part 35

I have always been fascinated with the histories of serial killers and child molesters and rapists and child abusers and spouse abusers. Sometimes each of these categories of monster can all be found in one person. A lot of times, there is some combination of two or more of the monster categories in an individual. Sometimes there is just one monster category that can describe one person.

Regardless, these people are monsters. I know people are not born monsters – this is a controversial topic, whether or not people are born bad. I personally do not believe people are bad from the instant of their conception, or of their birth.

I have heard monster-people described as being different from birth, as though even as a newly born infant it was easy to see something dark and wrong in them. I have also heard descriptions of beautiful innocent babies whose monster behavior as young children or as young adults is completely baffling.

I have heard mothers describe their monster-adult-child as a completely shocking and different person than she had ever known as her son or daughter.

Seriously, though – it never requires having to look very far into the behaviors of babies and children and the people upon whom they depend for love and support and nurturing to see how it all could go so wrong.

There is no definite formula, or any requirement of actions or events or behaviors of one’s past to determine whether or not they are monster-people. There are many similarities among these things, but certainly no scientifically proven method of how someone came to be a monster.

I personally believe, though, that a child born into a consistently and constantly loving and nurturing environment, even a childhood involving any form of trauma, will not become a monster. I really, truly believe that it is impossible for someone to become like my dad without having experienced deep and resonating pain at the hands of someone they depend on for love and security at some time before they are fully grown adults.

Maybe I believe this because it is easier to think that my dad was, at even the earliest stages of his life, not a monster. It is definitely easier for me to think that than to believe he was just born evil. If he was just born evil, if that was possible, if that was really how it worked, then …. I don’t know. What? Something that does not make any sense, or something I cannot make any sense of. Something without hope.

I have been thinking a lot about my dad’s childhood. I think I have mentioned before that he did not speak of it often, and when he did share something of his past, it was usually something negative. The only positive interactions I have heard him share from his childhood involved his relationship with an animal. A dog or something that he could think back on fondly and actually smile while remembering.

Everything else my dad shared about his childhood involved pain.

From my dad’s perspective of his childhood – which is really the only one that counts in the end – he was alone or being abused or experiencing some other form of pain pretty much the entire time he was growing up.

He described his father as cruel, his mother as distant, and his older brother as horribly abusive. I don’t recall him saying anything bad – or anything at all, really - about his sisters, but I have heard from others that he attributes good things to them, and always has.

Maybe this is one of the ways my dad became a monster. Maybe he had no ability to see people any other way than as good or as bad, with nothing in between.

It’s funny – I have recently described my view of myself as either all good or all bad. I mean, I am really beginning to integrate all of who I am into someone I can definitely live with, but before all of this therapy and everything, I was either bad or I was good.

Since my dad was the one who always made that determination, I was always good sometimes, and always bad at other times. He hated me or he adored me, and not just in that moment – he applied his hate and adoration retroactively probably to a time before I was even conceived, and he projected it into every breath I would take in the future and then into whatever afterlife I might have.

It was baffling, but no matter what he did to me, I tirelessly sought the good in him. No matter how cruel he was, I could not bear to think my father was entirely evil. It was crucial for me to reconcile my ideas of him as something other than a monster, and I have pulled it off beautifully for my entire life.

I have a hard time thinking of him like that still. I know logically that the kind of person my dad is does not have the capacity to love others, and especially not the capacity to love a child unconditionally. When I was about 20 years old, I asked my dad why he treated me so badly. He told me, “it goes both ways.” I was stunned – I had not ever considered that my dad would require me to prove my love for him before he would love me back.

I don’t know why I had never considered that before, and I have definitely considered it a lot since then, but at the time I was baffled.

I had my own child by that time, and I could not imagine ever not loving him, no matter what. I feel at the core of my being that loving my child is what it means to be a parent – it’s the bottom line. Not discipline, not preparation for the world, not guidance – to me, the bottom line of being a parent is loving that kid and making sure he knows it – NO MATTER WHAT. I suppose I expected as much from my dad. I always knew that my mom loved me that way, and I had never questioned it, but I guess it was a pretty big assumption I made about my dad.

Maybe before that time when I was 20 and my dad told me “it goes both ways” I always believed he loved me unconditionally, because that is what I needed to believe. I mean, if your own parent cannot love you unconditionally, who could love you at all?

Not only that, but I very much adored that man. I mean, that monster. It has taken me a long time to comprehend that he hates me so much now – he started hating me years before the last time I saw him, and I truly believe that has not ceased in the years since.

It hurts – it hurt then and it hurts now. And let’s face it – it is a lot easier to accept the pain of his hate than risk damaging any more of myself on a chance for even a sliver of his love.

Maybe the reason I have such a fascination with the childhood and life experiences of monsters is because it is a way for me to recognize a progression of the sickness in them. It makes it very easy for me to see that the kind of people their victims are has absolutely nothing to do with why and how they are victimized.

I can’t say learning about how people become monsters has made it any easier to forgive my dad, or at least to even consider forgiving my dad. Nothing that happened to him as a kid makes anything he did to me any less horrendous. But I really do feel a lot better being able to see the sickness as his alone, and not as something that is in me, too.