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This story makes me think of a chapter I wrote for my book: I… Victim! In which I wonder what an SPV can ‘trigger’ in her children.  This is a perfect example to further prove my point.

Whenever mommy and daddy can’t stand each other, they shift their attention to their children who don’t seem to do anything right and therefore implant guilt in their children’s hearts.

So you didn’t do your homework… 40 strikes with the belt ought to do it.  You didn’t do what I told you to do… locked in a dark closet for hours ought to do it.  You were in late last night… go sleep on the street because you won’t come inside the house.  And so on.  In their very special way they ‘educated’ kids… and created little monsters.  Five of them.

This story is about one of those children… the one with a free spirit, cheerful and spontaneous.  The one mommy and daddy considered their worst nightmare.  Believing, mistakenly, that they could tame such a spirit; believing they could subdue and manipulate as they wished only to wind up creating a little SPV… defiant, turbulent, impossible and miserable.  He ended up believing what he had heard once too many times: ‘You’re worthless’ and ‘No one can deal with you’!  They ended crushing his spirit.  They stole it from him.

This little SPV was heading nowhere, nomadic. He got married and attempted to get rid of all those psychological heirlooms.  So one day, after hitting rock bottom in that ill relationship with his parents, he got up and left, wife in hand.  He left everything behind.  Stopped being part of that ‘captive audience’ called family, that had only given him anguish and woe and could, eventually, turn him into a shadow.  He headed for a small town where life is ‘light’.  Light and sweet at the same time, unlike that American Express add in which you have to pick one or the other.

One night, which seemed like centuries ago, he decided to call mommy and daddy.  Out of the blue.  So weird.  What on earth would he say to those who spent most of their lives making him feel worthless? 

Daddy answered the call but, for whatever reason, the call didn’t end 30 seconds later… that call went on for an hour and a half… with daddy.

Once it was over, little SPV couldn’t stop thinking about that call, of how weird it had been for him when daddy spoke to him past some: Hi, let me put your mother on the phone.  The answer to that thought came early next morning.

Sixteen hours later he was on a plane going ‘home’.  Daddy had suffered a stroke the night before… right after ‘the call’.  Daddy was dying.  Mommy and her ‘captive audience’ filled little SPV with guilt feelings again… it was intense.  That didn’t help little SPV with daddy dying and all.

Daddy died 10 days later… without ever articulating a word.

Upon his return to the small town he now called ‘home’, little SPV, still couldn’t put that call behind and decided that: He did care about daddy and that daddy had, indeed, been a fundamental part of his life, in spite of it all.  He felt lonely and became a full time SPV in an instant.  His life had no meaning anymore.  He had everything and, at the same time, felt like he had nothing.  He was alive but felt dead… and packed with guilt.

His depression was so deep that he wouldn’t come home for days at a time.  It took him a whole year to get over daddy dying.  One year in which he punished himself psychologically for, what he called, selfishness towards his parents.

One morning… he just ‘woke up’ from it all… his mind was clear, his heart felt free, and he saw daddy for what he really was… an inflexible, detached and rude man.  He finally realized he’d been the object of manipulation and saw mommy for what she really was too.  It wasn’t easy facing the truth.  It took him years to overcome all of those feelings… but placed those guilty feelings in the right place, out and away from him.

Today, little SPV is still struggling.  Still recovering and getting better… recuperating his essence, getting stronger to repossess that spirit with which he began his life… he has managed to flourish again.

He, sometimes, sees mommy.  Does not allow or tolerate any verbal smack downs from her… today he belongs to himself.

Can you do that too?