God as a father

I have mentioned before a line that my therapist told me and that is to view God as a loving zeide (grandfather) rather than an abusive father. It is a beautiful thought. As with everything there is a gap between knowledge and implementation.

I want to explore why I find this ideal to be incredibly difficult to implement.

It has been said that out of The 10 Commandments, the first 5 are of a "bein adam l'makom" nature (between man and God). These include belief in God, not to commit idolatry and shabbos. The last 5 have been said to be "bein adam l'chaveiro" (between man and his friend or fellow man). These include, murder, kidnapping, coveting etc.

One of the 10 commandments is honoring your father and mother. On a simple level we might suggest the idea behind this mitzva is very much "bein adam l'chaveiro" (between man and friend). The concept being to give thanks to your parents for giving you life, raising and supporting you.

However, which number commandment is honoring your parents? Number 5. It is part of the "Bein adam l'makom" mitzvos.

The obvious question is why? While one might say it's really God that gives you life and sustains you etc, that would be a cute approach but doesn't seem to lend to the core of the reasoning and placement of this commandment.

I believe I have the correct (albeit painful) approach.

I wonder if the reason God gave us the mitzvah of honoring our parents is because he wanted us to have a human entity that would serve as a platform to allow us to learn how to honor Him. (Please take that in for a moment). Who in our physical existence would be the best "moshol" or parable for us to use as a means to learn to honor Him? Certainly our parents! All we know as a baby, then an adolescent and into child and adulthood is that our parents are our care givers. They are the ones who are supposed to supply security, comfort and love to us. If we learn to honor them we learn to honor God. We can look at this as a mitzva that squarely falls on us as individuals to learn how to perform. With this logic it is almost more incumbent on the parents to teach us to honor them appropriately so that we can live a life of honor, love and respect toward God.

I believe that a persons relationship with God will mirror their relationship with their parents (specifically in my case with my father). A healthy loving, nurturing and mutual respect between a parent and child will lead to the same with Hashem. A difficult and painful relationship with a parent will leave us feeling that God is the same. I recognize that it's not always this black and white and ones situation can fall anywhere between the two extremes.

I challenge you to think about the relationship you have with Hashem and see if it connected with the relationship you had with the parent that had the more profound influence on your life (Think about your partners, close friends as well and I am confident you will perceive the same pattern).

This is undoubtedly my story as well as many of my close friends.

This is why, while I adored my grandfather and would love to see God in that light, it simply is against teva (nature) and is a lifelong battle.

Image, Parenting and Therapy...

Growing up, I was moderately overweight. While I don't think this is something that should have been an area of focus in my upbringing, it ended up dominating it. My parents for some reason felt that they needed to project a family image that excluded an overweight child. Some of my most painful memories are of my mother telling me as a young boy that she was embarrassed to be with me because of my weight. I can never forget that.

(Stop for a moment and think about what it means as a child to feel you are an embarrassment to your parents. The most important people in the world are ashamed to have you as one of their own. How devastating and tragic that feeling is. I don't know what motivated me to keep on living.)

As a child of just 7 or 8 years old I was being sent to weight watchers meetings. When my family planned a vacation, the only way I was allowed to go was if I lost 5 or 10 pounds before the trip. The rest of the family just went, I had to earn it.

As I mentioned in earlier posts I was always the youngest in my class in school as well as in camp. Being sensitive is a vicious cycle. It encourages, excites and feeds into the bullies need and will to harass you.

After a while my parents realized that I was coming home dejected and depressed from school. They decided to send me to a psychologist. What a disaster. Not the idea, that was a good one. The disaster was the therapist they chose.

I am not sure if he falsified his degree. His horrific approach was to further tease and belittle me. He figured that he would knock the "wimp" out of me. He would take my sensitivity and sissiness and shove it back at me. Laughing at me, he would ask why I was such a baby, Why I couldn't be more manly. He would comment on my weight. He would even bad mouth my father to me by telling me all sorts of negative things about him. I know there was more but I've blocked a lot of it out.

It was as if he wrote the book on how to ruin a boys chance at masculinity and used me as his prototype.

This lasted a number of years. While it was going on I didn't know any better. I figured that this was therapy and what I needed to go through to get "healed".

Of course, now I know better. Now I know that all I needed was love and affection.

Parents reading this, I beg you to please consider refraining from challenging your children about their weight. Make subtle changes in the foods available at home rather than hurting their self worth and self image. They will come around when they are ready.

