Determined To Succeed

Day eleven.

Yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with a friend of mine, Mike (not the same Mike about whom I’ve talked before, but a different one who lives closer) about who my male role models were in life and I really had to think about that one. Instantly, my mind jumped back to my father, Ivory, who I can only remember in bits and pieces because I was so young but who made a lasting impression on me because he left. This man, who my mother loved until the day she died, took the opportunity to leave one day after he and my mom had an argument (I was about eight at the time) and he never called, wrote or came back again. This left me with a huge gap in my world. I thought I was O.K. not having a father growing up, and I was. My mom did an amazing job raising me with what she/we had, but my father set me on a course in my life which I have only come to recently realize. He was the first (and best) teacher of what it was like to live without honor.

The concept of honor. The more Mike and I talked the more we shared how certain pop culture figures became surrogate fathers and male role models for us. I felt so stupid as we sat there and talked because the concept of a virtual father seemed wrong, but it was very, very true. His questions made me realize that I didn’t have one father but a collage of fathers over the years, men on TV and in film who sometimes of questionable moral fiber but who ultimately did good in the end. Everyone from Rick in “Casablanca,” who left his politics at the door of his bar and allowed Nazis and the French, alike, to drink in his place – that is until Ilsa comes back and gets involved. When that happens he knows he can no longer be apathetic to what’s going on in the world. He must make a choice and chooses the side of good. Han Solo is another one who does almost the same exact thing. He doesn’t want to get involved but realizes through his burgeoning friendships with Luke and Leia how important it is to be involved, engaged and good.

But the last “Star Wars” reference really got to me the most. While Mike chose Obi-Wan Kenobi as his role model I chose Darth Vader. Fuck! How appropriate. Mike, an honorable, decent and great family man chose the man in the film who becomes Luke’s mentor, friend and ally against evil while I choose, especially when we include the newer (albeit shittier) films, the character who lets his greed, ambition, selfishness and emotions get the best of him – literally becoming disfigured and imprisoned in a suit of pain as a result.

As we continued to talk I kept thinking about this. I felt raw from the fact that my father, who was only my dad three times in my entire life, taught me to run like a coward. He taught me to not stand up and face up to responsibility. He taught me to not take care of myself. He taught me it was O.K. to not be present and eventually leave. And all of this stayed with me more than I could have possibly ever imagined.

Over the years I recognized right from wrong. More to the point I felt the difference, kind of like in the movies when you are just waiting for the bully to get his or hers from the good guy, the David to their Goliath. But what was ingrained in me was this base and core of it being O.K. to do what he did because he was my father and my mother loved him. I even admit how much I wanted to turn and run and fly someplace far away when the shit hit the fan recently. I fought my every instinct to do that for three reasons:

• I knew I couldn’t and shouldn’t run away from my problems
• I had to make them right somehow with the people I wronged
• I wanted to be my mother’s son and a good man again

A very wise honorable person once said to me something I will never forget: “You can’t change the past and the choices you’ve made, but you can always be remembered for how you deal with those choices moving forward.” That is the truth. In facing up to the things I’ve done in my life I not only realize how far I sank to inevitably reach rock bottom but that it is up to me to make things right and set things straight.

One day when I was a boy my mom and I were in the A&P grocery store and I pocketed a giant balloon without paying. When my mom found out she made me go back to the store and not just put it back on the shelf but tell someone what I did and apologize. As I walked back into the store I felt for sure I would spend the rest of my life behind bars but when I told the store worker they smiled, took the balloon and said thank you for being honest. Over the years I lost sight of that lesson, a lesson taught to me by the woman who had to raise a man after her man left her at the first chance he got. In that moment she taught me honor, and I should have kept that with me instead of pissing it and precious time away with lies and dishonorable things.

But I am here now and I am present, and I am going through a mental process of unpacking and purging – kind of like you’d do if moving. What am I purging? I am purging the behaviors I’ve displayed and it’s about time, too. No longer can I live my life acting and acting out the way I did all the while never forgetting what I’ve doneand letting that be my inspiration to never do it again. And what am I unpacking? I am unpacking the memories of that balloon and the other good and decent things my mom and others have taught me over the years. That is what will fill my brain so that maybe, one day, I can truly replace the bad I’ve done with acts (like helping others to lose weight and my continuing my own weight loss) that I will be proud to say are overflowing with honesty and, most of all, honor.