Transformation of the Self

the goat was me. I was pretty young so I just acted as if I didn’t hear him. Occasionally my

mother would tell him not to do this but it went on for some time. This was just baffling. That

really hurt. It was such a painful negative judgement on me. It was so belittling and made me

feel so small.

By the time I was 15 years old I was drinking a lot. My father never spoke to me about

this although I was pretty sure he knew. Sometimes, late at night, I would make a very noisy,

stumbling passage down the back hall and past their bedroom door on my way to my room. It

was like they didn’t notice. In September of that year my mom announced we were going

shopping for clothes for boarding school. That was the first I heard of it. I received two

weeks’ notice from my mother that I would be moving away from the family and would live

in a boarding school. I cried and cried in disbelief. I couldn’t believe this was actually

happening. It

was like, “Fuck! I really don’t count!” I broke down and felt like such a child. I didn’t relate

the move to my behaviour at the time because no one ever addressed that with me. I felt so

alone and scared shitless. My older brother was sent in to comfort me. I knew there was

something wrong about that. I wanted to tell someone to fuck off. I wanted my dad there

because I knew he was the one who made all the decisions. There was no discussion about any

of this from my parents. Two weeks later they drove to the school and dropped me off on the

appointed day.

I knew at the school I needed to be tough. It was a male only school and it was

supposed to teach us how to live in a “man’s world”. I refused to show vulnerability or

weakness there. I sent the message, “Don’t fuck with me!” I felt isolated. For the first year it

was kind of surreal. My dad would pick me up on Sunday at noon and take me home but I had

to be back by 7:00 PM that evening. This was maybe an hour drive both ways. After a while

they had me take the bus and after that I lost interest in home and just stayed at the school. In

my five years at boarding school I played hockey or football six days a week, including a game

against another school on Saturdays. My father came to one game. As I write this, I see that

my general injury was my ongoing experience of my father choosing to be absent from my life

and, in general, not knowing how to make connection with me. I have been angry about that

for most of my life.

I learned to demonstrate fearlessness in sports and to take risks at school. Not

emotional risks though, just physical risks. I learned to drink more and fuck girls. I learned that

men need to have power over women and I did. I graduated as a jerk with a narrow range of

experience.

When I was at university around age 22 my dad and I got into a disagreement. I was still

living at home. I challenged one of my father's political opinions. I wasn’t rude or anything

but he got very angry. He said to me, “When you are a man you can speak to me like a man;

as long as you're living here you will listen to me”. This reduced me to tears. I cried and cried.

I just

wanted to matter to him. I was so lacking in confidence that it never occurred to me to get a

job, find a place and get out on my own.

Overall, these experiences made me feel very inadequate and confused about who I

was. I could sense that many young men were more self-assured than I was. My only basis for

pride as a man was in my reasonably successful performance as an athlete in high school. As a