I’ve been lurking on a right wing website my father contributes to and comments on. I’m starting to think it’s his only winter time hobby he’s on it so much. Reading some of his comments, most of which are political in nature, but some of which are about family, has led me to re-evaluate some things.
A couple of comments in particular have stayed with me. One from yesterday saying how I’d been lost to the Seattle milieu (his wording) and another a month or so ago about how, because I’m self-sufficient, my step-mother and step-siblings dislike me and think I’m a stuck up bitch. The last one hurt (not the stuck up bitch part). I happen to know my step-sister doesn’t hate me. My step-brothers just don’t think about me which is fine. I can see my step-mother disliking me and thinking I’m a stuck up bitch. We had a bit of a row a little more than a year ago and have barely spoken since. I’m still miffed and apparently their phone doesn’t dial out to where I live.
As far as my being lost to the Seattle milieu.. he’s speaking politically. Or maybe he means more than that –I don’t know. I know that I was raised a democrat and somewhere along the way he decided all democrats are evil elitist criminals. I don’t mean just raised a democrat, I mean we worked on political campaigns to the point where I really can’t stomach the thought of working on them now. Jimmy Carter (I was four-ish), Mike Gravel’s senate re-election bid (yes, that Mike Gravel), Bill Sheffield gubernatorial bid, and others.
I was also raised with the notion that I had a Choice about my body, that I could be anything I wanted to be, that my actions can and do affect other people so I should think before I act and speak. I was taught to work hard and make my own way, That everyone deserves a good education and access to good schools, colleges and jobs, etc. Everyone. Even a skinny white guy who grew up on a farm in the south or a girl who grew up in a trailer park in east Anchorage.
Now it seems like the person who taught me those values and lessons thinks that people who want those things and who try for those things are looking for handouts or got into that good school or into their job through Affirmative Action. It seems that the person who honestly did work hard in his career to attain his position before he retired.. that since he made it … anyone else having a chance no longer matters. Aliens (or an ugly, bitter divorce) turned him into an angry, bitter man.
Aside from all that, him saying that I’ve been lost to the Seattle milieu is actually rather freeing. I will never meet his expectations politically. Since he only likes talking politics (or the Civil War) we have very little to talk about. Since I’ve never felt like I have EVER lived up to his expectations I feel much freer. Like a burden has lifted and I no longer need to try to meet those unattainable expectations. Yes it did take me until I was 2 1/2 years shy of 40 to figure this out, but if you spend any time with my father you figure out quickly that he’s a force to be reckoned with. Try being raised by him.
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