Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

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At some level I knew what he was going through, what he was dealing with, but as much as I tried to focus on the good and love him, it didn’t make any difference. The tragedy of life is that you can’t see then what you can see now. I know now that he was envious of me, but I couldn’t see that back then. All I could see was the anger and his inability to show me any approval for what I was doing, not resentment, jealousy, or a fear that maybe his first born son, a son he loved and admired so much, saw him as looking small and inadequate.

And yet, unlike my reaction to my mom, a part of me always knew that he was indeed proud of me. I would, every once in a while, hear from others the things that he was saying about me to them. But he was too stubborn to ever say these things directly to me and I was too stubborn to ever force the issue with him. So, while he played the tough guy with me, I think I knew that deep down he was proud of me, even in the face of his relentless verbal assaults. Sure, there was his demeaning mantra of “book smart, worldly stupid,” his outright dismissal of anything I ever said or wanted to try to achieve, and his saying I wasn’t nearly good enough for those types of things. Still, I think he was proud of me.