Nightmares

[nemorathwald]

Ever since I realized how close Andy's departure to PCC loomed, I've been waking white-knuckled and shaking from dreams which always ended either in tears or explosive rage. Andy and I and my friend samuraijkm (a fellow PCC refugee) are climbing a maze of traps. A platform collapses and Andy falls into a bottomless pit. If you have any loved ones at all, you can probably imagine that my reaction was not a calm one. The dreams are always different, but easy to understand. I'm going to keep a close eye on PCC while my brother is there. So, it's like I'm dragged back to a horrible episode of my life I had happily left behind.

This week I went to our parents' house to drop off the Hellboy trade paperback Andy loaned me. Dad found it and confronted Andy about having bought it. This time he used a gently imploring tone which he's been practicing ever since wulfthestampede and I stopped listening to anything he has to say. Dad realized he can't influence his kids just by demanding that they respect him. Considering that Andy leaves the nest this week, it's obviously too little too late. Andy has a adult's grip on reality that my dad will not shake-- but perhaps the military-school atmosphere of PCC will have better luck brainwashing him. Andy distinguishes reality from fantasies like Hellboy with a little thing we adults who live in the real world call "make believe." In this regard he is light-years ahead of our parents at the tender age of 18. After the confrontation, I went in and fished Hellboy out of the trash and said to Andy, "Unless you want to put up with four years of that, go to an excellent veterinary school like MSU. Do either one if that's what you really want. That's all I'm going to say."

What I should have done was confronted Dad by telling him I know lots of real-life witches and they're no worse than he is. In fact they're the same gullible fools that my parents are. Before the neopagans get all over my case about criticizing (which I will not retract), understand my point, that my parents need to hear and consider that in the eyes of their adult son who knows them well, they are the same as witches on the crackpot fringe of society. Now is the turning point in my brother's life as it was in mine, and I need to give my parents and PCC the tooth-and-claw fight of their miserable lives. So many PCC students stay there under the illusion that they would have nowhere else to turn. I need to start raising funds for plane fare home for Andy. A cash bucket on a table, with his picture and a sign reading "help give a second chance to someone in thrall to crackpot loons by an accident of birth!" I need to start hunting for scholarships and grants for him. I need to get an extra bed and set it up at my place for him. I need to start organizing an underground railroad for PCC students. I am going to FIGHT for my siblings!

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

They do love us. But take anybody who gets written against in a Jack Chick tract and they love their children too, which was my point of bringing that up. And not to say that both types are equally wise and judicious parents, but that they're equally UNFIT. The minute the kids of either set of parents have finished packing their bags, they need to look at their parents and say "sure they love me and have good intentions but I'm obviously cast on my own resources anyway." Because you know what? I expect more than good intentions from authorities and leaders who stand up behind pulpits or who have little kids who need some SOUND JUDGEMENT from the people in charge. The "demonization" isn't about a lack of love, it's a lack of honesty and integrity called faith. What do you think our childhood would have been like if our parents plan for their lives had not involved 1-800-GODS-WILL plugged straight into their brains, "bow your head and close your eyes" as if it were the psychic friends network? Maybe we would have avoided the corn-fed heartland? Sure they did their best in the past, but I'm looking at the present, and saying "No more. My respect and tolerance for this practice from authorities ends here."