Cult of None

Breakdown is, in my view, the most underrated Guns n’ Roses song ever written. From what little I’ve been able to learn about the song’s history, it was difficult to write and record. Maybe that’s why it’s only been played live twice in the entire history of the band (as of this writing).

My early teenage years were spent in the l ate 80s and early 90s. Music was a touchy subject in my house, because my father believed that only he knew what good music really was (basically anything he liked) and he also believed he was just as talented as any of the 50s and 60s stars he idolized. His musical journey is something that I’ll go in later in a longer post, but suffice it to say, I wasn’t allowed to listen to any music that didn’t meet my father’s approval. There was little that did, and while as an adult I became to appreciate some of the bands he liked, I loathed them when I was growing up.

Guns n’ Roses were a symbol of rebellion, and their songs really hit me to the core. Not all of them, but the ones that did - it was like they knew exactly what I was going through and that their words were written towards my father and the struggle I endured. There are so many lines in Estranged that encapsulated perfectly how I felt but couldn’t put into words.

It’s weird to think that GnR is classified as oldies or classic rock now. It’s amazing these guys are still touring, playing the songs of my youth three decades after they were written. I bought their albums in secret, and only listened to them at very low volume in my room or on my Walkman. 

Certain smells or weather bring back strong memories for me, as I’m sure they do for most. In November 1991, I was stuck in the cold outside painting the fence that went around our entire 8 acre property. It wasn’t the first chore or the last chore that Sunday morning. As I painted, Breakdown came on my Walkman. The rage, frustration, disappointment, angst, and wanderlust I felt was all encapsulated perfectly in this song. As I sat there in the cold November rain - literally - painting a fence for the tenth time, I thought about all I would do and see when I could escape the chains that held me.

Guns n’ Roses represented that escape. Whether it was a 10 minute escape through one of their songs or the escape that I longed for, they heard my cries and offered a way out. 

I’m sure everyone thinks the songs of their youth were the best. I like new music, but whenever I’m feeling a certain way I always gravitate to a band that got me through so much, even though they didn’t know it.

I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream and see GnR during their Not in this Lifetime tour. They weren’t the same band as I remembered, as we all age, but it was amazing to see them on stage and fulfill a dream I had when I was alone painting that damn fence.

One thing I am most grateful for in my life is the opportunity I’ve had to become a father myself. Every day, my son amazes me and I think one of the most awesome things in the world is to be a part of your children’s lives. Whenever anyone asks…

For the entire time I knew him, my father would always claim he was on the brink of something terrible. Mostly related to his health, he was a hypochondriac but yet I never recall him going to the doctor or actually taking his health seriously. He never exercised and never did anything to mitigate his unhealthy life choices. He was always looking for shortcuts - like liposuction - instead of making meaningful changes.

I don’t know think he was actually ever concerned for his health. If he was, he would have seen doctors, tried to make lifestyle changes, or done something. I don’t think a month went by when he didn’t tell me at least a few times that he would be dead soon. But this wasn’t what he really believed. It was all for sympathy. He would tell you some elaborate story, look for your empathy (which was ironic because he was not an empathetic person himself), and then ask you for something. 

Looking over old emails and letters from him from the past 20 years, it wasn’t surprising for me to see that the things he was telling me 6 months ago were the same things he was telling me 20 years ago. I won’t make it to next year! I’ll be dead in a few months!  Someday it would be true, but he was the classic person who cried wolf a million times with the only reason being for personal gain.

Over the last few years, things got worse. At one point in 2020, he claimed to have all of the following happen in a three week period:

• He was in a car accident.
• Both his kidneys were crushed and he was in end-stage kidney failure.
• He contracted the second rarest strain of E.Coli.
• He was the first person in the US to get COVID-19.
• He broke his left hand.
• He broke his right hand.
• He broke his elbow.
• He broke his leg.
• He had second degree burns on his leg.
• He stepped on glass and needed 50 stitches on his left foot.
• He could not move his neck to the left or right more than 1/16th of an inch in either direction (oddly specific and a number that always changed).
• He broke his left shoulder.
• His left foot will need to be amputated.

It was impossible to know if any of the above were true. Maybe one was true. Maybe all had a little bit of truth to them and maybe he made them all up. The thing with my father, was that he was saying these things his entire life so it was impossible to believe anything he said.

He was always on the brink of his existence.

