Daddy Dearest
Posted by:
richardmgreen
()
Date: May 04, 2008 12:56AM
Friday, May 02, 2008
As long time readers of this board know, I have been having a very hard time maintaining my balance over the years. I was involved in Shoresh Yishai, and Lubavitch and it may seem strange but I have bounced from one bad deal after the other.
The first bad and controlling relationship I had was with my father and his physical and mental abuse of me. I actually got the opinion of 2 lawyers about what to do about it and that will be discussed later on.
Now, you might ask what was done as leveling a child abuse charge is pretty heavy. I am not talking about normal corporal punishment like spanking. My father used to stick pins and needles in my butt to “prove that I am not tough.” He also used to wrench my hands behind my back for the same reason. In addition, he used to form my hands in fists (all of this happened when I was very young) and tell me, “If you want to fight something, go fight yourself.”
He seemed to think that he had the God given right to treat me just as he pleased and he was answerable to nobody. Since he was economically viable and I was just a little boy, he got away with all of this at least up to now.
I actually don’t know where my father got the idea that he could always to this. I know he thought that he had “parental rights” but the Torah, the New Testament and every major religion will tell you that parents have limitations as to what they can do to children. He totally overstepped his boundaries.
I had a very good memory when I was younger. My father used to always try to shake my confidence and he kept telling me to “look it up” when I would explain something to him. He would also ask me, “Are you sure?” Essentially this relationship was a really bad one and I am still recovering from it.
Later on, he wanted to still hit me when I was in my early teens. I got fed up with all of this (but I didn’t relay all the information above) and I went to the local fire department where I was living on LI, NY and told them I needed help.
The fire department told me that I may think that I could do no wrong and they hooked me up with Social Services and they got involved. If they knew about the above incidents they may have taken me from my parents but I didn’t tell them about all the problems. The caseworker told my father that if I were still under the age of puberty, then he would say, “OK, go ahead and hit him. But now that he is a young adult, it is [inappropriate].”
Looking for salvation, I got involved in religion and that led to my Hebrew School days and later on Ben (late Shoresh) Yishai. It was a very vicious cycle. Only recently have I come to higher ground. And Chabad was later on.
The day before my 18th birthday, my father and my mother kicked and punched me down to the floor in the kitchen of the house we lived in. I ran out of the door and went to a house of fellow Ben Yishai members. My father chased after me in his car and told me to get in the car. I just kept going and refused to put myself back in his hands.
I think that I didn’t actually do anything to trigger it. It seems to me that my father simply didn’t want to fund his church going son anymore.
Years later, I was at Long Island University and was a finance major. I had the highest average in the school out of the guys but I was cracking under the strain. My father kept telling me (telegraphing it to me actually) that he was going to mess me up. He kept saying, “Senator Eagleton, I am behind you 1000 percent, 800 percent, …” The senator was a candidate on Walter Mondale’s Presidential ticket. He had psychiatric problems and as such was dumped. My father had his own problems though. Do you see what I am driving at here?
After I finished my junior year at LIU, my father went to Israel to visit his grandson for the first time and he took a 2-week long vacation. His bosses were incensed and after 25 years on the job they fired him.
My father was a poor example. He kept fighting with his bosses for 10 years before they finally told him goodbye.
He didn’t look for work in the States but moved the whole family to Israel. I went in December of ’84. My undergraduate work was finished in Empire State College’s Israel program and when I was looking for a job in finance once the interviewer asked me, “If you are so good, why did you go to a college like that?” I couldn’t win.
Well, I went to graduate school in Israel through an overseas program that Boston University did at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Some time after I finished the degree, my father grabbed me, slammed me up against the brick wall in our apartment in Israel and I got completely messed up. I lost my ability to think straight and my memory was impaired. I have never recovered.
Later on, I was employed at AT&T. When they fired me, my parents had me over for the weekend. After my father drove me home, he kept talking about his business. When I lost my concentration, he started yelling at me and told me, “I am going to take your dead useless body and throw it in a garbage pail!” This is a father.
Then I was diagnosed with a mental illness. I went to a homeless shelter for a while and then got SSDI benefits. I visited him for about 2 years.
The Division of Vocational Rehabilitation sent me to school for computerized accounting but when I couldn’t find work, my father started abusing me again and I was told to stop going over to his apartment. At this juncture, I haven’t seen my mother or father for almost 10 years. I don’t even know if they are still where they were living years ago and if they are alive and in doors. I think they will just get what they deserve.
I spoke to 2 lawyers over this. One told me that I could win a lawsuit and get about 5K dollars but the second lawyer told me that parents often get away with murder too. The second lawyer ctied the case of Marvin Gaye and how he was murdered by his father and the father got very little time jail. I think the system is terrible and needs to be reformed.
Rabbi Shea Hecht always had an attitude against my father. He always told me that my father’s God is a “little but the dollar bill.” It seems to me that he thought as long as he had the money to support me, I was his captive and he often told me that I am “his slave.”
The problem is that knowing Hecht, he thinks I am just a chip off the old block. And rabbi Yeshua Witt always tried to get me to say nice things about my father but he never heard the whole story. Chasidim have some strange beliefs to my way of thinking.
I will not mention the name of my father until I get clearance from the moderators of this forum. I hope you will let me vent my aggravation. I am 49 years old now and I am still looking for salvation from all of this.
What do you think? I am all ears.