Love Case Studies ~ LCS1: Mom and Dad

I am currently stuck on Chapter 8 of 16 in my first attempt at a novel. Chapter 8 concerns itself primarily with answering the question What is Love? I want to try to convey with great depth something moving that will stick with my readers long after they’ve finished reading the book. To that end the following is descriptions of the influential loves I have experienced in my life and what they mean to me. If you find yourself compelled to write me and tell me about the loves that affected you most please do so with the knowledge that nothing written to me will be divulged without express written consent from the sender, all names and places will be changed with said consent.

Patriarchal Love: I loved and admired my father so much that as a child I wanted to spend as much time as possible with him, watching/doing/helping him with the things he enjoyed even if it meant doing things I detested. Later in life that love was shown to him by me thru imitation, in so far as even his flaws were incorporated into my general make-up of the person I am today. I like to believe his worst qualities have been for the most part left on the cutting room floor in the movie of me. I came to fear him, he had a strength when faced with grief that made him as stone before his cohorts. I would spend 3 decades trying desperately to get his approval and in the end deciding that his ability to make me feel small, unworthy and inadequate were a direct result of the power I had given to him to do so. I stopped trying to get that approval 3 years ago. To this day if either of us tries to tell the other we love them, a joke is soon to follow. We aren’t accustomed to showing affection or speaking it to each other. This pains me and we’ve tried to bridge the gap but it isn’t forthcoming.

Custodial Love: My mother started out as the parent who stood idly by while the ‘shit hit the fan’, she knew it was going to happen and did nothing to prevent or assuage the onslaught. Much later I would learn that the battles were fought for me in the invisible fray behind their bedroom door. Seeing what I perceived as nothing caused me to think her weak. This was not the case in that instance but she did have several mental breaks over my teenage years and so I took it upon myself to protect her as though she were the child. My parents have said I raised myself and this is part of the reason I believe I felt I had to do so and the reason for my lack of childhood. As an adult I have learned that her greatest gift to me was accepting me not only as her daughter but a human being with my own mind. She does not judge or try to control me thru navigating me away from the mistakes she thinks I may make in an effort to make life easier on me, she has the wisdom to know that I must make my own choices, live and learn from my own mistakes. By her own admonishment she has said she doesn’t always like the tings I do but she will always love me.

Therefore I am forced to conclude my ability to understand and accept love was dashed at the foundation, the very building blocks of how I would deal with love in my lifetime started out built on wet sand. I’m not blaming them mind you, it’s not as if children come with an operator’s manual but from the beginning of life children are taught the lessons they carry into the world.