If they would have just slowed down and listened… I never would have left.

That’s all they would have had to do back then.

Just slow down… take a few minutes… and listen to what I had to say.

Can you imagine it? Instead of whipping past with all the conclusions and violence, just slowing down could have saved so much pain, so much anger, so much sadness and numbness–and not just on my part, but on theirs.

All they had to do was just slow down… stop… and listen.

It is just about the saddest thing I know in my life.

It’s been almost twenty years since we last saw each other, I think.

I want to apologize for my actions on the playground that day. I also want to tell you a bit about what was going on for me.

It’s not to excuse what I did, but perhaps the perspective into my life will help you in some way.

On the surface, the same racist assholes who were teasing you were asking me, when you weren’t around, “Why are you friends with Kalap?”

The right answer–the assertive answer–would be, among others: “Because he doesn’t ask me why I’m friends with people that I like.”

However, as you well know, I did not give the right answer. I hunkered down, I tried to shrink into myself, hoping they would go away, but they never did.

As a test of friendship, I did fail you on that day; in my defense, however, I was equipped against a successful friendship.

My parents had recently divorced, and my father’s advice about bullies was something like, “Don’t let them get to you,” which is just about the same as saying to somebody standing in the rain, “Don’t get wet,” while refusing to let them stand under your umbrella.

I had no other friends to talk to about it… and I don’t think I talked to you, either. At the very least, I don’t remember talking to you about it at all.

So indeed, I did fail that test… but the test of integrity and loyalty was so incredibly difficult, it probably would have been some sort of small miracle if I had passed.

I hope that this brings you some clarity about what happened almost twenty years ago. I hope it brings a little peace, and perhaps some relief, if even but a small bit.

I cannot repair the damage, it is too long gone. I can only offer a salve to soften the scar.

All the best,

James Alexander Pyrich

I would rarely get any responses to my blog posts, but when I did, they would be one of two kinds:

• praise
• attack

Of those that praised me, it was often private, sometimes public, and they would often express appreciation or gratitude at my willingness to post about such difficult topics. I would be praised for my openness, my courage, my vulnerability, my honesty…

Of those that attacked me–and there were more of these, though not as many as others receive–it was far more often private, rarely public… and I would be called cowardly, weak, childish, spineless, unforgiving, capricious, immature, selfish, judgmental…

The members of my family fell squarely into the second camp. In their attacks, they also called me crazy, said I was lying and making things up, making matters worse than they were, holding on to the past…

But I have never struck a child–at least not since I myself was a child.
I have never yelled at a child and frightened them past the point of tears.
I have never forced a child to eat when he wasn’t hungry and refused to feed him when he was.
I have never refused to let a child use the bathroom and then forced him to sit in his own urine for lord knows how long, and then beat him afterwards for wetting himself.
I have never refused to seek medical attention for a child when he was sick or in pain.
I have never yelled at a child for getting lost.
I have never yelled at a child for not doing schoolwork.
I have never deliberately and systematically mutilated a child.
I have never used a child to talk about my own adult issues.
I have never yelled at or beaten a child for urinating in his bed.

I have been brutal to myself–but I never would have been so if I had not experienced the above.

All I did was talk about it… and I only did that when those same family members that are now attacking me refused to talk about it with me.

Of course… for them to treat me with the respect I deserved so very many years ago now would be a sick and sad sort of joke, a farce… because now that they can’t really hurt me anymore, but that I can hurt them… now they’re all about the tolerance and forgiveness.

Now that I have power… they counsel caution and restraint.

Now that I can hurt them…

“Where was your fucking tolerance when I wet the bed?”
“Where was your fucking restraint when I brought home those teachers’ notes?”

Compared to what?

What am I doing that is so horribly egregious compared to what they did?

Compared to WHAT?

I didn’t approach you one last time to try to “work things out” or to give you
some kind of warning.

I didn’t give you a list of conditions for you to satisfy, a bar for you to
measure up to, nor some sort of standard of behavior.

I didn’t try to share my feelings in a phone call, or in a face-to-face meeting,
or even in an email.

