Blarobbarg

Well, my last journal sucked and I had absolutely no incentive to write in it. I created my thread, "Your Official Opinion On...," to write and see other's opinions. So now I'm killing two birds with one stone by making a new journal in the style of my short lived but popular thread. Hopefully I won't let this one die.

I have several ideas for features kicking around, but will share none of them right now because I don't care.

As with my last awful journal, these are pretty much all going to be spur-of-the-moment, adlibbed posts. From my mind to my fingers to you. The quality isn't going to be anything mind-blowing, but hey, whatever.

That said, I'm going to kick this off with a bang (and ignore the very premise I started with). I'm going to give you my life story and some songs that are forever a part of certain memories. I highly suggest listening to the song while reading.



To start it off, Mozart's Requim. Whenever I think of my early childhood, Mozart is always a part of it. My mother was a firm believer that, in the words of that Babysitter from The Incredibles, "Mozart makes babies smarter!" This song, along with much of Mozart's work, is firmly a part of my childhood. Because of it, classical music as a whole is given a very sad twist, no matter the piece. Just read, it will make sense later.

I was born in 1992 into a less-than-stellar situation. My mother had married a crazy man. They had met because she was a bartender at a restaurant chain that he was a frequent patron of. They hit it off and began to talk. They were both ex-hippies that really enjoyed pot and alcohol. They both loved gardening. They both hated religion with a passion. They were both more-or-less outcasts from their families because of their "I don't give a ****" attitude. They were both psychologically traumatized from abusive childhoods. They had a lot in common.

But my father was severely bipolar, and suffered from bouts of incoherence and violence. He abused pharmaceutical drugs and was an alcoholic, which really didn't help his already unstable mental condition.

My wonderful mother in her sweet naivete loved this man, and love makes you do stupid, stupid things. She thought that she could fix him. She thought that he would get better. So they got married.

My parents decided to laugh in the face of the advice given by all their friends and family (or at least family who still cared about them) and start a hydroponic gardening business. They didn't have any dreams of their own, but they were building them together. It was like some sort of pot-haze fairy tale.

I was born, and my parents were ecstatic. My dad loved me to death, my mom was happy about starting a family after many years of despising the family unit as a lie and a farce. The business was slowly growing, they had a baby, and life was good.

Then, three years later, my little brother was born. He was an accident. My dad hated and wanted nothing to do with him. One time my mother came home with me, from grocery shopping I believe, and my father was shaking my then-toddler brother, yelling at him incoherently. I can only assume that he was jacked up on some sort of pills, as he often was.

Life spiraled downhill from there. My father's fragile mind was overwhelmed with the stresses of family life and business ownership, and he went head-over heels into all-out addiction and abuse. He yelled often. He did things to my mother that she refuses to speak about. I have mentally blocked much of the worst of the abuse, but from what I do remember and from talking with my mother, I know we were in a very bad place. I’m not going to go into detail about the things that my brother and I suffered, but I’ll sum it up with words from my mother that she told me once I was old enough to talk about it.

“I was seriously considering running away with you two in the middle of the night to Canada. No-one would know, not even family members. Because no matter where we went, he would always track us down and pull us back in.”

In the middle of it all, my mother, an avowed atheist, went to the lowest place she knew of… a church. Although I don’t know much of how this happened or why, I know that while there she was “born again” and became a Christian. When she came home and announced her change to my father, he was foaming at the mouth and raging, and attempted to kill her. I don’t know why or how he didn’t, but we’re still alive, so I know he failed. After her conversion, he got even worse. Whether or not it had anything to do with his hatred of Christians I am not sure. He came and went with no explanation, and his time with us was mostly terrifying.

Eventually, after yet another drive home with him ranting and raving and screaming, my mother gave him an ultimatum. Either he would have to leave, or she would take us and go to Florida. Bizarrely, because he literally hated the idea of us enjoying ourselves, he left. And thus, in a strange, manic moment; he was gone. For the time, anyway.

And that’s Part 1 of this story. Part 2 later.

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Trollheart

Wow, blarrobarg, that's a tough story. Seems most people on here have had some bad issues with their parents. I'm glad you managed to get out of it anyway. Isn't it interesting though how, no matter how bad the father is, the mother is almost always the protector? We certainly owe them a lot, don't we?

