Creep
january 4th 1986 is my birthday. when i turned 19 years old, i was in south korea. i went with my father, and his wife darcy to a private kareoki bar to 'celebrate'.
the one birthday i will never forget...19 years old...south korea...
singing: "i'm a creep, i'm a weirdo, what the HELL am i doin' here, i don't belong here
i don't belong here"...
i had been really excited to get to know my father better. had saved up my teaching money from working in beijing to take a visit for two weeks to see them. after this experience, i didn't care to know my father anymore.
the argument my father and i had gotten into was over music. i had sang only two songs at the kareoki bar, the first had been "hero" by mirriah carrey, he had no problem with that song, haha....
and the second song...was "creep" by radiohead...i did not think much of the choice of song, i just sang it because it was one i knew, was simple enough to follow, and really...is one of the funniest songs i've ever heard!... and singing it for kareoki, to me, was a bit of a joke. in the sense that i'm talking about myself as a creep and a weirdo...which i am. i accepted this part of myself way back in elementry school, and to me the lyrics are a joke at myself. having the ability to laugh at myself has helped me get through hard times. and really, who has not felt out of place in this world in certain moments in life? in that sense, i think most people love this song, because almost EVERYONE can relate with the feeling of not being good enough, for some thing, or some one. the truth is...i was singing this at my father. i had always felt i was not good enough for him...for his love and acceptance of me. this time proved...once and for all...that i had been right...
singing this song had made him really...really angry with me!
after the song was finished i was beaming! smiling ear to ear, proud of myself for how well i had sung it. thinking my dad would be laughing with me but instead his face was stern and he gave me a look that made me feel ...
"oh, god, this was a bad idea, stupid, stupid, idea"...
my dad said very calmly, but very firmly, at first...
"that song is evil. this music is garbage! how can you even sing such words as that?! do you know that those words will go into your head and make you believe it one day! you have to understand the effect music can have on you!.'
i held back a laugh, meanwhile, my eyes were, just, buldging out of my head in disbelief!!!
"here we go..." i thought. "i should have known...better."
my dad had given my sister the same lecture about music when he had found out that she listened to Nirvana. he broke her CD's while yelling at her...skaking, like he does when really angry..boiling over, face red...
"this shit should be burned, it's from the DEVIL!!!!"
i remember him saying this to her. the image of his angry face seared into my memory.
my sister, no less than i, had been crying.... i never understood this, at the time, i had been way too young to understand why any of this had been a big deal at all!
"it's just music!!" i had thought...
but maybe age doesn't matter and a lot of the things that didn't make sense to me as a child, still don't make sense to me, now, as an 'adult'....
on a side note, i remember the day that kurt cobain died, i walked into my sister's bedroom and she was crying more than i had ever seen her cry before. wailing! it was like her heart had been ripped into two pieces...i had asked her what was wrong!! she replied through sobbs
"kurt cobain died today!, he's DEAD, he's DEAD, oh my god, he's dead..you can't understand!"...she said.
my sister loved him so much...poor girl.
i was way too young at the time to understand the significance of this news. to me he was just some other rock star... i had only heard a couple of the songs, 'teen spirit', in particular... which i liked, how could i not?!! such a catchy tune and a soulful voice...of...of understanding... also, i had liked everything my sister did. i wanted to be her. and this news... it broke her heart and so it broke my heart just watching her cry. in that moment i wished i could understand her better, wished that i could feel the same way about his death, but i only cared because she had. it was only later on in life...that i really understood...what she saw in him...why she cried so.
"how could she have loved some one so much, that she never, even, knew, in real life!?"
.... i had wondered at this back then...but, now, i know what she must have felt
...because my heart will break when Thom Yorke dies.
but, back to where i was at...my dad yelling at me, cramming bullshit dogma down my throat....
my father was going into this lecture, the same old, of how music and lyrics are important, and he was saying that if i listen to music like this...it will affect me on a spiritual level. he simply did not understand what the song meant to me...he simply did not understand how much sarcasm there was, for me, in those words "i'm a creep, i'm a weirdo!" he went into a rant about how he knows his children think that he is a weirdo, but the truth is, he said,
'MY CHILDREN ARE THE WEIRDO'S"...