But what I did do was crystal clear.

I didn’t talk to you because I was afraid of what would happen.

I was afraid that I would have my heart broken again.

I was afraid that you would tell me all the same things I’ve heard before, like
it wasn’t that bad, or I’m overstating the case, or I’m just too sensitive, or I
was/am a difficult person, or I’m lying, or I’m making stuff up, or I’m playing
the victim, or I’m unfairly blaming others for my shortcomings…

I was afraid I would hear those things instead of hearing the one thing, that
very one thing that would make all the difference in the world, that one flare
of curiosity that is precluded by all of the above:

“Tell me more.”

Now that the critic is quieter, I was able to ask myself: how do I feel about opening the blog back up?

I thought about how I’d feel if a family member came to my blog and read the post, Hiding Feelings. I did feel a little anxious. I’m not sure exactly why this was, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I have made it very clear, through my actions, that I do not wish to engage with them, but they’re cyber-stalking me. To open myself up to that, even in a small way, does cause some anxiety.

But then I thought about how I’d feel if somebody came to my blog through a link to one of my very heartfelt and personal posts. I felt sad, and I think the sadness came from them not being able to access the treasure that I have to offer. I mean, when most people come to a site and they have to log in to do anything, even if it’s a completely free account, they skip it unless they’re very motivated to sign up. Heck, that’s what I do all the time.

So if I have something valuable to offer people, and I hold it back because of a handful of people will feel bad… well, isn’t that being unfair to the people who will appreciate what I have to offer? Isn’t that being unfair to myself and living in reaction to my history?

So… I’ve unlocked my blog. Enjoy!

What came out of that recording, however, was too valuable to discard.

I started to talk about how I hadn’t yet gotten myself into therapy, and that I anticipated doing it soon; I’ve seen how other people have made much progress while being in therapy themselves while others that have kept themselves in isolation have made little to no progress or have even drifted away completely.

As an example, I started to talk about my father.

My father had the opportunity to pursue therapy in his early-to-mid-20s. He had read some book in which he saw parallels to his own abuse of alcohol. Instead of entering group therapy or individual therapy, however, he decided that he was going to fix it on his own–in isolation.

Why did he do this? He had a golden opportunity to discover the roots of his abuse of alcohol, to explore why he felt so empty and worthless inside. Instead, he drove himself into deep isolation and ended up attaching himself to more socially-acceptable cults.

I believe the reason he did not pursue intensive therapy is related to the fact that by his mid-20s, he had already abused and was continuing to abuse his own children.

It might be possible for somebody to recover from severe self-abuse, but once they begin to abuse a helpless dependent, recovery is damn near impossible.

Thus, by the time my father discovered that his life was proceeding towards disaster, it was already too late. In order for him to be successful in therapy, he would have to face the guilt of beating innocent children.

The end result? He continued to abuse his children, and later on acquired more children he could abuse.

Justice can never truly be satisfied in this circumstance. I can never go back and be a child again and be treated with love and respect, and neither can my parents go back to treat me with love and respect. At this point in time, it is too late. They did not demonstrate themselves to be loving and respectful people when they had all of the power in the relationship, so why should I trust their expressed desire to be loving and respectful now?

Furthermore, if they have the capacity to be loving, respectful, reasonable, and rational now, why did they not do this when I was completely under their control?

My parents, other family members, church people, friends, even strangers will tell me that I ought to forgive my parents.

Why?

It’s always put forward as them looking out for my own interests: “you can’t be angry ALL the time;” “it’s not healthy to be so angry;” “it happened so long ago, at least you’re out of there;” and other such expressions.

But why shouldn’t I be angry? They repeatedly violated me and said that it was for my own good.

These are not the actions of good people!

My parents have not approached me asking for forgiveness for the abuses of my early childhood. They merely protest and attempt to bully me into not talking about it.

The time to confess to crimes is before the victim discovers he has been defrauded.

There is such a thing as “too late.”

It might not be too late for some of those that counsel me to forgive, however.

Assaulting a child is an evil act. It is stone evil.

