The Fear That Your Past is Your Best

"The fear that your past is your best" - Robbie Coltrane

I'm not exactly sure when, but one day my 50 year old father traded in his life of being a hard working business man for the life of a 22 year old frat boy. Now let me make something clear...he doesn't actually think he's 22. He still goes to work (sometimes) and does other adult things. Now he just does them like a teenage boy would. Let me give you a few examples. He plays a game with the water company and doesn't pay the bill until they shut the water off and show up at our door demanding a payment...just for fun, the hallway upstairs is now a sea of laundry, there is nothing but beer in the fridge, he bought a "guard" dog and he has a new obsession with guns. 


I recently had surgery and stayed at my moms for a few months, leaving my 14 year old brother and dad by themselves. This is when the transformation happened. All they do now is watch movies and play video games in their underwear. Although it's not a pretty sight to see, it's nothing I can't handle.


Sigmund Freud once said, "If there are quarrels between the parents or if their marriage is unhappy, the ground will be prepared in their children for the severest predisposition to neurotic illness". My parents have been divorced for nine years, and from my point of view, Freud had it all backward. I thought turmoil and divorce has clearly sent my dad into a downward spiral of insanity, not me. My mom and I automatically assumed this behavior was a result of the current (and unusual) lack of women in my father's life. As usual, we were sure everything was about us, but as I did some research I realized this wasn't the case at all.


It turns out my dad is a part of a group classified at "middle age". These so called middle age people are in "a period of adjustment between the potentialities of the past and the limitations of the future. An emotional rebellion has been observed in some persons, sometimes referred to as a mid-life crisis".  So while my mom and I have been attributing this childish behavior to the divorce and my lack of presence in his life, it really doesn't have much to do with us at all. He's just another dad wishing he was a kid again.