Kiss MY Ass!
Posted on | October 13, 2010 | 2 Comments
as written August 22, 2008
My family came to visit me for the week, and we spent a few days in St. George hiking trails and driving all over the place. For the most part, it was just a relief to see them. Feel them. Be loved by them. And achingly painful because Brent wasn’t with us for any of it.
BUT – there was one interesting thing I learned about myself and how I really am changing, and it had everything to do with E.O.D. EOD = Exploding Orifices Disorder. It’s my name for the Tourettes-like reactions some of my family members exhibit under certain stress points. It’s a sudden and often volatile freak-out when a trigger has been purposefully or inadvertently pushed. That said, this particular trigger was a childhood one of my dad’s: BEE’S. We were driving up to Brian’s Head on very narrow roads, with hundred foot drop off’s inches from the car. Somehow, a lumbering bumble bee found its way in through a window, and…
E.O.D. TO THE EXTREME, PEOPLE.
My poor Pops, he had nowhere to go to escape the insect and I had nowhere to pull over so he could get as far away from it as possible. So since he couldn’t react physically, he reacted verbally. And continued to do so until I came to the closest pull out and he threw himself out of the car, shouting an absurdly ridiculous parting line: “YOU CAN ALL KISS MY ASS!”
And here we go with the codependent throw-down of the rest of my family: what cycled round like a winding cyclone was our own hurt and anger and REaction to his own personal issue. What I saw as we all allowed ourselves to be carried away by something that had NOTHING to do with us, was that…I no longer had a need to do so.
I stood quietly for a moment, feeling what I felt after my dad projected his issues outward from himself. Because he’s my father, and families always seem to have the surest and most direct route to your own crap – it immediately hurt like hell. But then comes the interesting part – this time (whereof before I would have held onto it and nursed it like a pouting child and made him feel guilty for something he can’t control right now), it struck right through and nailed my heart, but because I’m learning to repel what isn’t mine, it bounced off my chest like a boomerang! Hurt me for a moment, but then I chucked it back at him hard, and heard myself (amazingly) quip right back to him:
“No, dad, you can kiss MY ass!!!”
Reeling from my own response, I realized that I was only handing his anger back to him. He projected his issue at us, and I just threw it back at him because I don’t want it! This was me telling HIM to own it, cause I sure as hell won’t own his dysfunction and outbursts any longer!!! It’s not my job, nor my responsibility, nor my desire. My goal is that at some point I CAN get where I won’t let it even REACH me, these things that aren’t mine to own.
Here’s the best part – because my dad is actually self-aware and has an uncanny ability to chuckle at himself when you call him out on his crap…he looked at me for a surprised moment, then burst out laughing. We howled on top of that mountain, he and I, while the rest of my family sulked and continued to take it personally. But my dad and I? Us crazy dysfunctional fools?
We just laughed and laughed and laughed.
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October 16th, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Oh my goodness you came to St. George and I didn’t get to see you. What a loss. I love and miss you fiercly
October 16th, 2010 @ 2:13 pm
Aw nevermind that was in 2008 lol. I love ya