Final Installment- Memoir: Perfect Peter- Prologue; Are You Happy Now?
This is the final installment of my memoir prologue. If you’ve been reading, I want to thank you. If you’d like to stay in touch send me an email and we can chat about life, and how it’s sometimes hard, and sometimes wonderful. Take care of yourself.
I am currently searching for the right literary agent to represent my memoir, Perfect Peter (And why I hated him) which includes this prologue along with 30 or so chapters. (Table of Contents below)
One reason I’m sharing my memoir is because I have realized as a health coach, often, when we are struggling, like when trying to be healthier, our childhood may be holding us back. Until we address our past, our present and future may be affected.
Another reason is, when I shared it with friends, many said, “I feel the same. Can we talk?” (The answer is yes. Please contact me if compelled to. I welcome it.)
And, the most important reason; Right now, somewhere, an adult is harming a child. They may not know they’re doing it.
If what you read affects you, please reach out to me via email or phone, or leave a comment. My hope is to connect authentically with you, so we can support each other.
Caution, Dear Reader - Some of the content is graphic, and I have been told, disturbing at times. My goal is not to upset, but to share honestly. Only reflection and honesty have helped me glimpse what has eluded me for 50 years-happiness. Please read at your discretion.
*Most names have been changed.
Click here to read my memoir from the beginning.
Click here to read installment 13.
Excerpt:
“Your story is sad. Are you happy now, at the end of your writing? I love reading what you wrote, but I want to know that you’re alright, that we’ll all be alright, otherwise, what’s the point?”
Installment 14
It’s January, 2020. I’m finishing up the final chapters of this memoir. Last week I turned 50. In one week, 34 years ago, my father will have killed himself.
I’m grateful I followed my gut and shared this writing because my healing benefited immeasurably from readers comments and interactions. One wrote, “Childhood trauma is difficult to come face-to-face with, yet is so difficult to overcome years later. Your memoir is inspiring me to begin digging into some of the things that have shaped the person that I am, as I know that some of these things hold me back from truly experiencing life in the way that I would like to experience it. Thank you for that unintentional nudge and thank you for putting yourself out there. You're making a difference.”
The comments, though unexpected, were much welcomed, because they proved to me I wasn’t alone, validating what I experienced and felt. They didn’t know it, but when they wrote to me they were partnering in my healing; their words affecting me as much as they said mine affected them. Some also sent praise, which, because of the work I did over the past three years, I could now accept. I have humbly included some of it below, along with some of the courageous shares I received:
“I think so many feel the same but we often don’t share it. If only we knew, then maybe we would recognize it, and be less hard on others, and ourselves.”
“Peter, I admire your story and experienced much dysfunction growing up as well. I have a son that plays baseball and football, so this really hit home for me. I try to show him as much love, support, and encouragement as I can. I love him to death and try to be conscious of what I’ve been through, as well as stories like yours. I am not perfect in any way and I try my hardest not to be even though it’s embedded in us from our experiences. You’re a great man for rising above, changing the cycle, and sharing your story. I hope and pray it helps, and reaches others. Keep up the great work you’re doing brother.”
“I have read your installments over and over causing me to revisit my own childhood experiences and memories. After reading I visualized myself at the age of my own assault, and myself now. I saw myself hugging my younger self. I felt peaceful, like I integrated the hurt me into who I am today. Thanks for taking me on your journey.”
“Thank you for being brave enough to share your story! While there is so much tragedy and sadness in your words, there is also hope and redemption. Your conscious desire to not pass that life onto your children is something you should feel good about. Doing all the hard work to face your past takes a vulnerable strength. Verbal abuse controlled most of my life- starting with my mother. You never knew when it was going to strike, but when I t did it was cruel and damaging. It led to me being attracted to people with this same abusive qualities hidden beneath a caring exterior. I was drawn to men over and over and thought this was all normal until it almost broke me. Lots of therapy and my desire to change my kids lives gave me the strength to face it and recognize what it was and where it came from. I cared for my mom through a very painful death and she abused me right to the end. But learning the source of her abusiveness helped me come to terms with it. It was always fear and anxiety. Thank you again for sharing your scars. I’m contemplating writing my scars down now as a way to continue healing and moving forward.”
“Your "Memoirs" are truly healing for my soul. We will get together and chat soon. So appreciative of your transparency and the ability to engage me through your writing skills.”
