The Deleted Logic Blog

Revisited...

An interesting weekend this has been.

I spent a lot of time with the girls... I took them up to Big Bear with me. There's no snow yet, but there are plenty of large pine-cones to pick and the lake is always beautiful. They enjoyed themselves and I was glad to have them with me.

We stopped by my Mom's house and picked up a few things that night as well. My oldest daughter began asking questions about the house I grew up in. She's five years old, but she's brilliant and inquisitive. After a while, I found myself explaining how bad a childhood I had (As lightly as I could do it and with as little graphic detail as possible). She looked at me funny and I could tell that she found it hard to take that I was beaten up and verbally abused a lot. "Haven't you ever noticed how grumpy I am?", I asked her. She shook her head in a negative fashion and I suppose it's because she's seen people even grumpier than me. I'm also a lot more fun when I'm with them anyway.

So I ended up continuing to explain things... "... and so I became really angry. I was mad all the time. I'm not so mad anymore but it wasn't easy to stop."

I don't exactly remember how, but the conversation easily turned into the childhood understanding of "Good-Guys" and "Bad-Guys".
"A lot of people think I'm a Bad-Guy."
Both children look at me skeptically. The four-year-old pats me on the hand and says, "You're not a 'Bad-Guy'... You're my Daddy!"
I did my best to keep my eyes from watering in front of them after that. Angelina still looked unconvinced, so I went on:
"I wear all black... Do you know why?" "Because it goes with anything?", replies the oldest. Chuckling, I explained further, "That and it keeps people from bothering me. It makes them think I'm dangerous... It makes them afraid to mess with me."
"I also don't follow the rules that much and I don't do what everyone else thinks I should... And some people think that's bad too." 
The conversation about doing what other people want you to is one I'm sure she's had with her Mother.

She started to get it. After that, she was even trying to be extra nice to me. I don't want them to experience the kind of pain I went through, but I will explain myself properly to them. None of this, "You'll understand when you're older." crap. I've noticed that if I take time and ask questions about what she believes she already understands, it's easier to explain some of the more complicated aspects of life.

I really don't care what the rest of the world thinks of me.
They can call me "creepy" , "evil" and pretty much anything else they want. As long as my children (whether they understand me completely or not) know who and what I am, the rest of the world can continue on it's path to hell.