The People Behind My Eyes

We Teach Our Children To Love-Sunday, May 21, 2006 - 12:09 PM

I met a lady that needed care for her dog during a vacation. She dropped the dog off with his dog house and stayed 3 hours telling me how much she loved this dog. She told me the people that cared for him before were abusive to him that they starved him and beat him. So why did they leave him there that long? I don’t know. So, it turns out that she and her fiancé are really just crazy people. In the first day of knowing her and in the first contact with her she told me the following things: her income level, her fiancé’s income level, what kind of medication she’s on, her medical conditions, about her nervous breakdown, about 5 miscarriages, about her abusive father and a bunch of other personal information. The next time I talked to her she told me more about her abusive father and how her fiancé abuses her verbally. He was on the phone in the background yelling at her. She told me about how violent he gets with other people but that she can’t live without him and she loves him so very much.

She cried twice in two conversations, always over the dog. She would say, “I just love that dog so much, can you tell?” She said she use to drive by the home of the people that use to care for him and then proceeded to tell me all about their life as she viewed it from her car. Then she started crying again and said, “I just love this dog so much, can you tell?” I said, No, I think you’re obsessed with this dog. I also think you need to come and get him because I don’t want to bring your drama to my home.” So then her fiancé started going off in the background because she broke down yet again. She was like, this woman is afraid of me Dennis. Dennis started yelling, “She needs to be afraid of me.” I said, you guys need to come and get this dog. Long story short, the next day (today) she called me and said that she and her fiancé fought all night long ABOUT ME and that they broke up and that she couldn’t come and get the dog. I said, yes you can. She was silent. I said you have until noon to get the dog. She came at 11:22 am and picked up Shadow. Of course she apologized all over the place and told me how he and she broke up and that it’s over between them and things could never be fixed, blah, blah, blah. These people are crazy. My point is though, why does she feel this type of love is right and something that she wants in her life?

Why did she go from guy to guy, drunk to drunk, homeless and in abusive relationships? Who taught her that was okay to do? I can’t answer that question but I do know that in general the people who raised us teach us how to love.

My neighbor says she married her father. She had her kids one month apart from the age her mother had her and her sister. She didn’t finish high school and her husband quit school in the 8^th grade. They’re relationship is loud and physically violent all the time. She married her father. This is what her mother showed her, its how she learned to love. I asked her if she realized that she was teaching her daughter this and she said, I can only hope that she doesn’t marry anyone like her own father. But again, if she only knows one kind of love that is the way she will express it. We do what we see not what we are told.

The other day in the restroom at Wal-Mart I overheard a woman on the phone talking to her new boyfriend as she sat in the stall next to me. She told him that she was upset because he raped her last night and that he forced her to do things she didn’t want to do. Then she began telling him to stop apologizing because it wasn’t his fault. She said that she loved him and that she missed him and that they’d work it out when she got home. She nearly apologized for him raping her. Why did she feel that it was okay to stay with a person that raped her, that broke boundaries and violated her? Who taught her that it was okay to be treated this way? Who hurt her when she was little and who brushed it under a rug and left her to make sense of it on her own? If in fact she was hurt, who failed to tell her that the original person that hurt her was dead wrong? And if she was hurt clearly she hasn’t had any help or she wouldn’t have made excuses for him or nearly apologized for him “having to” rape her. Who taught her that this is okay?

As for my mother, she taught me that love is a dangerous thing. You have to work for it in ways that no one should ever work for it. She taught me that love hurts but now I know that she taught me a terrible lie. Love does not have to hurt. Love should not make you cry; punch you in the face verbally or physically. It should not bring you to your knees and leave you powerless and void of self respect. I know that now, but I didn’t practice this idea because it took me 3 times before I actually left my abusive husband for good. He was not like my father but I didn’t respect myself enough to stay away from my husband. Why? I'd been hit all my life what was the difference if I had a ring on my finger? I didn’t think I deserved it but I certainly didn’t think I was above it.

If we love with balance we teach our children to marry someone that will love them without violence and chaos. If we live in a violent situation with our children then we teach them that kind of love. What we show them is what they do. I’ve heard too many times, “I married my father.” Or “I married my mother.” We teach our kids how to love, either functionally or dysfunctionaly.

The good thing with this family and their little dog is that she is barren. There will be no children for her to mislead. I am so happy she can not reproduce ‘cause those would be some messed up kids. These people are really just crazy and I will not be caring for their little dog. I also hope that she gets some help for her untreated Borderline Personality Disorder and other psychiatric difficulties that are unknown to me. Clearly, she needs some help. Either way, she’s got some lessons to learn about self worth and purpose.

Austin’s August