Yet under the surface of normality a deep secret of anger and victimization is buried
But other persons are able to keep up a surface appearance of functionality; they hold jobs, they get married, and they have children. Here are the dark roots of symptom after symptom of secret resentment for the father .
Addictions (alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, bling, pornography, etc.) allow them to feel filled when they are really empty; thus they feel nothing .
Argumentativeness prevents them from accepting truth, which includes the truth that their father has failed them; thus they accept nothing .
Immodesty (dressing so as to reveal the body rather than clothe it with dignity; or making the body into an object with tattoos, piercings, and unnatural hair styles and colorings) prevents them from respecting their own bodies; thus they respect nothing .
Mental confusion (often expressed by forgetting things or as difficulty with math) prevents them from engaging with the signs and symbols of life; thus they engage with nothing .
Procrastination prevents them from stepping out into the world they don?t know how to negotiate in the first place; thus they accomplish nothing .
Sexual preoccupation (whether as self-created mental fantasies, pornography, lust, or sexual acts) prevents them from experiencing emotional intimacy; thus they are intimate with nothing
In the end, all these ?nothings,? taken together, lead to the nothingness of death. On the one hand, the death is symbolic death , which keeps a child emotionally disabled as punishment for his or her anger. On the other hand, the death is real death ?through slow self-sabotage or through outright suicide?by which the child, in making herself or himself the ?missing one,? draws attention away from the truth that the father has been missing from the child?s life all along.