Growing up and moving on are terrifying enough. They are scarier still when everyone else stays behind.
It happened last week. I posted a picture on Facebook of a watermelon beer, and a friend from high school commented, “[T]hink about how big this could be if they sold this in a 40 oz.”
For years of my life, this was the natural discourse. It is the thing that haunts me still. I am constantly afraid that my friends will embarrass me. I am constantly afraid that some –ism will spew forth onto my news feed and embarrass me, laying bare my “redneck past” for all to see. I am afraid that one of these friends may repeat a racist joke that I told in a weak moment long ago. I am afraid that my new colleagues, my partners in examining issues of race, class, and privilege, will judge my association with such small-minded sentiments. I am afraid that a flippant comment will inflict a deep wound to a dear friend, and that will be the result of one of my long-held associations.
So, I am a man torn. I am a man torn between a flawed home and a flawed past that I still deeply love, and a future I am striving to create, a self that I am striving to be. It is no longer an option to run. We are too connected. I am a man torn, sometimes feeling guilty because he fled for the greener, more progressive pastures of California, rather than fixing the mess that was happening in his own backyard.
The last Christmas my dad and I spend together, he told me a tasteless joke. It was a joke that combined Barack Obama, lynching, and a Christmas tree. I was a man torn—torn between expressing my disapproval and leaving his house altogether, and the deep love I’ve always felt for my dad. So I swallowed my rage. I told my dad that he was a terrible person, with just enough of a laugh to stifle any rage. I took another swallow of the scotch that he had been dying to share with me, and I enjoyed Christmas.
This is the life of a man torn, swallowing idealism for the sake of love, and trading cold truth for long-held relationships. The life a man torn is one of constantly weighing the costs, of constantly second-guessing, of wishing for take-backs and do-overs. It is a laugh of nervous laughs, uneasy feelings, and tough choices made in split seconds.
I only hope that there is grace. I hope that there is grace enough to atone for redneck pasts. I hope that there is grace enough to atone for racist jokes. I hope that there is grace enough to atone for homophobic slurs, and for ignorant assumptions. I hope that there is grace enough for all living life as men torn.
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About Josh Bobbitt
Amen. I’m in the same boat although I only moved about 30 miles away from where I grew up. My wife says when I go back there I’m a different person.
Can you take advantage of some of these awkward moments to have some loving one-on-one conversations with some of these folks explaining that you are a different person now, why you have changed, and what appropriate boundaries are for you now?
I once stood at the register of a Target next to my mom as we were checking out. A mentally disabled person was, very slowly, putting our purchases into bags. Right there in front of him, my mom turned to me and started making nasty comments about him being retarded and that he should be institutionalized and she shouldn’t have to put up with service from and idiot and things like that. I was much younger then and didn’t know what to do, but I did know I was terribly embarrassed so I just walked away. When she came out of the store, she made snide remark to me that, “You probably think I’m TERRIBLE…” expecting me to reassure her that was not the case. But to both our surprise, I said, “Yes, I do.” And then I proceeded to tell her with a surprising amount of calm that:
1. she had been unnecessarily unkind to someone who wasn’t hurting her,
2. even if he wasn’t up to her standards of intelligence, the young man clearly understood he was being bullied,
3. I am happy for people to have the opportunity to support themselves and be independent to the degree that they are able, and
4. what she does by herself is her own business, but she should never do anything like that in my presence again because it is not okay with me.
It was one of the first clear boundaries I ever set as an adult, and while it was really hard to do, especially with a parent, it felt really good.
Sounds like my mom. She would wait until we got to the parking lot to actually say anything, but what she said was vicious and very much along the same lines as what you quoted here. I was a kid when this happened so couldnt articulate my objection. I just thought to myself, Wow, that was a mean thing to say….
To that end tho, I admit i have a sort of phobia about people who are disabled. I don’t dislike them or think badly of them, i just get very very uncomfortable when I have to interact with them. It is a gut feeling, not really based in any ideology or malice, and I do my best to never let it show that I am uncomfortable. But one reason i decided not to be a teacher is that the thought of working with special needs kids was paralyzing to me. (I am not proud of any of this, by the way, but it’s not exactly something I am actively working on either.)
I do sometimes wonder if my mom’s attitude and comments influenced this at all.
Racist jokes and everything else that was part of a “former” system are difficult to disconnect with completely unless you disconnect from the system. If home is part of that system, it’s nearly impossible. I feel you.
That said, never, ever, apologize for 40oz beers. : )
I agree with Krsten, you have to set boundaries and help your family and friends to understand that you are a different person now. Although you will always love them and you want them to be a part of your life in whatever capacity is acceptable to both parties but, you cannot abide by some of the behaviors or comments that they are engaging in. That’s the hard part of the journey, knowing that as much as you love people that somtimes you have to let some people and some relationships go. Not because you want to but because you have to. We’ve all at one point or another outgrown our relationships with friends, family, jobs, situations and circumstances. I’m not saying that it will be easy but sometimes it’s necessary.
Josh, probably, like many of us, there are those “things” of the past, that we would like to forget and never talk about again. However, you’ve done the best thing by remembering and turning it to a learning experience. Because from that, we learn how to live today and in the future, because today we learn that it’s not what other people think of us that’s important, but how we think about and treat them that is. Good post.
This is a pretty beautiful post – thanks for sharing. I think a lot of the challenge of masculinity has always been about balancing different priorities, different versions of self. I study early medieval masculine identity, and you can see similar conflicts in men who are expected to fight and rape viciously, then return home and build a stable and unified nation. I don’t think it’s possible to reject one part of the self: it all has to, somehow, be written into an integrated narrative. And in most times and cultures, masculinity seems to me to be about being capable of adapting to different contexts, rather than demanding that they reshape themselves around us (being ‘all things to all men’, if you like). So you can expect family and friends from the past to shift a little, but it is (I think) healthy and ‘normal’ to find yourself speaking and acting in different ways in different places and with different people.