I've Got You

Something I’ve always tried to instill in my son is a sense of safety. Not just for his physical safety - that’s a given - but also for his mental safety. I want him to feel a sense of stability and know that he doesn’t have to worry about carrying any weight for the family. It’s something of which I carry a very strong sense. I want him to know that I’ve always got his back, that if he needs me for anything I’ll be there, and that I, as the parent, am the one who has to worry about paying the bills, strategizing for his future, and dealing with work. All he has to do is be a kid. 

This responsibility for me is so strong, and I know it comes from how I grew up and a certain way in which my father behaved that made me grow up very quickly. Like a lot of others, I didn’t have the luxury of being a kid for very long. 

My life when I was growing up was a constant move from one crisis to another. From a young age, I knew about bounced checks, about vehicles being reposted, and about possibly losing our house. My father never had any filter in front of his children when he talked about these things. In fact, looking back on it now, it seems like he relished in sharing his worries with those he should be protecting. 

A few times a week, my father would go into a fit of despair. He would scream and cry and go through all the bad things that were happening in his life. Now most of these things were of his own doing. If you spend all your money building a home music recording studio and then don’t have any money left to pay the mortgage, well, that’s on you. And that’s the kind of thing my father was doing. All the time. Many times it was financial but other times it was problems he had with his church or many of his various businesses. 

These episodes would usually start with him coming home and going to bed. There, he would start to talk to my mother about all the terrible things that were happening to him and of course never take any blame for it. My mother would try to talk to him and cheer him up, and my father would go back and forth between saying he would kill himself to thinking things would be okay. He would continue these fits of emotional upheaval all through the night until the early morning. 

You may wonder, how do I know this? Well, most of the time I was there. My father would call my older brother and I into his bedroom. There he would be lying in his bed screaming and crying, surrounded by tissue boxes and my mother sitting on the bed next to him. It was our job, as it was our mother’s, to make him feel better. We would have to try and convince him that things weren’t so bad. That none of this was his fault. That it all was a bunch of circumstances beyond his control and that it was unfair. That he was a good man that deserved better. That we would get through this because God entrusted him to be a prophet. 

The first time I was called into his room for this, I was about 8 years old. My mother, by older brother, and I would continue trying to build up my father’s ego all night long. I remember so many times being so exhausted and just saying things I knew my father would want to hear because I just wanted to go to bed. I didn’t believe any of it. I knew my brother didn’t and I don’t think my mother did either. We all just wanted to escape this madness because we knew it would come again in a day or two. 

From these psychotherapy sessions that I partook in as an 8 year old to try and make my father feel better, I learned all about the terrible things that could soon befall our family. We could lose the house. We could be homeless. The church could turn on my father. One or more businesses would fail. We would lose our source of income. People would not respect my father because of these things that could happen, and this was one of his worst fears. Above all, he wanted to be respected and looked up to and have others think he was the smartest and most pious prophet around. 

When I first got called into his room in those early days, being only 8 years old, I believed the things I was told and I think there were times I genuinely tried to help my father. But as I got older and the sessions got more frequent, I knew something was wrong, but I just couldn’t quite place it. 

I remember thinking, how could one person be so unlucky for all of these bad things to happen to him? 

It took a while for me to realize that it was he who did those things to himself, and all the three of us were there for was to prop up his ego and make him feel better. It was something completely selfish on his part, and something that my brother and I should never have been involved in. 

We should not have had the weight of his problems - and thus our family’s problems - on our shoulders. We should have been able to have been kids, without caring about the disasters around the corner because of my father’s mistakes, even if these disasters would come and affect us. We should have been shielded and protected. We were so young and those many days in which we sat in his room for hours and hours trying to cheer him up through his fake tears took away the innocence of childhood. 

These experiences have shaped me how I am as a parent, and I do think in a good way. Although they were tough to go through and weighed on me intensely for years from when I was small, I know that no matter what, I will always protect my son and let him be a kid as long as possible. It’s a fleeting time in a person’s life and it should be as carefree as possible. I know so man people don’t have this luxury, and have had it worse than myself. I can’t control the childhoods of millions of kids around the world. What I can control, is the the childhood I am giving to my son, and I will always be there for him and never impose any responsibilities on him that he shouldn’t have to deal with. 

I guess that is one thing I’m thankful for about the way I grew up. I learned a lot about what not to do.