TA Life Script Exercise
The exercise was to create a writing, drawing or other art work. The suggestion was to include a story from childhood, probably fictional, which grabbed you. Select the character with which you identified. What were their strengths and weaknesses? How did they relate to others? How relevant is this to your life now.
I really don’t relate to stories by relating to a figure in a story. So I wrote about that:
TA Life Script
I didn’t play with toys. They were objects to me. My brother would play with cars. Brrrm, brrrm. He was weird. I would see if I could build a fast track for them. It worked. My brother would spend hours pushing cars down the tracks.
My brother had an action man. My dad said that they were dollies for boys, and so sissy. I didn’t play with action men. My brother did. He was strange.
I learned how to make things. I would make puzzles from wood and wire. I would carry them around in my school bag. If there was a boring time, I could let other kids use them.
I would learn to use a sewing machine with my mum. But stop when dad came home. It was sissy. I would learn to bake with my mum. I learnt to read from recipe books. But stop when dad came home. You get the drift.
I learnt music. That was respectable. It probably was sissy, but it had bragging rights. So I learnt music that I would have to practise. Music dad would hate.
I could go outside and play manly games with my dad, but he would see how hard he could throw the balls at me and my brother. At ten I helped my dad break up hardcore and lay a concrete drive for the house. We worked for days. At the end the drive was done and level. I accidentally walked on the wet concrete.
My dad saw it and threw a spade at me. I jumped. It hit. It scarred my ankle. I still have that scar, and all the others.
He is now dead.
My brothers ‘happy’ memory of him is having a cricket ball thrown at him.
I don’t have that many happy memories of him.
My dad’s life script was that no-one like him. I wonder why.
And then I uncovered the memories when he REALLY shamed me.
My script was/is that I am not OK and I have to work extra hard to be accepted and that I am not worthy of love except for things I do and I am not a real man.