I also beg you that if your child needs therapy, send them by all means, but please research the therapist. Make sure you have references. Maybe interview him/her and learn their approach. The wrong therapist can kill your childs soul and possibly turn them away from the idea for life.

Lastly, for Gods sake, please don't put your image in front of your childs. I promise you, the kid will smell it a mile away and you will lose him or her forever.

Growing up with neglect...

My parents always wanted me out of the house when I was a kid. They sent me to a Catskills sleep away camp when I was 6 years old. Yes, 6 years old. They sent me for 2 months. I was the youngest kid in camp. My parents should have known better and the camp should have been closed down for being enablers to my abuse. They shouldn't allow such young kids barely toilet trained into camp...

I had a counselor who used to tickle me silly until I couldn't stop laughing and then hit me until I would cry... and then repeat. He did this to another kid in the bunk too. I was confused but the other kid had the balls to go to the head counselor. He didn't do anything about it. The counselor continued on his merry way through the end of the summer. (I actually had the opportunity to confront this counselor years later when he came back to camp as a chosson for a shabbos. It totally was against my nature to do that but I asked him in public if he planned on abusing his wife the way he abused me. I don't know where I gathered the strength to do that.)

School was the same way. My parents started me off early at 2 years old in nursery so I was always the youngest in the class. Smartest, but youngest. Not a good combination for the bullies. They don't like smarter than them and being the youngest made me an easy target. Lucky me, I was sensitive and would react at the slightest provocation... that egged them on even more. I constantly found myself on the other side of harmony. I didn't have peace at home. I didn't feel protected in school and didn't have a respite from the madness in camp.

(Sorry for painting such a bleak picture but part of the reason I started this blog was because I needed to vent. It has been somewhat cathartic.)

It is horrible not to have anyone to turn to. At the time I couldn't, and even now I cant think of any specific person who I might have been able to talk to about what I was going through. The only picture of love I can remember was my grand father who lived nearby. I unfortunately came home from school one day as a young boy, to him having had a heart attack and passing away young.

My parents sensing my unhappiness had the sensibility to set me up with a therapist. More later on the disaster that experience would turn into.

To close this entry I guess I wonder why I was destined by shamayim to have my spirit so broken as a child? What was Hashem setting me up for? How has it shaped who I am today? Sitting in my den at home, while my wife sleeps upstairs, anonymously blogging about my gay existence, not wanting anyone to know who the real me is. Where will this all lead?

Genetic? Maybe, but I don't think so....

While I believe there is certainly a genetic aspect to homosexuality; I believe I don't need to go there to explain my deep yearning for male intimacy.

There is no question that a prerequisite for an individual to grow up with a sound feeling of self and a healthy emotional balance, their childhood home had to feel safe. A home for a child needs to be a place that they can fall back on for stability even when it seems like the rest of the world might be falling apart.

Of course for a home to feel safe there typically has to be a positive relationship between the parents and a general feeling of calm and predictability in day to day life. Love and encouragement on a proactive scale wouldn't hurt either but might not be absolutely necessary.

I for the most part did not enjoy any of the above feelings of safety. I grew up in New York City with second generation holocaust survivors as parents. I dont judge them becauae they had to live with parents who woke up screaming in middle of the night from the nightmares of their childhood.

My father was a successful business man who gave a ridiculous amount to tzedaka. He was into the New York political scene. Rabbi's fawned on him. He was cool. Good looking and charismatic.If I had a dime for every person who told me what a wonderful guy he is I would be rich. How I yearned for his love. I believe he loved me dearly but didn't always have the means to express it. I needed him to touch me gently and to tell me that he was there for me. He sent me to a yeshivish/heimish boro park elementary school. If you think there was a male role model I was able to count on for a healthy male child adult relationship you would be quite wrong. (That might be for another post.)

My mother had to hold up the fort on her own. She unfortunately wasn't emotionally strong enough to raise all of us. Without going into details, she lived a difficult and complicated life that played out in my relationship with her. I could truly write up a book on my upbringing and the difficulty it was.

Yes, this is the gay cliche of absent father & dominating mother. What could I say? I grew up yearning desperately for the love of a man while being turned off by the instability of the primary female in my life.Where did that leave me? You guessed it.When puberty set in, that yearning turned into something more sexual and physical in nature. Unsatisfied, it just raged on further.

As I started this post, I can never say for certain that elements of my gay desires are not genetic. I have no question though that my life experiences can explain my homosexuality as a learned behavior or at a minimum it has fanned that genetic flame in a very powerful way.

Ultimately, when I stand here today it makes absolutely no difference to me how I got here. I can't undo genetics, nor can I undo my life experiences.