Last month, I wrote about boundaries and family— how during his final year in this life, my dad made unfair requests that stretched me and my siblings too thin.
That wasn’t a new thing.
My childhood really lacked boundaries. My dad was constantly blurring the lines.
Was I his friend? Starting when I was little, he talked to me all the time about the details of his dating and sex life, conveying all kinds of confusion and excitement and insecurity. He told me about arguments he had with partners and asked my advice, and he shared dirty jokes and explained slang that somehow went over my head while simultaneously exposing me to way too much.
Was I his caretaker? It felt that way when he would sit in his bed with me at his side and sob uncontrollably about the most recent diagnosis, and when he got explicit with me about his self doubt and negative body image, and when he would get hysterical the day we were set to fly back to our mom’s house only to have me soothe him with reassurances about being together again soon.
Were we children whose parents were in conflict? Or, as he screamed about hating our mother, were we weapons in a battle he was waging?
Dad was in crisis, and in lieu of the tools and support he needed, he turned to me. There’s a whole lot out there that well-adjusted adults can reasonably handle but that will harm children. Everything going on with my dad was (obviously) too much for one adult, so it was certainly too much for a kid. Too heavy, too complex, too overwhelming.
Part of the problem is that I didn’t have a reference point from which to understand that he was causing me pain. I just saw that a person I loved needed someone to listen and cheer him up and validate him. The minute he treated me as capable of being that someone, I eagerly stepped into the shoes.
As a kid, how could I ever speak up about how invasive and exhausting and unfair all of this was? How could I even conceive of that? I just thought I was doing something important, and I felt good about him treating me as though I had some kind of special insight that made me valuable.
We’re humans. Mistakes are part of the deal, and we’re bound to be inconsistent, sometimes wildly so. I forgive him.
Still, I feel pulled to say it plainly:
Children need boundaries, even if they don’t know how to ask for them. Boundaries provide literal protection from that which is dangerous and, more broadly, guideposts that tell us what is and isn’t threatening, what does and does not concern us.
Depriving children of this type of security is a way in which grown ups pass pain onto the next generation.
Beyond being painful in the moment, the secondary effect here is that I was left without the skill needed to step back and ask: am I ok with this? Is this serving me, or hurting me? As an adult, I’ve been blind to times when some distance between me and another person or situation would have been a good thing. It’s hard to do a thing when you were never shown how.
You could call a lot of what happened in my house traumatic: yelling and screaming and fear and fight/flight/freeze brain chemicals and their associated physical energies and all that.
We feel danger in the loss of agency— when we don’t get to decide that we want out. My dad’s failure to honor boundaries was that; it was just slow and constant. Boundaries say what is and isn’t permitted, and without them, anything goes. Looking back, I see that I didn’t have a choice about what was allowed into my physical, mental, or emotional space.
Between not being able to stop an attacker or being conditioned into harm, that lack of choice is the common thread. We deserve to be able to choose, and when we’re little, parents are supposed to protect and facilitate that right.
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A note of context: I played ultimate competitively for a long time, and this newsletter began as an effort to examine life through the lens of the sport.
Since I’ve started writing this newsletter, what I’ve put out has spanned from clearly related to ultimate to more peripherally connected. I do try to make sure the tie-in is there one way or another just because, at least for now, I like having a common thread running through all these pieces.
What’s coming up for me with this one is that as I look back on a large part of my playing career, I see myself carrying so much angst without even knowing it. It wasn’t on purpose, but I saw frisbee as a place where I could try to somehow make all that pain right: to overcome it, or outrun it, or fill the void it left.
I know I’m not alone in that. At its most basic, I guess this post is me offering a reminder that the people we ride to practice, trade Slack messages, and take the field with all deserve some compassion. Who knows what we’re carrying.
Loose thoughts
The following idea is one I’ve heard articulated in various ways by various folks. It’s also a truth that I feel inside of me, and that is at the heart of why I write what I do. This particular iteration is from a guy named Michael Ventura. I heard it while listening to this interview:
We are living in a dark age and we’re not going to see the end of it, nor are our children, nor probably our children’s children. And our job, every single one of us is to cherish whatever in the human heritage we love and to feed it and to keep it going and to pass it on. Because this dark age isn’t going to go on forever. And when it stops, those people are going to need the pieces we pass on. They’re not going to be able to build a new world without us passing on whatever we can: ideas, art, knowledge, skills, or just plain old, fragile love. How we treat people, how we help people. That’s something to be passed on.
adrienne maree brown is one of my favorite thinkers, and her appearance on Krista Tippet’s podcast is full of the kind of perspective that makes that so. If you’d rather read than listen, there’s a transcript at that link. If you’d like to listen a lot, there’s also an un-cut version.
Mike Namkung is a name most big ultimate fans have heard. Black Tide, Condors, Downtown Brown, World Games, JAM, Hall of Fame ballot. Michael is also a writer, poet, and artist whose work I’d recommend checking out. Start here, but check out his website too.
I hope you’re enjoying the summer. As a reminder, I always love hearing from readers. Also, it’s a big deal when anyone recommends my work to a friend.
Much love,
Jonathan
"I see myself carrying so much angst without even knowing it. It wasn’t on purpose, but I saw frisbee as a place where I could try to somehow make all that pain right: to overcome it, or outrun it, or fill the void it left."
This resonates with me, Jonathan, especially the part about not even being aware that frisbee was serving as some kind of salve. I know that is true for many of us. I appreciate how you approach these topics.