Poésie

My Father Writes Poetry Too

I guess you could say I grew up in an artistic family. There's always been room for creativity in my life, and I know that makes me lucky. Not a lot of people get to say that about themselves, that they grew up in a household where art was encouraged. I learned to paint before I learned to fight.

I didn't start writing poems until I became depressed. A lot of people say that genius, be it artistic or intellectual goes hand in hand with mental illness.

My father writes poetry. It's pretentious and wordy and he describes his hikes in the mountains alongside women I suspect he's cheating on my mother with. And then he describes the way the sunlight falls and the sound of the creek running over rocks and other half assed "meaningful" shit like that. He writes mostly haikus.

In his entirety, my father is professorlike, for lack of a better word, from his overpriced sport jackets that we can never afford (but he buys anyway) to his stuck-up, sickening health plans; from his never-finished dissertation to his cheap "health-beneficial" beer.

My father is introverted, almost perversely so and has cast aside all religion he used to have inside of him. I think maybe he's rolling his eyes when we say grace at dinner, but I never look. I'm more shocked on days when he doesn't scream and yell at us for inviting friends over than days he does; it's what I've come to expect.

I've googled the terms "emotionally abusive" and "verbally abusive" so many times now that I almost know them by heart, but I figure wikepedia could tell you better than I could. Emotional abuse is "a form of abuse characterized by a person subjecting or exposing another to behavior that may result in psychological trauma, including anxiety, chronic depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder." That sounds about right to me.

When I began to have panic attacks almost every night, my mother comforted me until she had to leave, and she often did, being the only supporter of our growing family. My father would stay at home with me, grip my shoulders painfully and tell me to "push through." Like I was letting myself hurt on purpose.

He called it tough love, but it didn't feel like there was much love there at all.

My father used to hit me. I don't know how long it's been, but it hasn't quite been two years yet, so I suppose I could still phone the authorities and shriek about abuse but it wouldn't do any good. I'm already damaged enough; there's no point subjecting my family to the same pain. I tried to shield myself from it, physically and emotionally, but I've never been able to go to a "happy place" that's far enough away for me to hear anything over the sounds of my father slapping across my ass while my best friend sobs across the hall.