The lotus is a sacred symbol because it rises above the mud and muck, breaks the surface of the water, and blooms. It’s symbolic of the beauty that can grow out of darkness, and the fight and effort to rise above the mire that is mortality to attain Nirvana (bloom)
My “father” died at the end of July. I’d have to go back and check to remember the exact day, because there have been so many other, more impactful things that have happened since then. While there are a dozen topics I could spin off this event, I’ll try to pick something with broad relevance, or at least interesting to read.
But now for the clickbait title:
One day my mom was engaged in a phone call, unaware I was reading somewhere within earshot. As I tuned in and out of her conversation, eventually she landed on him, when in a hushed voice she confessed that I was conceived via rape – the super rape-y kind that’s preceded by being beaten within an inch of your life.
My mom told the story the same way she always spoke about such things; like an unflappable veteran of the world’s worst horrors. I grew up listening to her crazy tales, and this certainly wasn’t the first that involved violence and turmoil.
I had heard other things about my conception before; mainly that she drank herself into a stupor after learning she was pregnant and scheduled to have (what would have been) her 4th abortion. But that was a happy story, or at least I took it that way – I was here, after all!
But upon hearing this new piece of the story, my response was…stillness and not sure what to do with it. Perhaps it meant something about me – maimed my spirit in some way. I couldn’t articulate how I felt, but subliminal messages always impact us before we can describe them. At that point, I had only met him twice for lengthy summer visits.
Today, I can better describe how I felt. Besides pain and outrage over my mom’s experience, I felt degraded and devalued. Why had I been encouraged to meet someone I should have been protected from? Why was anyone tolerating him? After being sent there, my mom told me about his inappropriate behavior with teenage girls that my aunt informed her about. And yet there I was, shipped away to stay with this abusive, predatory person. No one thought they were doing anything wrong – just allowing me to know my father. It shows how easily dysfunction or abuse can become accustomed to, and therefore not properly responded to.
It humbles me to think that maybe anything I’ve done right has only been due to some advantage – the advantage of not having a dangerous and abusive person in my life. He may have been a persistent source of fear for me (the reason I couldn’t use my real name online), but at least he was always far away. I had traumatic experiences while visiting him, but by age 24 (the last time I saw him) the number of days I spent with him was less than 1% of days lived.
I never had any attachment to him, but some people experience abuse from people they love. We might judge people for their fragility, their inability to pick good partners, their chronic depression without understanding the landmines that were planted in their consciousness during developmental years, or that their brain wasn’t given the environment to even develop properly. Somehow, those people are expected to fix or heal themselves.
Too many conclusions to choose from
Many thoughts come to mind when I think about these experiences, like the inadvertent ways we have our sense of value diminished, or the ways we have to build ourselves up when having absent, negligent or simply incapable parents. I think about the power of alchemy and how many of our lives are testaments of this alchemy, and who I would be had he been in my life “for real.” Like I said, too many to choose from. I have to land on something though.
Sometimes life robs us of something, or we have to live with a big hole somewhere. We can choose to stare into that hole, until our peripheral loses all sense of the light that surrounds it, or we can see what that space can do for us. We can turn it into a portal to greater wisdom, compassion, or some other virtue, or fill it with something beautiful. I don’t know if I would have searched for beauty with so much vigor if not for the knawing hunger my empty pit gave me.
Whatever dark, mucky thing shows up in your life, I hope you heal from it. But I also hope you can grow something in it one day.
Peace!
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