My Mother Was My Father, And It Was Awful

 People, Peeps, Y'all, 

Hey, It has been a whole week since I talked to you. I hope it was a good week for you. It has been considerably enjoyable for me. The highlight has been spending the weekend in Utah with my girlfriend and our families. We didn't make a special trip to meet family. She needed a ride down and we both have family in the same town so we are sharing meals with them all. 

This trip goes along with things that I have been thinking about all week. I am staying at my father's house here in Utah while I am down South of my college town in Idaho. My father and I have a great relationship right now, and it wasn't always this way. I think I have shared in an earlier post about how my mother took my siblings and I away from our father in 2008. Divorce papers were served a year or so later. In that interaction of happenings, my mother decided that my father was no good and could not be trusted to raise us children. She decided she was going to be both the father and mother figure in mine and my sisters' lives. It went like this:

Strong punishment and harsh words came from my mother. She refused to rough house with me, even in my prepubescent years. She opened up experiences to me like shooting and riding horses and roping steers. These were on the whole, very formative times and experiences for myself. I have not specifically or directly asked my sisters what these years were like for them in regards to our mother being a pseudo-father, but in general, we had a hard time with this and felt that we needed a father in our lives. That is part of the Divine Plan after all, having a father and a mother. Preferably, they work together, love each other, and communicate well. In my experience, this is not always the case. I say that tongue in cheek, of course. 

When I was eleven years old, my mother decided that it was time for me to get off the video games and go to work at her father's, my grandfather's, property. I did as she wished, but grudgingly. It turned out to be the right choice because I was taught lessons that best come from a man to a boy. My mother would never have been able to teach me the things I was so graciously taught by my grandpa. He taught me to work. He taught me to treat women with respect. He taught me how to shake hands with both men and women. I had a lot of learning experiences with my grandfather, not only because he was my grandfather and boss, but because he was temporarily my scout master as well as my mentor in life. He was the father figure my mother allowed me to have. My biological father could have possibly taught me the same lessons, if he had been given the chance. 

People who grow up without an effective father figure are more prone to addiction, violence ( both received and dished out), poor treatment of women, poor choice in friends, and a plethora of other social, mental, and emotional ailments which I will not list extensively. I have not gone without some of these effects. I am fighting to heal and fighting to learn so as to not put my own son(s) (future tense) through the things I have suffered. I do not want a divorced home. I do not want it, Sam I Am. 

All Seuss jokes aside, this is really important to me. I hope it is important to you too. 

With future children in mind,

-AR