What I've learned from men

This may be considered offensive by some, or not.  My intention is not to offend anyone.  My intention is to simply state what I have learned from men throughout my life.  WARNING!  Much of what I learned is not very pleasant nor acceptable, in most vanilla settings.  This is my process of dealing with things in my life.  I share my process in the hope that it might possibly help another human being who is struggling with something in their life.  Here we go.

My father was most likely bi-polar and psychotic for most of his life.  He's still alive, but we have no relationship.  I've tried many times to develop a relationship with him, but each time I get kicked in the face for trying.  So, now, I don't try any more.  When I was almost four years old I saw my father hit my mother, bloodying her lip.  I was frightened and at the same time I was enraged that he would hit my mother.  So I jumped on his leg and started biting him to make him stop.  He grabbed me by my arm, shoved me into his duffle bag, he was in the Air Force, and tied it shut, then set the duffle bag (with me inside it) on the couch.  The bag was very smelly and I could see through the small ventilation holes (grommets) in the bag.  I was screaming the entire time.  He finally left the house.  I'm sure my mother rescued me from the duffle bag, but I really don't remember what happened afterwards.  I learned from my father that men hit women; make them bleed; and that a small child (like me) would be treated like dirty laundry when they interfered.

Not long after that incident, I was playing with my puppy, Bubbles in the yard.  Bubbles was tied to a tree with a chain.  I was sitting near the tree playing.  Somehow Bubbles had run around the tree, and me, enough times that I was entangled with her chain and couldn't get free.  I guess I cried out loud.  My father went nuts, freed me from the chain and that night he took my mother and I and my puppy on a drive outside of town.  He stopped at some point, took the puppy from me and threw her in the ditch and we drove back home.  I was hysterical, but it didn't matter to him.  To everyone's surprise, a few days later, Bubbles found her way back to our house.  I was thrilled!  My father was livid.  This time he took Bubbles, by himself, in the car and I never saw her again.  I learned from my father that men may rescue you but they will take away anything you love or care about.

One winter, when I was almost 5 years old, my father was playing with me in the snow.  He decided to make an igloo for me.  So he used a shoe box to form bricks of snow and built a very cool igloo.  Then he told me to get inside it, so I did.  Then he proceeded to close up the opening so that I was completely enclosed with no way out of the igloo.  That's all I remember.  Obviously I got out of the igloo, at some point, but my memory of that is gone.  I learned from my father that men don't play fair.

I was 5 1/2 years old when my brother was born and things got worse.  My baby brother would often cry when my mother put him in his crib.  My father took off his belt and hit him with it while he lay in his crib, my brother was unable to sit up or walk, a helpless baby.  Why my mother didn't get a skillet and crack his skull open with it, I have no idea.  At the dinner table, my brother sitting in a high chair, me sitting on a book in a chair so I could reach the table to eat dinner, my father would often scream at my mother, throwing whatever was close at hand at her.  Nothing was ever good enough for him.  Once it was a Corning ware bowl.  Funny thing was that the bowl didn't break.  Instead, it bounced and the contents of the bowl went right into my father's face, which resulted in plates and glasses also getting thrown everywhere.  The plates and glasses didn't bounce.  I learned from my father that babies are no better than animals in a cage and that Corning ware will bounce if you throw it on the floor.  I also learned to hate dinner time at the table.

When I was about 8, my father told me that he was going away and would never come back.  He said he loved me, but that he didn't love my mother.  I cried and couldn't understand why he would leave us.  Then I learned why.  While he was stationed in Japan he had an affair with another woman and he was leaving my mother, and my brother and I, to be with her.  What this meant to me was no more tantrums, dish throwing dinners, no more hitting my mother or my brother, no more screaming and yelling.  That year my mother mailed my father my school pictures, because she knew it was the right thing to do, right?  The pictures were mailed back to us, but they were shredded into a million pieces.  I remember crying because that felt very personal, like he hated me.  I learned from my father that men only care about themselves and what they want.  They do not care about how anyone else feels, even their own children.

It's too bad I didn't learn these things better or remember them.  Maybe I would have saved myself from the heartache of being beat up by my first husband.  That marriage lasted a whole 4 months of hell.  What was I thinking?  Maybe I would have saved myself from marrying an alcoholic that had no idea how to re-adjust his priorities when our daughter was born.  Maybe I would have saved myself from the heartache of a lying, cheating husband (also an alcoholic) who thought it would be just fine for him to have an affair with our young daughter's boyfriend's mother, who was also married.  Two families ended up divorced so he could be with her.  It killed me to watch him manipulate my younger daughter, using her to facilitate his illicit affair.  Then, just to rub salt into the wound, even though I had initially purchased the house we lived in, he still got half of it in the divorce.  I learned to never ever again get involved with an alcoholic.  I also learned men lie and cheat and they don't care who gets hurt, even their own children.

I ventured into one more relationship after that.  It lasted for four years but ended up with him lying and cheating, too.

So I give up.  It's just not worth the heartache and the incredible amount of emotional energy to recover from that kind of treatment.  I'd rather be alone than to ever have to deal with that again.  My daughters jokingly say "Mom, your picker's broken."  Maybe it is.  Or maybe there are so few good moral men left in this world that the odds are simply against finding a good honest man.  I don't feel sorry for myself.  I feel relieved that I can focus on being a good mother and friend to my adult daughters and their friends, enjoy being grandma to my grand kids, and make good friends along the way without having to worry about a significant others' issues.  I've heard it said that when you "stop looking" is when you find that "right person."  Well, I've stopped looking.  If that right person dares show his face now, too bad.  I'm done.  Like I said, I should have remembered what I learned from my father.

Don't take this as me thinking all men are horrible lying cheaters.  I don't.  I simply believe that there are very few moral men or women left on this planet.  If you're a woman and you happen to have one of those few moral men as your partner or husband, count your lucky stars and never take that for granted.