters: I can. I am able. And I do help people. The wife of one of my hospice clients told me that I had not only showed her exceptional kindness, but I had renewed her sense of human goodness— the very thing I had long felt I was pathologically without!
It was my love who first challenged me to throw away my narrative of redemption. I had always told my story as one of the broken irredeemable man, who, by some magic, was made whole thanks to the love of the women in his life. Some truth there, sure. But the real story was of the cute loving kid who never lost his heart. Tell that story my love says….
I have run from that story because it really had an ocean of grief at the bottom of it. All the people I was unable to protect, help, save. Despite what gifts my heart and mind might have afforded me. Some were beyond my capacity to save. Like my late wife, who died after years of being on NIH clinical trials for a rare genetic disease. Who was utterly tortured every second of her life running up to her death. Anxiety, uncontrollable body motions, sleeplessness. Others not mine to save, like the woman my date and I just found, drugged on the floor. A victim of a recent sexual assault. Or my friend murdered in college by her domestic partner. Or the women a friend in college date raped. Or or or…
All the people in my circle I couldn’t save, couldn’t help. I grieve them all. I feel helpless. Impotent.