“Your Perfect Peter Memoir caught my eye and I engaged with the information at the first installment. I have waited for each new installment with curiosity and anticipation. First I'd like to say, you are a good writer and you are able to capture the details of your discomfort in a very compelling way. But - what is really magnificent - is your story and its honesty. It touches me deeply. It has propelled me to continue my own personal journey and reminded me that this onion never gets fully pealed. I relate to the material in so many ways. My dad committed suicide with alcohol when I was 16. The mess in my house was constantly swept under the giant rug in the living room full of elephants. My family had no communication skills and found talking about anything of substance uncomfortable. I responded to my family situation with alcohol and with a need to find love at every corner flirting with danger and unhealthy behaviors for a long time. In my mid thirties - I received the gift of sobriety. I worked the steps and I write this today with 26 years of a clean and sober mind and body….I really just wanted to write to you to say thank you. And, to tell you to keep going. To tell you that this is important and inspired work. To tell you that you have made a difference in my life. One day at a time. One person at a time. That's how the healing goes. That's how this type of work works.”
And this, from a close family friend for over 30 years:
“I have been reading your memoir. I love that you wrote it and I hope that it has been helpful and therapeutic for you as you get to your Happy! When I read the 1st 3 installments I reached out to _____. I have struggled (and still do) with so much over the past 47 years personally and definitely over the past 14 years with all that my son has had to go through with his father. I relate to so much of what you have written. Different situations of course, but same feelings of depression and self doubt masked in strength and perseverance. Thank you for writing this. It is helping me. I would love to get the chance to talk to you sometime about things. I have never felt that anyone could ever really understand where I was coming from until I started reading your words. Love you Pete!”
When I emailed a reader, “I don’t plan on posting any more writing until I find the right publisher for this book,” she asks, “Wait, I feel like I’ve missed something. Did you share how your father died, or why you left your scholarship?” I write back, “What you read was just the prologue. The details are in the following 30 or so short chapters, each a snapshot from my life describing the hurt, and how, with help, I healed.” But I must back up. She initially wrote, “I have been reading your memoir and it really pains me to read it. I had no idea of what you had gone through and all that you were keeping inside. Everyone has a story, everyone has things that they have suffered through, but you never learn of these things because they’re not usually talked about; they may be too painful to bring out into the open.” She should know. Several years ago she lost her only daughter to a brain tumor, suddenly. Her daughter left behind two young children, a husband, parents, and an only brother who has also been diagnosed with a brain tumor. She finishes, "You have the courage to lay bare all that is inside you; you are very brave for doing this. I hope that your memoir brings you the peace and happiness that you are seeking and deserve.” This person has lost one child to cancer, and while the other is in remission, she writes to me, to comfort and support me, to wish me peace and happiness. Were she here next to me, I’d hug her, and not let go.
'The examples above, and the one that follows, demonstrate how I could not have healed on my own. How I learned asking for help is not weakness.
With this one question a reader opened another door to a room I didn’t know I needed to look into. It happened a couple of months ago, sitting at a high top table in a Mexican restaurant, sipping salt rimmed margaritas, dipping chips into creamy guacamole. Unexpectedly, she leans forward, close, and asks a question I have not thought about once during my writing. She asks, “Is there a happy ending?”
“What?”
“Your story is sad. Are you happy now, at the end of your writing? I love reading what you wrote, but I want to know that you’re alright, that we’ll all be alright, otherwise, what’s the point?”
“Shit, I never thought about that. I just did the work because I was compelled to.”
“So. Are you happy now?” she asks.
“Sometimes,” I say, shrugging weakly, thinking that’s a reasonable answer.
She sighs, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘Sometimes.’ And you write some pretty sad things.”
Confession- Having felt a pervasive uneasiness, a foreboding of doom, a fear of being wrong, or in trouble, since my consciousness, I’m not sure what happy feels like. Reflecting if I ever felt happy in the past, I observe my default dysfunctional mind quickly replacing potential moments of happiness with impending dread; If something good happens, that means something bad is around the corner, so start worrying.
But, because of sessions with Frank, my therapist, working a 12 step program, this writing, and readers comments and support, all that has changed. How do I know? Because, I can now feel emotions. For example, when I’m with Kara, Bella, and Nicholas, observing their strengths, admiring the people they are becoming, admitting my faults and apologizing for past harms, I feel what I now know to be love. Smiling, I exhale, thankful my family’s generational pain stops with me. At work, connecting with a patient or client who says, with red eyes, “Thank you for listening. I’ve never shared this before,” I feel purposeful. After my 20 minute workout, a routine I created 20 years ago that still keeps me in the best shape of my life, I feel accomplishment. At my 12 Step meeting, when a newcomer sits and stares out, like a deer in highlights, after my three minute authentic share, thinking back to myself in that seat three years earlier, I feel growth as I welcome and encourage her, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it.” When I walk away from a writing session, though often sad, I feel recovery. Lying awake in my bed, the grief from my childhood seeping from my pores, my anxiety dissipating with it, I am reacquainted with my confidence. Sitting in Frank’s office, crying for the first time in 30+ years, in front of a man, I feel relief. When I open an email from someone who read this writing, and they ask, “Can we talk,” I feel connection. At the supermarket checkout, when my mother tries to hand the cashier her social security money, I quickly slide my card into the chip reader, grateful and I can pay for her bananas and bread, proud to be her son. But happy? I don’t know yet.
