I Never Meant to Hurt You
Empathy is an inseparable part of my nature. For a creative person it is the key that opens the world seen through other people’s eyes. The ability to imagine oneself inside another person. To where the naked eye cannot see. To imagine being someone else, completely different from yourself. To feel their feelings, to look at life through their eyes. To try to understand that this too is one possible way of living. To reflect on why they are the way they are, feel the way they feel, and do the things they do.
Empathy is not the same as compassion, nor does it necessarily or unconditionally mean agreement, but rather an attempt to understand why a person is the way they are. What has made them who they are. This is not always easy. How to understand a violent person? Especially when it turns out to be someone close.
Every action and consequence has a cause. Some personal trauma, being a victim of bullying, alcoholism, a difficult childhood, or growing up in a harsh environment.
I like the thought that we are made of other people and come from our childhood. From somewhere there a person receives their virtues and vices. I often think that warmth comes from warmth and goodness from goodness. But not necessarily. Sometimes a person shares warmth precisely because they have lacked it themselves. Some are who they are today thanks to the people and environment they come from. Others in spite of it.
I take the key to open the door into the world of a person who had everything. The world of a wanted son who was cherished, loved, and who loved his parents. I breathe in deeply and close my eyes. I breathe out and open my eyes. I find myself in the skin of a man who has lost almost everything, who wanders in a labyrinth of bitterness, disappointments, addictions, and negativity. Who has lost himself.
I sense surges of remorse alternating with bursts of anger. The devastating effect of spiteful words lightly let loose and the self-deception made up of desperately sought excuses. I feel torment of the soul and a heartfelt wish to find a way out. I hear a voice that criticizes and belittles, yells and accuses. But I also hear another voice. The trembling whisper of heart and conscience, with guilt and a desperate desire to change. Behind eyes the color of extinguished embers, deep in the heart, glows love. It has always been there. But for a long time he has not known how to show it or say it.
Had he ever known, I wonder as myself.
This man is my father. The life of the party and the joker. A valued and respected man among his companions, and for good reason. A man who at first had everything. A marriage born of love and children. Many friends and a circle of honorable members of society. A rise up the career ladder from a small cooperative manager to the founder of a large joint-stock company and then the head of an entertainment group. The home was in order and well kept, the wife loving and wise. In the family grew three boys, like boys usually do. Big worries and tragic events passed this home by.
When did everything change and why? How did a man surrounded by love and care become a man of unpredictable behavior, from whose words and actions painful, burning sparks burst out? The kind that leave no external burn marks but scorch slowly from the inside. That is exactly what psychological violence is like. It burns from within, slowly, those who are closest. Until the moment when the flame flares up and everything burns to ashes.
I look back through my father’s eyes at the life he lived, searching for the breaking point, but I can’t find it. These things creep in silently. And yet I ask myself question after question.
When did friendly teasing turn into bullying?
When did a warm laugh gain a darker tone?
When did the joy over small but important things disappear?
When did the little details at home become irritating?
At what moment did responsibility turn into an unbearable burden?
When did expectations grow bigger than reality?
When did pride in his children’s achievements turn into envy?
When did the quirks of a beloved wife start getting on his nerves, and why?
When did he lose the ability to see the forest for the trees?
When did the scales tip for good?
When did everything slip through his hands?
When did the glass that was always half-full become one that would forever stay half-empty, and when did it run dry?
In that glass and bottle metaphor lies the truth about my father. The reason for the change was alcohol.
I look back at the beautiful times and see how, scene by scene, they twist before my eyes into distorted mirror images.
“I’m so lucky with my wife,” my father said with joy.
“She could complain a little less when I come home a few hours late with faint smells on me.”
“What the hell are you nagging about? We had a long, hard work week and celebrated the end of it with colleagues,” he snapped after coming home only the next morning.
“There’s a lot of work, and it isn’t easy, but it’s exciting, and the things we’re accomplishing are so big,” he said with enthusiasm. “And I’m doing all of this for you, my dear family.”
“I have so much work, and it’s hard, and I constantly have to fight against stupidity,” he complained more and more.
“You don’t understand me. Easy for you. You live here at my expense. I’m the one making sure there’s food on the table and the room is warm. You all get on my nerves, and I need to relax,” he said while pouring stronger and stronger cocktails.
“Please don’t drink anymore today,” my mother begged.
“If you don’t like it, then move out,” my father replied.
But my mother had nowhere to go. Or maybe she lacked the courage. Or maybe she loved him. Unconditionally. She endured everything. She was the buffer between her husband and her sons.
Quietly, a time crept into our lives when my father’s needs outweighed everyone else’s. Instead of “us,” there was “me.” Me and the bottle. Selflessness turned into selfishness. He lost his self-control more often, though there were also moments of regret and rare sunny days.
“I just can’t get along with my sons at all, and I feel so sorry about that,” he said on his better days.
“My sons are worthless, stupid, and foolish,” he said on his worse days.
“I’m proud of you, so proud,” he said on his good days.
“You’re an idiot, and you embarrass me,” he shouted on his bad days.
The time between those two kinds of days could be just 24 hours.
Pride and malice at once.
“You’re a useless woman, get out of my sight,” he humiliated his wife on the bad days.
“You’re my precious,” he cherished her on the good ones.
Sometimes those extremes fit within a single afternoon.
But my mother believed, hoped, and loved.
And then the flame burst.
Heavy troubles found their way into our family, and tragic events followed in their wake.
“We need to talk about the important things,” I once told him. “But only when you’re sober.”
“You don’t call me a drunk,” he snapped.
The man who once stepped in at the first sight of injustice or violence now raised his hand to strike, but it froze in the air at the last moment…
“I never wanted to do something like that,” came the apology only two years later.
“I never wanted to hurt any of you,” he told us, his loved ones.
On his last birthday.
Just a month before his sudden death.
Four years after my middle brother, his son, chose to leave life voluntarily.
I wander into the soul behind that other pair of eyes, which in the end was completely broken. Behind those eyes lies another story. A story of mental health, which caused a different kind of emotional violence.
But both stories are tied together by love and kind hearts. And yet, a barking dog can bite, and a wolf can strike in its own home. And sometimes it happens that even good hearts break other hearts.