The Decision

The Decision

Ivy Gaiser

California Institute of Integral Studies

             

              William Jack made the decision to leave his troubled homeland at the dawn of the 19th century because he couldn't handle the constant fighting between the Catholics and Protestants. He was troubled by his family's role in the displacement of so many native Irish, although he also felt a deep connection to the land where his family had been for a hundred years. William bid his family farewell and hopped aboard a ship headed for America to seek a new life.

              Had William chosen to stay in Ireland, he would have seen a comfortable life as a member of the privileged class of Protestants. Instead he decided to start over in a foreign land many months away from his homeland. He risked his life in a difficult sea voyage which saw many fellow passengers succumb to disease and despair. Happily, William made it to Pennsylvania in one piece, and he met a woman on the voyage whom he would marry after a brief courtship.

              Unhappily, William found himself, in Pennsylvania, re-enacting the lives of his ancestors who first came to Ireland as part of the Ulster Plantation. For William it was conflicts with the native peoples of Pennsylvania that made it a difficult life. At times there was an uneasy peace, as William and his fellows played middle-men between the indigenous people and the American government, and other times they were at war with the natives, fighting over land rights.

              It seems to be a common occurrence throughout history that people repeat the worst mistakes of those who came before them. So Jack left Ireland to start fresh, thinking that he could just find some unoccupied land for himself and a wife and children, and instead he found himself displacing the native people in his new land as well. On the one hand he wanted things to be peaceful and yet he would not give up what he thought was his right to his own land.

              William Jack was a confused man who tried to do the right thing, but inevitably others were hurt. As William's son Thomas grew up, he received mixed messages about what was the right and the wrong thing. On the one hand he learned the importance of family and taking care of his own people, and yet he lived through wars and participated in the dislocation of thousands of native people. Thomas was also subject to the increasingly violent and unpredictable behavior of his father.

              There were similar patterns throughout the various settlements of Mercer, PA. People who thought of themselves as rather upstanding citizens were slowly getting twisted inside from the hurt they were inflicting on others. They may not have been aware of the sources of their common demons, but common they were. So you have two families that have now been in America for a couple generations, and their children marry. These two individuals have similar family histories which are then passed on to their children, and so on and so forth, until you come to the 20th century where alcholics are beating their children and drowning in beer because they don't know what they feel anymore. They don't know what's real inside of themselves. The only thing that keeps these people from taking their own lives out of depression is the love for their families and the love of music they've brought from the old country.

              The next generation grows up and resorts to the only path they've been shown by their forbears, which is the path of alcoholic numbness. Perhaps this child is one who is especially bright and sensitive and he is beaten into submission by his angry father for one too many years. This bright and sensitive child, full of creativity and madly in love with his piano, is taught that it's not okay to feel. He is taught to push his feelings down into the pit of his stomach and from there he can drown them in beer.

              It is this child who beats and mentally and emotionally traumatizes his petite little wife. This child of a man is completely separated from those aspects of himself that make him a human. He is afraid of what he thinks and feels and in his anger and frustration he goes blind to his own as well as his wife's humanity.

              Michael, for this is the man's name, soon loses his wife and young children after one too many threats against his wife. He is left alone with his rage and his disease. He drinks more and more until his liver is fighting for life. Michael is lonely and talks of his children and his regret while fused to his favorite bar-stool. Life becomes a daily struggle with a rotting liver and nothing but sadness, and Michael decides to save his family the trouble of a burial and he sets his house on fire before shooting himself in the head.

              Michael is survived by 3 children by two different women. The children struggle with the legacy of self-abuse passed down through the generations. They fight for equilibrium and find that perhaps they are winning this uphill battle after all. They have taken the drive for creativity and made that the focus of life.

              Michael's oldest is a visual artist/clothing designer/musician/all-around creative type who lives and dies to create and express and has dealt with self-harm and suicidal thoughts since the age of 10. The second born turns to the written word to make sense of the world. This child is as sensitive as the father they never knew, and driven to express everything happening inside, intuitive centuries of struggles passed down that are begging to breathe fresh air and escape from the depths of the collective gut. Child number three is separate from the older siblings, never having met them. She struggles to make sense of her life and spends time drawing faeries and navigating the world of substances as well. She looks to the older sisters to make some sense of the world, now that they are in contact as adults.               These children of abuse are looking for a new way to be in the world; A sense of place within their own hearts is the path to freedom from the past. Demons are faced and embraced and a healthier vision of reality is the result. I, for one, am grateful that I get to be the one to end cycles of abuse passed down through multiple family lines. I am a new beginning.