So I start the final phase of my work, exploring happiness, and what often comes with it, having fun. Writing it that way makes it sound formal, not happy. Honestly, I’m not sure where or how to start to be happy. I’ve been so serious my whole life, a worrier, an overachiever and perfectionist, not a boast, and sense happy and those traits don’t play well together.
Frank and I talked about grief at my last session, and how when I wake, lying in my bed, as a result of this work, I feel grief seeping from my pores, like the white plume that envelopes dry ice, slowly spreading out from my body, covering my bed, gently falling over the sides to the floor, eventually dispersing into nothingness. He reminds me, as grief ends consider replacing it with another emotion, like gratitude. Will that lead to happiness? I think.
He shares articles and TED talks about self compassion and rewriting our story. Will they help me be happy? I think.
I think of Thomas Jefferson in 1775, sitting in the rented room of a Philadelphia bricklayer, working on a small mahogany desk he himself designed, staring out of a window overlooking an open field that will one day soon become the birthplace of independence, contemplating happiness being something to be pursued.
Were he alive, Jefferson might nod in agreement when the Dalai Lama shares, “"I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness.”
Because of my 12 step program, I can now believe a higher power loves me, and always did. That leads me to seek, and I find; the Bible says happiness is a byproduct of loving God.
When I ask friends, many tell me they believe happiness is a choice. That makes me defensive, because that means I’ve chosen not to be happy all my life. Wait, that can’t be right. I also know many “good’ people who also struggle with their happiness. In the US, there was a 50% increase in unhappiness reported from 1990 to 2018. over 17 million Americans suffer from major depression. How many more suffer from minor depression? What’s going on? Are we all deciding to be unhappy? Because I did this work, and spoke openly with many others including friends, therapists, and doctors, I was continually surprised, after I admitted my unhappiness, many admitted their own. Using my writing as a reference, they said, “I feel like you wrote,” using words and phrases like anxious, worried, scared, nervous, phony, self doubt, not good enough, etc., to describe their dominating thoughts.” When we spoke deeper, each one could point to at least one episode from their past, specifically childhood, and identify where their unhappiness may have started, or happiness ended.
If I learned one thing being on this journey of three years and counting, many of us were hurt as children, either physically or verbally, and what I’ve come to observe as the cruelest of ironies, often it was done by a desperate, well meaning parent who did not want their child to suffer like they had. Though misguided, that leaves space for empathy.
Determined to learn more about happiness, I go back to one of the three people I sense provide me more happiness than anyone, or anything, when I’m ready to receive it. I ask Bella, “Honey, how do you know when you’re happy?”
“You know, it’s a feeling you get, dad.”
“But how do you know?”.
“You just know.”
“How?”
“You just do,” She says
So I start with that- Feeling.
Thanks for reading, goodbye for now, and please take care of yourself.
Peter, (or Pete), (or Panagiotis), (or Theodoros)
Nyack, New York, 2020
Coming Soon!
PERFECT PETER (And why I hated him)
Table Of Contents
Prologue
Part 1 Names, Flames, and a Desire for Fame
Chapter 1 What’s Your Name?
Chapter 2 The Fire
Chapter 3 Death and Notoriety
Chapter 4 Becoming Perfect
Chapter 5 The Funeral
Chapter 6 My Father
Chapter 7 My Mother
Chapter 8 My Children
Chapter 9 A Night Alone With My Father
Part 2 My Father’s Lessons
Chapter 10 “Your Mother’s a Whore”
Chapter 11 “Daddy Loves You and Beats You”
Chapter 12 “Hitler Was a Good Man”
Chapter 13 “Blacks are Fucking Lazy”
Chapter 14 “If You Drink, Smoke, Do Drugs or Gamble, I’ll Kill You”
Chapter 15 “School is a Waste of Time”
Chapter 16 “Fuck Any Girl You Want, They’re All Sluts”
Chapter 17 “I’ll Kill You If You Tell Anyone We’re On Welfare”
Chapter 18 “You’re Not a Good Baseball Player”
Chapter 19 “I’ll Kill You if You Play Football Again”
Chapter 20 “If Your Sister Sleeps With a Guy, Kill Her, and the Guy”
Chapter 21 “My Customer is An Idiot. I Should be the President”
Chapter 22 “Fuck You, God”
Chapter 23 More Lessons
Part 3 Understanding
Chapter 24 Love, Unexpected
Chapter 25 My Parents
Chapter 26 Hitting Bottom
Chapter 27 Frank, My Therapist, and Awakening
Chapter 28 Recovery
Chapter 29 Grief
Chapter 30 Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and Art Imitating Life
Chapter 31 Second Born Son
Chapter 32 Conclusion
Appendix
A Night with My Son
Recurring Nightmares
Family Photos
Newspaper Articles