By telling me that I should forgive my parents, you are telling me that I should forgive stone evil. Not only that, you’re telling me that I should forgive people who aren’t sorry for assaulting me; they’re only sorry that they got caught.

If there is any hope for them, it is that they face the abyss that haunts them, and the only possible way that they are going to be able to do that is if good people stand up and say, “No more.”

But whether or not there is any hope for them is not my concern nor should it be yours.

Is there hope for you?

How can there be hope for you if you continue to protect evil?

They aren’t anything the world has not seen before, of course–they were all publicly posted on my website for years.

Over the years, I received sympathy, of course. Such writing does not come from a well-balanced, happy soul. However, I cannot recall (though I think there might have been one person prior to FDR) anybody truly sympathizing with the horrible situation I had to endure and directing me to seek professional help.

Despite this, I’ve had a very strong sense for quite some time now that I needed to seek out a therapist that could help me unravel the twistings of my psyche, but I could never find the right person, or I didn’t have the money, or so many other excuses out there.

I once begged a doctor to just give me some pills so that I wouldn’t feel suicidal. He didn’t give me a prescription, but instead sent me to the ER of a local hospital. After waiting there for several hours, I was finally seen by a grief counselor who said something like, “We don’t really deal with your kind of case.” That is to say, I wasn’t discovered holding a razor to my throat, so I wasn’t considered that sort of risk.

So, why now? Why am I unearthing all of this now? Why did I delete the emails when I deleted them? I could have deleted them years ago, or I could have let them sit on my hard drive for another decade. Why that action, then? Why the poetry, now?

I’ve moved to a new apartment, and this new apartment is quite different from the old apartment. The most significant difference to me is that it is not in the mountains near a body of water, in a dingy little town that’s an hour from everything significant.

The poem, “Volcano,” speaks of a dragon who can’t seem to help but hurt people and destroy things. Such a creature surely could not change his nature, so the natural consequence of feeling bad about this is to escape to a remote area where he can no longer hurt anybody.

The fallacy in that analogy is that it is not my nature to be in constant pain, nor is it my nature to lash out and hurt others. It is no more my “nature” to do so than it is in the “nature” of a pitbull to be violently aggressive.

No, to turn to such ends requires the continuous infliction of harsh and brutal abuse to the point of trauma.

Do I sweep my arms too broadly? Take another look at my poetry. Take another look at how I viewed myself. This is not because I was born broken, but because I was born, then broken.

The analogy of the dragon logically concludes with, “I must flee,” but one can never flee the fire in one’s belly. Hence, the dragon is always fleeing, always escaping, but never able to completely escape.

So, I am seeing some parallels between the behavior of my parents and my own. I ran to the mountains, where few other people resided. However, this is not therapeutic, but escapist!

Moving out of the shit mountain town I was living in was a move out of the paradigm of my parents, which induces a great deal of stress, but is fundamentally necessary for my continued growth and good health.

I am not a dragon by nature. There are hundreds–if not thousands–of stories which have as their central theme, “James is a broken creature.”

Among them are:
James is inconvenient.
James does not deserve affection.
James does not deserve love.
James does not deserve attention.
James deserves to be hit.
James deserves to be screamed at.
James deserves to be threatened.
James deserves to be scared.
James does not deserve to be taken to the doctor.
James deserves to be isolated.
James does not deserve normal relationships with girls.
James does not deserve to feel affection.
James does not deserve to be a sexual being.
James does not deserve to see his parents’ admiration.
James deserves to see his parents’ hatred for him.
James deserves to see his parents’ hatred for each other.
James deserves to see his brother treated better than him.
James does not deserve privacy.
James does not deserve boundaries.
James does not deserve to have desires.
James does not deserve to express his feelings.
James deserves to have his feelings denied.
James deserves to have his feelings minimized.
James deserves to have his experience denied.
James deserves to have his experience minimized.
James deserves to be humiliated.
James deserves to be mocked.
James deserves to be set up.
James deserves to be in pain.
James deserves to be made fun of.
James deserves to be sad.
James does not deserve to be happy.
James does not deserve to live.
James deserves to die.