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A Critical Man
My father always said that he did not expect us (the children) to be perfect, but he we might as well should have been perfect with all the criticisms he gave us. I always felt that I could do nothing right, and nothing as good as he could do it. He was quick to point out how much better he would be at things than we [the children] would be, and I could never understand the point of even mentioning it to us. He was an adult, after all. It might be obvious that he would be better at something than us. Yet, it was a problem when we showed him up. He did not like that at all.
More than the rest of my siblings, I felt that my dad always singled me out. There were times that I literally felt that he did not even like me as a person. He was quick to teach me things, but if I attempted a different way other than the way he taught me, he constantly criticized me. It was his way or the highway, and if I dared to do something different, he would accuse me of trying to be better than him or others when that was not my intention at all. I just had different ways of approaching things, and my approach was always something he never approved of even when it was obvious that my approach actually worked for me.
Handwriting Critique
I suffered through school for more reasons that one, but my dad’s help was completely unwanted because his idea of critiquing me on my work was to yell his way through it as I did the work. When I learned to write in cursive, he had me practice everyday. It was tortuous because he literally expected my handwriting to be just like his handwriting. He would literally accuse me of purposefully trying to write differently when my handwriting was automatically going to be different just because we are different. It was crazy!
When I finally got my cursive writing down to a semblance of perfection in his eyes, suddenly my handwriting was too small. He would accuse me of writing tiny on purpose so that he could not see what I wrote. As much as I tried to explain, it pained me to even write. He did not get it. I suffered from some type of condition that I do not even know if there is a name for, but I was extremely sensitive to the sound of lead rubbing the surface of paper. The more I practiced writing in cursive with pencils, the more debilitating the sound of pencil touching paper became for me.
The sound of pencil lead on paper was so annoying to me that I would literally squirm within myself and grimace in pain. My gums literally ached each time I heard pencil lead rub against paper. This was not a problem when I practiced writing with ink pens. It was only a problem when I wrote with a pencil. I would literally have to control the movements of my hand as I wrote so that I would write in a way that was steady and forced because I simply could not bare the sound of the pencil lead on paper. To this day, I write with a bold pen. If I must use a pencil, the lead must be thick and smooth, and the paper must be strong and sturdy. My dad thought that I exaggerated for show, but it was a real thing for me.
So, I wrote tiny because I felt intense irritation within my gums when I wrote with a pencil. As I said before, the sound of lead rubbing against the surface of paper was hard for me to deal with then. I did not write tiny to purposely annoy my dad as he thought. In fact, I never understood why the size of my handwriting had to be about him anyway. It was my handwriting and the practice of it was forming my written identity. My written identity was never going to be the same as his anyway. So I just never understood why my handwriting bothered him so much back then. It was one of many things that he had to criticize me about.
Unacceptable
The other thing that bothered me is the fact that I just think I did things that grated my dad’s nerves. Sometimes he behaved as if he could not stand the sight of me. He literally complained about everything that I did and criticized my every move. He criticized the way I dressed, the way I wore my hair, the way I walked, the way I talked, and even the way I ate my food. I found myself turning into an angry kid every time I was in his presence. He seemingly provoked my need to stand against him even if that was not in my heart to do. I would do so anyway just because he aggravated me so with his constant criticism of me.
When it came to my friends, my dad regarded them as better than everything compared to me even when they were clearly not better than me at a lot of things. In his eyes, I felt that I never measured up even though these were also the same friends he thought meant me no good. Frankly, he did not seem to like me having friendships and always found ways to sabotage my friendships by embarrassing me in front of them, exposing me and my secrets, and keeping me from being around them by always finding things for me to do so that if a friend invited me somewhere, I would not have been able to have gone. My dad wanted me to be friends with people of substance and only seemed to approve of my friendships once I attended college. Otherwise, my dad was very critical of my friendships.
Praise
When I did something that would garner praise from others, he would watch me for my reaction. If I smiled or seemingly took pride in the praise given to me, then he would find something he could critique so that the one giving me the praises would hear him nitpick and take me down a few notches. If I did not react to the praise given to me from others, then he would beam and praise me in front of others. He would speak incredibly well of me. However, he could also shame and embarrass me in front of others as well – specifically when it appeared as if he did not want me to become to haughty or prideful.
For the most part, I felt I could not do much of anything right without his proper guidance even if I knew a better way to do something. To be honest, I secretly resented being treated as if I was an unintelligent person having to depend on my dad’s every word. Yes, he knew a lot. He was an adult. Yet, he did not know everything, and because I knew he did not know everything and because he knew that I knew that he did not know everything, he always seemed to act like he needed to show me that I had a place, and he surely wanted to keep me in it. It was a place where I was debased and lower than him.
Overall, my dad’s criticisms seemed to have a greater impact upon me compared to my mother’s criticisms of me. When my dad criticized me, his words cut like a knife as if done purposefully out of some lack in his own life. I often felt what I could not accurately describe when I was younger that he was making up for his own inadequacies. I clearly saw this in later years. I clearly saw his vulnerabilities and insecurities. I realized that there was a component involved in how my dad treated me, and it really had very little to do with me, but I did not realize this when I was a kid. All I knew was that I could never do anything that pleased my dad. He seemed to be perpetually disappointed with me, but when he was proud of me, my heart was filled with happiness.
Stay tuned for more to this story.
My Voice Unchained 