You can see it everywhere nowadays: self-promotion. I stay away from social media as much as possible, because it seems like it is an endless feed of people only showing the good side of their life or trying to show how wonderful they are. There’s even a term for it…

One of the strongest emotions I’ll never forget from my childhood was being afraid. Through my father’s parenting style - he was one to never spare the rod and would punish us in advance for things we didn’t do yet - and the beliefs that I grew up with, I…

Control was a common theme that permeated our house and church. Every aspect of our life came down to who had control and who didn’t. From my earliest memories, I knew there wasn’t much I had control over. Getting older I thought I would have more freedom, but it never…

It had been over two months since I talked to my father. Thinking about it back then, it marked the longest I’d gone without talking to him since he was in prison.

It was refreshing and felt liberating.

Being a father myself, I hope my own son never feels that way about not talking to me. But I will never treat him the way my father treated me.

The longer I went without speaking to him, the freer I felt. My father beat into us kids - literally and figuratively - that listening to him and pleasing him was all that mattered. This led to an odd and strange sense of obligation for me. I don’t think my siblings felt the same. Maybe they did, but we all had such different experiences. Even though I knew logically all he brought me was misery, I still felt some strange feeling of obligation to my father. This meant I would continue to talk to him and have him in my life.

Shortly after I first left, it was much more than that. I was almost afraid of not receiving his approval, even though I had left his church and no longer lived in his house. It caused me to make many decisions I ended up regretting. The choices I made weren’t about what I wanted, but we’re about what I felt would make my father happy.

No, scratch that, I knew he wouldn’t be happy no matter what I did. But maybe he wouldn’t berate me and make me feel even more worthless than I felt almost every day of my childhood.

My father always taught us to think of other people first. But when he taught us this, it wasn’t because he was trying to instill in his children noble values. It was because he wanted us to think of him first and put him ahead of everything else. After all, he was a prophet and spoke to God himself. Putting our father first was therefore the same as putting God first, which was the most honorable and Christian thing to do.

Or so we were taught and led to believe.

But it was all lies. It was all to give my father control over us. And that control remained in many ways for years after I left.

I once tried talking to a therapist about my past. After hearing my story, he said that he believed deep down I still had the desire that everyone naturally has to please their parents. For most people this is fine. But for me, he said, it was causing me pain and said I should find a way to release myself from this in terms of my father.

At the time, I don’t really think I believed that was the case. Even years after leaving I was still encumbered by this lurking shadow, but I felt I freed myself from it years prior.

Yet, looking back on it, after I was able to stop speaking to my father, I realized that perhaps there still was some vestige of these feelings left deep inside that caused me to still have a relationship with someone who brought nothing good to my life and was only destructive.

It wasn’t as pronounced or harmful to my life as it once was, but it was still there, even if just a little. It’s why I still put up with the craziness that was always around my father.

As time went on, and the further my father was from me, the clearer I could see.

I'm still not completely sure how my parents found Branhasim. They were both very vague about the whole thing, but I think they were introduced to it through some friends or by a stranger at a religious event they went to. My parents were not particularly religious at this time.

One thing that always fascinated me as I grew up was my father's ability to get others to do things for him. I'm not just talking about small things, either. But we can start there.

My father never seemed to want to do even the smallest things himself. I'm not sure if it was laziness or just the fact they he had his family and a church congretation at his disposal, but whatever it was, he always would ask others to do things you or I might not even think of. For example, my father loved to spend time in his library on the first floor of our house. It was adjacent to the steps going to the second floor where all of us kids would usually hang out when he was home.

The worst thing you wanted to do was to go down the steps when my father was in his library. Why? Because he would hear someone come down the creaky steps and, as soon as he heard footsteps, ask who was there. He would go down the list from mother to my smallest sibling until someone answered. I learned later on just not to answer, but when you are young and scared of your father, you would tend to answer.

Once you do, he always seemed to have some menial task for you to do: get him some water or diet coke, even though the kitchen was a 10 second walk away; bring in more fire wood for his fire; bring him a magazine/book/newspaper; get someone else for him; rub his hands/feet/eyes (I always hated this and is why I think in adulthood I don't like getting any type of massage). The list was seemingly endless.

But these are just the small things. I remember him always asking my mother to do his dirty work for him. When I say this, I mean he would ask her to call the landlord for an extension on our rent, to call up someone at his church and ask him for money, or to meet with clients he hasn't filed cases for yet and try to give them an excuse as to why they shouldn't ask for a refund. If my mother wasn't available, he would get someone else in his congretation to do it.

He even would ask one person in our congretation to ask another church member if my father could borrow money from them or get a car loan for him, instead of asking them himself.

Maybe it was his pride combined with laziness and a fear of rejection. But when I was growing up a favorite phrase of his was "Do this for me, would you?".