By Butch Freedman
“Anyone who survives childhood has enough to write about for the rest of their lives.”
Flannery O’Connor
I’ve always found comfort in the above quote. I don’t think it applies only to writing, but rather to all of life after childhood. The answers to all our actions and dilemmas are contained within those initial formative years. Did you grow up in a loving, supportive family? Or was it a difficult situation? One where you felt unseen and unheard? And how long did it take you to overcome those feelings of unworthiness? If ever. Maybe that’s the deal with trump. Bad parenting. But I won’t bother with him and his various psychological failings. Not today.
I’ve written pretty extensively about my own childhood and how it has impacted me throughout my life, and continues to do so. I have more of a grasp now of what’s happening when my reactions feel out of control or over-wrought. It takes a long moment, but I can usually pull back and see what’s happening. “Damn, Butch,” I might tell myself. “Get a grip. You’re not that little kid anymore.” But it took many years of self-introspection and therapy to get to a place where I could see myself more clearly. More—not completely. There are days when I still feel like a lost little boy.
They say (whoever they are) that age brings wisdom. I’m not feeling it. I believe there is a progression—from that lost little boy to the aged writer and surfer. I was smarter at 25 than I was at 16, but happier at 16, when I still hadn’t realized how messed up a life could become. At 25 I was already married and raising a family. Too much, too soon in retrospect. But who knew. We did what was expected of us—graduate college and settle down. Turns out, settling is harder than slipping on a ring. At 30, I kept my head down and worked to support my family and raise my children. My ex-wife and I mostly ignored each other at this juncture. We both realized we had made a mistake, but still had to plow on. “For the kids,” we told ourselves. Not smart.
At 40, I felt older than I do now 40 years later. I had given up most of my dreams and aspirations, and paid little attention to my own well-being. That changed in my late forties when I came to a long-suppressed realization that I had to make a change, or I was going to remain stuck in a place where I accepted unhappiness as my due. My marriage resembled my parents’—loveless and cold. My brain snapped. This has to end, I told my wife. She agreed. That was hard at first, devastating, but also liberating. I had to rethink everything. Find out who I really was and what mattered.
The next 20 years was a period of serious growth. I explored all the stuff I had missed out on. A late bloomer for certain. Therapy helped—a lot. Over those years I spent a small fortune on sessions. I could have bought a Jaguar for what I spent, but the therapy was worth more. Did I get any wiser? Maybe. I find wisdom hard to define. Some days it’s there, other days I continue to make the same mistakes I always have. React in crazy-man ways. Like all the other men in the world. But I’m getting better all the time. Which is so weird to be saying as I grow closer to closing time. Hey, maybe that’s what they mean by the wisdom of old people. Maybe It’s just that we mostly now have the time for laughing at ourselves. We get that you can’t keep taking yourself so seriously. And that the most important things in life are connections and love. Including loving yourself.
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