The Bundle of Shame Passed Down 

From One Generation to Another

I have passed on a disease to my children and their children, and I can't warn them because they don't want to hear about it.

They may think "well that's okay for him, but I am fine and don't need you to shame me again."

And maybe they are right. I cannot control them as I tried to do when they were children. They will live their lives with the best awareness they can muster or create for themselves.

All I can do is to tell my story, and hope maybe some day they might read it and understand me.

I tried hard all my life to be a good person, living by a moral code instead of believing in God, trying to be a success in life so I could  be looked up to and provide for my family.

I nearly killed myself trying because, unbeknownst  to me, I was sabotaging myself at every turn in my life. Because of my self destructive behaviors, I got fired from my dream job, never to have an opportunity to return. In fact, I got fired from a lot of jobs and they were all my fault. I had an excuse for each dismissal because I refused to look at my own behavior and learn from it.

I was threatened with my life by young thugs with baseball bats, had part of my house burned down, lost another chance at a successful career as head of a union, lost my house twice, separated from my wife, and went into a deep depression before I began to see how I was the cause of it all.

The disease I had was passed down to me from my own parents, not to diminish their worth or shame them. They did the best they could. You see, their dysfunction was learned from their own parents and this probably replicated itself back as far as one of my royal lineage, an heir to the British throne, who was beheaded, I'm guessing for his own dysfunctional behavior.

My mother married her prince charming. He was tall and handsome, and had enlisted in the Army. He probably had dreams and ambitions and wanted to provide for his family, me being a scant three months old at the time. But he left his only child behind to fight in the Korean War and never came back.

My mother received a purple heart and a flag that covered his coffin, which I would later inherit to make up for the lost years of not having a father. She had been abandoned again, but at eight months old, this was my first experience. My mothers dreams of travel with her new husband came to an abrupt halt when she suddenly had to care for a child on her own.

My mother also suffered the emotional abandonment by both of her parents. Her father, an alcoholic, was never there to serve as a good role model and probably abused her emotionally and physically--she would never talk about it to me.

She never forgave her mother, who had tried to palm her off to her aunt when she was young. She talked about the incident with bitterness, but never elaborated on the subject. My grandmother sometimes mentioned her drinking husband was a mean asshole an d better off dead. She never did mince words.

My father was abandoned by his own father at the age of thirteen,when he was killed in a logging accident in the Pacific Northwest. He was raised by a stepfather, a retired air pilot in the U.S. Army during WWII. Looking back, he looked up to his step-father and I surmised he joined the army to try to live up to his standards and maybe feel loved.

If I had been older and an observer of my parents childhood, I probably would have noticed  themes that replayed themselves in my own life. Lack of self-worth, fear, guilt, compulsive self reliance, and addictive behaviors.

But I grew up thinking I had a normal life. I was good at making friends and it served me well growing up. We moved eight times during the first 14 years of my life. There were a few other times but I was too young to remember. So every year and a half I had to make new friends and leave old friends behind. As a result I never had any lasting friendships and that carried over into my adult life because one way or another I would find a way to abandon them just as I had learned.

Intimacy was a word I knew nothing about. My mother had emotionally abandoned me to deal with her own issues of raising a family after a second marriage and divorce and three kids, carrying on her role a single parent. I learned early on that you didn't let people get to know too much about yourself.

This is because subconsciously I knew I was a bad person and I couldn't let anyone close enough to discover my secret.