My own didn't even have the excuse --- if that sort of thing can ever be excused --- of being a drunk, or on drugs. He was a teetotaller, or "Pioneer", as they call them here, and a (supposedly) devout Christian, so the only reason I can see for his abusive behavior was that he was a total, dyed-in-the-wool wanker. I remember the sense of euophoria when he ****ed off; it was like a window had been opened letting fresh air into a room that had been stale and musty for years.

I hope the rest of your life with your mother went okay for you and your brother. I feel for ya. Looking forward to part two...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

mr dave

Awesome hahaha. Write what you know. If the path to peace takes you down a dark road then so be it. It'll be worth it when you step back out into the light.

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i am the universe

Geekoid

As a fellow '92er who grew up without those issues (and with Mozart played to me in the womb), it kind of makes me look back at my life and realize (again) that I shouldn't take any of it for granted. Both of my parents came from extremely abusive and traumatic homes, and my dad had to escape to Canada from Detroit with my grandmother and his siblings. Both parents became Christians as teenagers, and thankfully they have not let me down in that regard (although Christians are still human, of course). Your mother is one brave woman. Makes me look at Mozart's Requiem in a different light...

looking forward to more posts.

Blarobbarg

Thanks for the replies, guys!

And don't worry, dave, the story gets better later. But first it gets worse. But that's for later.

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Blarobbarg

Blarobbarg’s Life Story, PART 2 OF WHATEVER

I don’t remember a whole lot of what happened between the time when my old man left and when the next stage of my life came in. It was a very confusing, frightening time period. I vaguely remember wondering why it was happening, and during one of the few times I saw him before the divorce went through, he was completely broken down and weeping on his hands and knees, begging me to stop my mother from leaving him. That memory will forever be burned in my head. I had never seen him like that, devoid of all power and anger. He was just a broken, miserable, depressed mess.

But soon enough, it was over. He was gone, and we were alone. It didn’t last long, though. Roughly a month or two after my father left, my mom met her new man… we’ll just call him New Dad.

A mutual friend of theirs was fishing and invited both my mother and New Dad to go along. They met, grabbed their own boat, and New Dad spent the entirety of the day singing Spanish love songs to her. He came over and “spent the night,” so to speak. And that was that. They literally decided, within one day and night, that they were getting married. That sort of thing rarely works out, but it has shockingly been great. Eleven years later and their marriage is still going strong.

One thing to know about New Dad is that he is, and always has been, a complete badass. He was in the Navy, and the only reason he wasn’t a Seal is because of some screwed up paperwork. He is completely capable of destroying everything and everyone around him in a million different ways. He’s pushing fifty now, and there is no doubt in my mind that if somebody ever did anything to his wife or kids, he would hunt them down and kill them.

So, this badass motherlover went over to my dad’s (from now on known as Old Dad) house and… well, none of us are actually sure. We know that New Dad threatened Old Dad’s life. I assume it sounded roughly like, “If you ever touch that woman or those kids ever again I will ****ing rip you open with a hunting knife.” That sounds like something he’d say.

Anyway. Moving onto the musical part of this entry.



I have a very, very distinct memory of one of the first days with New Dad after he and my mother eloped. We were outside in our back yard, and we had Tom Jones blasting. We were just dancing and laughing and having fun. This was an entirely new experience for me. My mom and Old Dad never had any fun, whatsoever. On top of that, this was really my first experience with any sort of music. Until this point in time, my mother had been too busy trying to make sure we survived to play any of the music she liked. When you’re fighting for your life, the little pleasures in life are soon forgotten.

As my mother danced in what was, in retrospect, an incredibly sexual way for my New Dad and we laughed and played, I realized: Life is awesome.

For the moment, anyway. Part 3 is next, with a generous helping of crippling depression and self loathing!

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Exo

I'm glad this story got a bit better.

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LastFM

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Trollheart

Delighted things worked out for you and your family, though a little worried about part three...

Kudos to "New Dad" for sorting "Old Dad" out. That sounded like it needed to be done, and it was important he knew clearly that there was no way he could ever just breeze on back into your life when he felt like it.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Plankton

I'm liking "New Dad" quite a bit, or as they say... "I like the cut of his jib".

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Blarobbarg

Thanks for the bump, Plankton. I've been needing something to get me to type up Part Three.

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