Emotional Worldview
It’s difficult to know where to start in writing these entries. There’s so much going on inside my head and it’s all interwoven. The problems that exist are not insular, they are deeply connected with other problems/happenings in my life. I’ve thought a lot about how I want to communicate these thought processes — not just for you the reader, but for me, in order to best archive them and make sense of them later on.
That all having been said, I’ve decided that the best way to start these off is to begin to state and develop my “emotional worldview”. Sort of a weird term, I know, but hear me out. How do you deal with people who are out of touch? Maybe they have mental illness, maybe they’re just nasty to you, etc. Do you give them a pass? Do you hold them accountable? Is it one size fits all or do you take mitigating factors, such as mental illness, into account? What is the driving force behind this decision? Is it the efficacy of your response? Is it motivated entirely by emotion or morality?
For a long time, I was used to giving my father and siblings passes for their actions. Often told that they were depressed or struggling and couldn’t help themselves due to their mental illness, I resigned that I should just accept their poor behavior. Sometimes, I was even blamed for it. The Christmas of 2019 was one of those instances.
Around 2006, my parents attended a tacky-themed Christmas party. Everyone brought tacky white elephant gifts; my parents came home with an Elvis Christmas tree ornament that played Blue Christmas whenever you pushed a button on the back.
My younger brother always hated this ornament. I’m not sure why, and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure he knows either. We’d always push the button to play the music and piss him off, normal sibling stuff. After eating dinner on Christmas of 2019, we all went to relax in the living room. I pushed the button on the ornament, admittedly trying to annoy my brother. We all joked about it, until he blew up, called everyone in the room a cunt, and stormed upstairs. 0 to 100 real quick. Somehow, I was in the wrong and got yelled at by my mom for pushing the button. The shithead kid who called everyone a cunt was just “struggling a bit and needed some space” and I was the one who ruined Christmas. What?
This brings me to my first major point in establishing my emotional worldview: The way you treat others is a choice. You may have a shitty day at work, if you come home and make everyone else’s day shitty, you’re a shithead. You may hate the Elvis ornament. If you call everyone a cunt on Christmas over it, you yourself are, in fact, the cunt. It doesn’t matter what is going on in your head. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re bipolar or a narcissist or have borderline personality disorder — it’s always a choice. That’s not to say you can instantly cure mental illness (or even cure it at all), but allowing it to affect the way you treat others is unacceptable.
That’s not to say people don’t make mistakes. I have definitely said many things I regret. Everyone has, it’s part of being human. This brings me to my second major point: A sincere apology will be shown via a change in behavior in addition to a communicated apology. Ultimately, if one recognizes their actions as unacceptable, they will change their actions. If they don’t care, they will apologize in order to band-aid the situation and repeat their behavior later on. I don’t remember if my brother apologized for calling everyone a cunt on Christmas, but honestly, I don’t care. This past Christmas (2021) he told everyone at the table “Fuck you” because we asked him to not speak so loudly. He apologized to me for that, but he may as well not have. He has demonstrated that he is willing to repeat specific unacceptable behavior and thus his apology was already insincere before it left his lips.
So, what needs to happen in order for people to mean their apologies? Point number 3: People must be held to account for their transgressions. This doesn’t have to be anything brutal. It might be not letting your child have candy if they don’t eat their dinner. It might be letting them know that they fucked up by ruining Christmas an effective second time in a row and that you’re really pissed off about it. It certainly doesn’t mean yelling at the person who pressed the button on the Elvis ornament. When my brother apologized, he looked absolutely flabbergasted that I didn’t just accept it outright and move on. I let him know he ruined Christmas for the second time and that I was really pissed off. He looked shocked because he was so used to getting away with his horseshit behavior — he was never held to account.
Many of these things are black and white for me. Was the correct choice made? If not, was there an apology? Was it sincere i.e., did the person not repeat their action? And were they held to account? When these questions are examined pertaining to actions my dad has taken, the answers are always the same. The correct choice was not made. There was an apology, but no, it wasn’t sincere: nothing changed. He was not held to account in any way.
The day after the “Fuck you” Christmas incident, my then-girlfriend (now fiancée) and I left to go home. When I got home, I received some unpleasant news — my dad had gotten into a verbal confrontation with my brother and had decided to throw a kitchen stool at the floor out of anger. The cause of the altercation is outside the scope of this particular blog post, but at the end, my dad stormed out of the kitchen yelling that the rest of my family “didn’t know how good they have it” and “things are gonna change around here”.
My dad made the choice to throw the stool. This is the third time he has done this (throw things out of anger) that I can remember. Apparently, there have been others. Additionally, he only apologized to my mom, and that was after she confronted him about it.
He chose to act like a 5-year-old. Additionally, his apology was insincere. It’s up to everyone else to hold him accountable. I’ve resolved to never speak to him again. I am one ruined Christmas dinner from making the same judgement call with my brother. Things are, in fact, gonna change around here. My dad, in fact, didn’t know how good he had it.
I know it may sound impulsive or excessive to cut my dad off after this altercation, but there’s more shit than I can remember from beforehand and even some shit from after that lead me to this decision. I will eventually have a post that explains it in totality, but know that my decision was not rushed and my resolve is infinite.
He will not attend my wedding. He will not meet my children (if we have any). He will spend the rest of his life wondering why I am so mad at him, devoid of the empathy necessary to answer that question for himself, or accept the answer if it’s given to him. I hope he yearns every day for me to call him. I hope he looks in the mirror and wonders how he fucked up so bad. I hope he agonizes every day for my love in the same way that I agonized for his.
Too fucking little, too fucking late.
