A Legacy of Affliction

After a layoff last year, I decided, with the support of my loving wife, to pursue a career as a writer. I see writing as a continuation of my teaching and an outlet for my native abilities.

This new phase of my life can be a living hell. I berate myself for not bringing in enough money to support my large family. Feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness and mistrust of my fledgling abilities crop up regularly. The depression I experience changes daily. One day I cannot look my wife in the eye and say that I am a full partner in making our life work. Another I feel more hopeful that I will come out of this phase whole.

Writing is an affirmation of my talent. It allows me to build esteem related to that skill and the confidence that comes with it. I am doing something that is an organic part of me, as opposed to taking jobs for which I have no passion.

The only other thing I do that generates a similar feeling is coaching basketball. Both give me a direct connection to my inner self. There is also a suspension of the outside world in that there is no clock and virtually nothing can distract me.

Somehow this process has brought both relief and willingness to speak openly of my depression—something unusual for a male to do, I'm told. To me this proves there is a higher power.

Depression has a history in my house. My father's father, I am told, was manic-depressive back in the days when those words rarely appeared together or separately. He was a stonecutter, a trade he learned in his native Italy and continued when he moved here in 1915.

My cousin, the family historian, informs that from 1929 until the local shipyards came alive in 1940, "Pop" was unable to work. To his torpor was added the shame and humiliation of watching his wife, my grandmother, and her mother support the family by cooking and taking in work as seamstresses. My father, born in 1917, helped out as much as he could through the Depression, big D and little d.

My grandfather was actually born in the U.S., in the marble region of Vermont, where his father, also a stonecutter, was working at the time to send money home to Italy. Before he was a year old, my grandfather was sent home with his mother. There he stayed until he was 16. But in his formative years, he had to endure the shame of watching his mother carry on intimate relations with many townsmen. I am not passing judgment, only retelling the story told to me.

At 16 my grandfather joined his father in the quarries of Vermont. One day, he broke down and told his father of his experiences at home in Italy. Two days later his father dove into a frigid Vermont river and killed himself.

Into his own marriage my grandfather carried the double burden of shame he felt about his mother's behavior and guilt over his father's suicide. He begat two daughters and a son.

My father was abused throughout his youth, especially by his fanatically Catholic mother, until he was big enough to fend her off. From an early age he was fat, perhaps seeking in food both the bulk to defend himself and the comfort he could not find at home. As a certified public accountant, he specialized in the restaurant business.

Well-meaning and often charming, my father escaped his heritage as much he could by marrying a non-Italian non-Catholic; he anglicized his name from Vittorio Giuseppe to Victor John Corsini. But the chain of affliction was unbroken.

My father abused my sister physically and sexually. My sister never forgave my father for his cruelty nor my mother for her inability to stop him. My mother was verbally abused often and in my presence. I was both physically and verbally abused whenever my father got angry. My father was an extremely harsh critic with a volcanic temper from whom I rarely heard an encouraging word. I was a good student and athlete but nothing was good enough to please him.

As bad as I got, I still feel guilty, because my sister got worse.

When my father raged, my mother took refuge in books and quoted Aristotle. Or she turned popular music against him. I can still remember her running to the bedroom in tears, singing "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair." My father retaliated by selling the hi-fi.

My mother collected what my father deemed junk. Periodically he would sweep it all into a shopping bag and deposit it in the garbage can. I am told that the drunks of the family came from her side and that their parties were full of character and fine commentary. My dad's folks were reserved; my mom's were earthy, bawdy and violently celebratory. Nice combo!