"well thanks'...i thought to myself..."you just contradicted everything you were just saying, dad!"
i started trying to explain to him my point of view... agreeing with him to a certain extent...that i understand music does have some effect on us psycologically and even, maybe spiritually. . .but that...lost for words...because...he simply didn't...couldn't understand...didn't even get to complete one full thought with him without being interrupted....
trying to explain this to an 'old-school-evangelical-bible-thumping-hick' is impossible...his...mind already closed, already decided... simply....impossible...i realized all too late. after about an hour of arguing in the kareoki...i was broken down by him. word by word. he lashed out at me. most of which i forget. something just slowly closed down inside me and past a certain point i just blocked what he was saying to me "out"...my mind deleted it as if it were information into a computer that has no value, no service...to the higher understanding of the program. my mind simply said "delete, erase"...and the brain slipping into autopilot, survival mode.
... but i remember this part very clearly...he had said...
"you better SHUT UP or i will give you something to cry about!!"
my father yelled this at me as we walked away from the bar, back to his apartment. i knew that he meant to slap me. give me a nice good old fashioned wake up call. i had been sobbing uncontrolably. could hardly breathe. my first panic attack, ever. after he said this to me, i shut up, right away. was silent for the rest of the walk back to his place. darcy was silent too. she knew, maybe better than i did, that it's never a good idea to talk back to some body like my father. i stopped crying, took a deep breath, and i remember breathing in and breathing out...focusing, really focusing in on my breathing...and...trying to calm myself down from my hyperventalation...thinking to myself,
"i don't want to know you, anymore...dad"...and after that thought...i could breathe, again.
but i would never say that out loud, knowing what the concequenses would have been for back-talking.
...something died inside my heart that night. my father killed something in me, saying what he said. given, he had been a bit drunk, and my father was always prone to saying stupid things when he was drunk...and doing even more stupid things.... i took this into account...but no matter how much i tried to mentally justify his emotional outburst at me, it did not stop my heart from closing towards him. i turned into stone. from that moment on, i looked through my father, like i was looking at a wall that i had, in that moment, very deliberately built and that wall is still there to this day. i do not think i will ever break it down; it's higher than the great wall of china and i know that he will never try to break it down, either. it's too high, it's too old, and it's too strong..
i thought to myself...
"my father will never know me"...
i was just waiting for him to pull out the bible when we got back...start thumping on the words of god. he would do this, in a way, as if he thought he could be able to drill it through my head. sure enough, that was the first thing he did after our walk back to his place. but what he didn't realize is that, i was no longer listening to him any more...after he said what he said to me...i closed completely. i saw his lips move, but no words came out....i stared into my father's face blankly; hollow, empty, and cold.
he didn't even notice that i was no longer there with him...i was far far away...in my heart and in my mind i was miles away from his world, and he would never know mine.
i got the closure i needed from that last visit. never went out of my way for him again. i understood better my mother and what her trials must have been with him...what must have turned her into...how she became... found a greater understanding, a greater forgiveness into her mistakes with us children.
i realized in that moment, that my dad had really broken her... like a wild horse, he broke her spirit. i decided that night that my father would never break me. i'm too strong and i'm too free. i'm more of a horse than i am human. no one can break me. i am wild, forever,
he could never break me, like he did my mom... i would never let him close enough to do that to me.
i forgive my father, because i realize that it's his loss, not mine. i forgive my father because...in his own way he is really quite innocent in his ignorance and narrow minded stupidity. i forgive my father because i realized a long time ago that hate is a waste of time...and bitterness ends up eating you alive.
that night before i went to sleep, i whispered to myself a prayer for m y dad
"forgive him father, for he knows not what he does..."
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