Originally Posted by greedrex

interesting thread.
I could go on forever about this one but will keep it short.
Basically, I rejected my dad between age15 and my very early twenties because of the extremism of the feelings i had towards him. On the one hand i have always TOTALLY ADMIRED him because:
1) his father died when he was only 15 and he had to take care of his mother and his 4 little brothers by supporting them financially)
2) Then he is savvy in a deceptively long list of handy things like electricity, all sorts of mechanics, he could build a house by himself, he can drive a massive truck, sail a boat,... He always seemed OMNISCIENT in all domains.
3) he created his own company (he was an ambulanceman) from scratches and managed to become a very influent and well-known person with quite a lot of money in the 8O's/90's. It's all relative but he had money.
4) he is a very impressive physical father figure.

Now on the other hand i always felt like i was the perfect opposite of what he embodied:
1) I'm not technical, but "intellectual". He was good at maths and i'm good at all things having to do with human science, languages, etc..
2) the way he succeeded made me feel like i would never reach the point where he was. So i discarded working in a private environment and studied to become a teacher for a number of reasons.
3) Working 24hours a day and having to be available and reachable 7 days a week night and day (even while on holidays) made me feel sad for him cuz i thought to myself " You earn a shit load of money but can NEVER RELAX and leave work aside for say a couple of weeks, this is nasty; welcome heart attack". So i got a job with employment security as we say here (ie i can't get fired unless i do something nasty in class which i won't), i will never be rich BUT i earn my living pretty well and then i have 4 months holidays a year. Why all this money when you can never appreciate it by getting away from it all from time to time?
3bis) I always felt my father thought i was a good-for-nothing because he kept on comparing me to him , what he knew and what i didn't know. He would always reproach me for not knowing say how to fix a car engine BUT at the same time never showed me how to do it. How am i supposed to learn? And it's just ONE example. My best was never enough, in any domain.
4) There was a MASSIVE CLASH when i turned 20. I lost it for a good 6 months and went through a very nasty nervous breakdown: i lost all my friends one by one, and became estranged with all my relatives. One night my parents came over to my flat because my girlfriend called them to say she didn't know what he was going on as i was thrashing all things in the flat. That night was the worst of all; My father sat on the sofa and i remember quite well insulting him for a good half an hour in all possible ways, wanting to kill him at once, my girlfriend and mother were in the kitchen and i can remember hearing them crying. My father just sat there and LISTENED, not saying anything. His face distressed.
I was very high on drugs that night but bizarrely i remember this, i don't remember how that night ended though. I think i passed out.
The following year, i didn't see my parents at all and thought i would never see them again.
To cut it short, i spent a whole year travelling here and there, eating hardly anything, working wherever and whenever, sleeping in parks at some point, horrible shit.
i ended up at my grandmother's nearly a year after because i felt she was the only person who could put me up. I found a job nearby and eventually my aunt who lived nearby called my father to tell him i was there and arranged for us to meet at my parents' a few days later.

Which we did and we rebuilt everything VERY SLOWLY from there.
My dad was impressed as i had left a huge debt at my bank and came back a year later with enough cash money to fill that massive hole.
Then they had gotten this letter that said i had surprisingly mùanaged to graduate god knows how and i was entitled to go and teach in England for a year. I was supposed to be there THREE DAYS LATER.
So I went and that was a welcome break.

My life went on and i'm a happy responsible person today but what i learned is this:

Today I'm just like my father in a number of meaningful details and don't feel bad about it because i understood where he came from.
i think i was wise enough to keep what was good from him and left altogether the bullying part cuz i'm a very laidback person, although relatively stressed mofo.

My vision of him has changed. I remember being so impressed by him until not so long ago.
Being a father now, i very often look at him with sympathy or even empathy (ha ha)
He sees i don't actually need him anymore for anything, so he knows he has to be a nice person to me if he wants to keep an okay relationship with me and my son, so his grandson.
You know, he's a grandfather now.

Anyhow, i know you're going to say 'too long didn't read" but fuck it.
so to answer, "like father like son", not quite but life is surprising with hindsight, because i now embody a lot of things i used to reject, and i feel it's a very good thing.