I just spent the last hour typing up a post to put in !squaredcircle@lemmy.zip about how I observed a beautiful moment with a father and his 3 year old son.
The son was a fan of a wrestler named L.A. Knight. And he was set to make his grand entrance, and have his match, live in front of 57k people.
We were in the stadium, in line for merchandise. The line was really long. So the dad realized they would miss L.A Knight’s match.
Logically the smart thing to do is bring your son back to your seats. Give up your place in line, and try later. Or evdn online later.
Instead, this dad, who was clearly also a fan of L.A Knight, and wanted to see him asked his son: “Do you want to stay in line? Or go see L.A Knight?”
And the kid picked staying in line. The dad confirmed with him “If you stay in line, you’ll miss L.A Knight in the ring. He’s coming out now.”
And the kid chose to stay in line to get L.A Knight merch.
And the whole moment was beautiful to me. The idea of a dad respecting his kids opinion is foreign to me.
I grew up with my dad telling me to shut up and do it his way. Always his way. Still to this day, it’s always his way. My mom left him because he was controlling. My sisters (who are not his kids, but he helped raise them) don’t talk to him because of how he treated them.
I’m 40, and now he’s elderly, and I barely talk to him. Sometimes I feel guilty until moments like this. Where I’m reminded that still to this day I don’t speak up when I should. I don’t ask for help when I need it. I just suffer in silence, just as I always do.
There have even been times in the past where calling 911 for someone else having an emergancy was the right thing to do. Hearing gunshots on your street. Seeing a woman hanging out of a car screaming for help. But not calling 911, because nobody wants to hear what I have to say. Nobody wants to hear from me.
And at Summerslam, I see this kid saying he wants to stay in line. And the dad just confirms, and explains the consequences that he’ll miss L.A Knight, but the kid insisted on staying in line. Despite it not being the smart choice. It was the “wrong” choice. If I were in that position, my dad would have ended it with zero input on my end. But here this dad was respecting his sons choice. His three year old son.
And as I typed to a wrestling community what I intended to be a beautiful story, I realized it’s only beautiful to me because of my own repressed perspective. Everybody else just would hear a story about a normal dad doing normal dad things. Loving his son. Respecting his son.
And nobody would get why that would make me cry.
So I deleted the story before I posted it, and began to realize that even though I’m 40, and should be past all this, it still hurts, and I’m a deeply broken person.
And now I’m wondering, has anyone else had these moments where they realize that they’ve just been repressing pain for 30 years to the point where a normal loving relationship can cause jealousy, but also an intense heartwarming moment?
I don’t know how to describe it. That moment was just 10 minutes out of this kids life that he’ll not remember. The dad won’t deem it important, so he won’t remember this by now. It was a meaningless moment that in a loving relationship happens everyday. But to me, the idea of a dad respecting his son making a “wrong decision” had me supressing anger, sadness, and heartwarming joy, but also knowing how weird I was for that. And so I shut up, and repressed it. Only in trying to retell a heartwarming story did I realize it was coming across as bitter and jealous, and thats when I realized thats MY issue. And I don’t know where to go from here.
Have you ever had a moment like this?
You aren’t broken. It sounds like a broken man raised you.
I grew up without a father; no positive male influence. It took me a long time to reach a point where I could accept it wasn’t me that was broken, it was the negative thought cycle I was habitually stuck in.
Taking a step back and seeing the good in the world, the small moments, for what they are (which I think you are doing?) Rather than viewing positive moments as a reflection of my own negativity, I am learning to view these positive moments as positive. Realisations of what I didn’t have but knowing I am living my life better than the ones that came before me.
A deeply personal anecdote - I am an alcoholic. I’ve been in AA for a while now, and have been sober for that time. I’ve grown and moved on from needing alcohol to feel normal.
My fathers side of the family, including him when he was alive, are unrepentant alcoholics. I don’t feel bitter or hateful anymore - instead I see it as being the only one in that family tree to actually break out of that cycle.
I have needed to spend a lot of time in therapy to help me reach this point.
Best of luck - you aren’t broken. just hurt
So I deleted the story before I posted it, and began to realize that even though I’m 40, and should be past all this, it still hurts, and I’m a deeply broken person.
The thing about trauma (and it likely is trauma) is that it often just doesn’t go away on its own and you need to do work on it. So, why should you be over it?
Should is a loaded word as it pretty much always comes from what you learned as a child. You should do that. You should be like this.
That “should” probably comes from your father when he told you how you should be as a child.
It sounds like you aren’t over it now, but that’s ok. It’s ok not to be over stuff that happened in childhood. But the important thing to understand is that you can get over it with work. Being aware of that is the first step on that road.
A few weeks ago, a mom was at the hardware store with her young son – he was about five years old.
For some reason, we crossed paths a few times, And each time she was talking with her son about the things they were buying in the projects that they were buying them for. But what Caught my attention first was he asked her ‘What if we can’t do it?’ and she responded with ‘Well then we learned how because we can figure it out.’
This woman was endlessly, encouraging towards her son, and it was clear that she was setting him up to have an attitude of feeling like he was capable of tackling things in life. Which is something that I didn’t get us a kid - I was often told that I couldn’t do things or the things were beyond my capability and that if my mom didn’t know how to do something that it was basically impossible for me to figure out how to do it as well.I was so impressed by their interaction, that when I saw her later while I was checking out, I actually said something to her and after she figured out I wasn’t trying to pick her up, she took a moment and like… just looked satisfied. I was happy with the interaction.
Beyond the fact that I mostly grew up without a father and my mother was very self focused to the point that it was pretty detrimental to me, I also grew up with undiagnosed ADHD that I only learned about in my early 40s. I am constantly discovering ways that I feel broken in the world, so you are not alone.
What a lovely post. Thank you for sharing it.
I’m 60 years old, my father passed many years ago. I have still not come to grips with all the complexities of our relationship. My wife knows that if we ever see a film or TV show where a parent, but particularly a father shows any form of approval for something their son did, I will turn into a blubbering mess.
That said, more rational me knows that there were many ways in which my father was a good dad, if am willing to take the time to look for them.
I have three sons and a daughter, my greatest hope in life is that they won’t have the same issues with me as a father that I did with my own dad.
Thanks again for this amazing story about how even small things we do can have a great impact, and not necessarily on those we expect them to.
