Killing Off The Pretender

I was watching part of a documentary on “To Kill a Mockingbird” today. There was a scene where Oprah read a passage. It was weird. She tried to do an accent. It took away from the content, so I closed my eyes and pictured the scene.

And when I opened my eyes they were all wet. Oh, Oprah, quit making me cry, you bitch. Actually it wasn’t Oprah that got me…if it had been her making me moist (in the eyes) I think I would’ve had to get myself tested for feminism.

Instead it was Harper Lee’s words…her description of the scene where Tom is found guilty and Scout is fixated on her father Atticus’s reaction. The kid is frozen. But, snaps out of her daze with the help of the black preacher who tells her to “Stand up…your father’s passing.”

That.

Shit. Got me again. There’s something so powerful in those words. The deep respect the black community had for a man that went against the mainstream and defended a black man. Their side didn’t win…yet. But, men like Atticus laid the groundwork for change. And there was a heartfelt appreciation, almost an awe, which Reverend Sykes and the other outsiders in the community had for Atticus.

And what a moment for his little girl. Her daddy lost the case, but was true to himself. He saw the bullshit around him and actually did something about it. Scout must have been overwhelmed with pride seeing how much her dad’s work meant to Tom and the people from his church.

Atticus was a guy who “got it”. Racism is bad. Duh. It’s easy to say that now. It’s easy to look back and think we could have had Atticus-like intestinal fortitude. But, when everyone around you is a racist, it’s really hard to not catch that disease.

It’s really hard to think for yourself and choose what’s right over what’s popular. Atticus could’ve chose money and providing for his family and pleasing the honkeys. But, instead he represented a not guilty, poor black man in a way that made another black man tell his daughter to stand up, because she was in the presence of greatness.

Everytime I think about that scene as I’m writing the tears come. And I think it’s partly out of what I’ve been through and want for my kids. Four and a half years ago I had a big decision that deeply affected them and me and their mom. I chose divorce.

But, the story behind that decision is what matters, not what it looked like on the surface. I’m sure to the church and to our friends, I looked like an ass hole. But, underneath all that, what I wanted was to take a stand. To say that I was unwilling to be fake anymore. I wasn’t going to show the kids that love was the train wreck that it became in my marriage. I wasn’t going to go to church and continue to fall in line with mainstream Christianity.

Everyone around me seemed to think one way. But, I thought differently. It’s hard to go out on your own. To go against the flow. But, I knew what I needed and what my kids needed was a dad who faced his shit. A dad who didn’t mail it in or go through the motions, but who actually put in the hard work it takes to deal with all the shit life has thrown at me.

Basically I said fuck off to the church and the marriage and began the hard process of swimming upstream. It’s so much harder than going with the flow, but it’s been so worth it. And there’s a zero percent chance I’d be where I am if it wasn’t for my therapist.

I don’t deserve the kind of respect from my kids that Scout was asked to give her father, but my therapist is helping me work towards that. Four and a half years ago I was a shell of a man. I could make the kids laugh. I could be a surface daddy. But, the dad they need…I’ve had to grow into that role, slowly.

I think the first piece of that was working towards a place where I could love myself. If I don’t love and respect myself, I don’t have love to give my kids or deserve their respect.

Grace and I were talking today about the two planes where people do life. The surface. And the real. Life gets good when the real swallows up the surface. There’s no pretending. I couldn’t see it at the time, but my old life…why I left…was so that I could stop pretending. I couldn’t respect myself. I just went along with whatever my church or my wife said, but I lost myself and what makes me great.

It’s sad for everyone in the family that finding myself wasn’t possible in the context of the marriage. But, the dad that I am now…the man that I am now…is worth the cost. My kids don’t have a surface dad. They don’t have a dad working a corporate job that he hates. I get to do the things that give life to my soul. I get to write.

I get to fuck up and learn from my mistakes. I’m not walking on eggshells trying to be perfect thinking God is looking over my shoulder ready to wave his finger at me. Thou shalt not? The only way I want that in my kid’s vocabulary is in the context of them knowing that they shalt not believe things just because everyone else does. Or do something just because it’s popular.

I’m no Atticus Finch. I’m not going to win any awards for best job defending a Negro. I’m not superman. And I think that’s what makes my kids look up to me. They know I’m not perfect. But, they know I’m real. I want to redo the family traditions of secrets and religion and lies and running from our issues and take the kids with me as I head upstream.

I listened to Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” yesterday. That used to be me. I packed my lunch in the morning and went through the motions at work and in life each day. But, inside that Pretender was the longing to be real. The Pretender is “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.” I “started out so young and strong only to surrender.”

But, I get a second chance. I wondered a couple of posts ago if maybe I killed myself in my empty hotel room four and a half years ago…wondering if this is heaven. Everything about my life seems too good to be true, even though none of those things are the typical American dreamy bull shit. The too good to be true isn’t the external, it’s how I feel inside.

And I’m realizing that there was a death in that lonely hotel room. I killed off the Pretender. It’s been a hard road, incredibly lonely at times. But, every bit of it was better than being a fake. I can look myself in the mirror. I can be proud of what I’m giving my kids. And humbly thankful for all the people in my life that “get it”. They’re not giving me the equivalent of that fake Oprah accent. They’re giving and getting the mutual exchange of the real story underneath. Most people just go along with Oprah. Are you like most people or can you pull the trigger and kill of the Pretender inside you? We need less of Oprah's sheep and more real people.