HOW THE MARK CAN MAKE OR BREAK YOU
Part II: RICHARD PRYOR

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"I never realized that people really liked me", says Richard Pryor in his autobiography.
In Peoria, Illinois, in Richard's extended family of con artists, pimps and prostitutes, the familiar refrain was: "Child, can't you see I'm busy!"
Richard's mother did not expect to be pregnant, nor did she want the baby. "At least she did not flush me down the toilet as some did", writes Richard.
Mother drank, argued and would be gone months on end. "As much as I wanted love and attention, I could not help but feeling I was a source of hardship for my parents".
"Why don't they take me to the game", he asked grandmother once. "Why Grandma"?
She looked at him. Then slapped him upside his head.
"Growing up was a minefield. I had to watch every step, but it was hard to remember all the time. So many things were impossible to understand that after a certain point you just quit trying. You dealt with the facts with survival. You didn't trust anybody. You watched your back. You said whatever you had to, to stay out of trouble."
School, church and neighborhood colluded with sacrificing the child and by the time Richard was twelve years old he had been raped, expelled, abused and victimized by the sting of racism.   "Am I going to be hanged, Mama?" "Go and play, boy," was Grandma's answer.
All Richard knew was tug of war. He married five women, seven times, the pattern mostly the same: first he beat her and then he worked hard to make her love him again.
Yet the most devastating civil war took place inside: one hand destroying what the other was forever building, wishing and deeply longing for.
Jennifer Lee Pryor too wondered in her memoir, if her mother could ever really love her.
On the family estate in Cropseyville, New York, the all-white, New England parents of well bred and privileged Jennifer, were equally out of control and thus unavailable to her.
Minus poverty and blatant racism, Jennifer was dealing with the same hell raising mother, the same absent father, the same emotional minefield.   Downing martinis, popping happy pills and throwing the furniture, mother was in and out mental institutions.   Father, a well respected lawyer, with ties to the highest echelons in government, simply withdrew and left it to Jennifer to take charge of the situation.   About her first marriage with Richard she says: "Each of us has had a painful childhood, which we have been dragging behind us like little red wagons filled with the leftovers and the souvenirs – pain, loneliness, rage.  We want to help each other with our love "
The intent was good, yet the compulsion to resurrect the marks, wounds and scars from childhood was stronger.   The compulsion is a natural unconscious way of attempting to heal the pain, finish things up and move on.   Deep down the belief is: this time it will be different, this time the other will love me.   Yet because we resurrect same old-same old, we get stuck in the merry go round (more in The Merry Go Round: Eric Clapton).  
Never mind Richard had been on the cover of Newsweek and hailed by Time as the new black superstar and movies projects were heaped at his feet.   Never mind he had money, mansions, women and two Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari amongst his cars and he piloted the plane himself to his vacation home on Maui.   Never mind he had been to beautiful Africa and met majestic people with their self-respect and pride still in tact.   It did nothing to help him recover from childhood, it did nothing to raise self-esteem or solve depression.  
Never safely loved, he was generous and told us he loved us.   Yet he was not going to be a fool and trust anyone to love him back.   Love equaled a broken heart and feeling something was scary and had to be kept at bay.   The neglect and abuse he suffered, marked how he saw the world and everyone in it, including himself.  The brilliant and brave man, who gave us the gift of laughter, exposed a hidden America and paved the way for many successful careers, had been brainwashed as a child to think he did not deserve.   Only one friend was allowed close: the forever reliable, soothing loving crack pipe.  "I fell in love with this pipe.  The pipe controlled my very being."
Going too far out too many times, not knowing how to come back or create something different, he set himself on fire during a drug binge, turning himself into a human torch.   The scars and pain he now had on the outside mirrored the ones on the inside.   Did he believe he received just punishment, was this an attempt at suicide, a way out, a scream for help, or all of the above?
When the multiple sclerosis assigned him to a wheelchair Richard believed God "struck him down". His image of God was marked by what was spoken in the family and in the land: God had become a punishing God, a God of retribution, conviction and sentence.   Yet the source of his tragic demise was the mark.   He who believed he was hardship for his parents, created hardship for himself.   He who had been burned so often, had learned to burn himself, literally.   All God did was saving his life over and over, giving him yet another wake-up call, giving him yet another try.
The wheelchair was, yes, tragic, but not a penalty. The wheelchair was the blessing in disguise, the opportunity to literally step back and chill out, to review life.
The fates had decided it was high time for something new and better.

We would like to think that Mr. Pryor's experience with mark and mimicry is extreme, yet the principle is the same for everyone: all of us are imprinted in our own unique way.  
We too are tied down by the tyranny of mark and mimicry.   Our compulsion to resurrect the wounds and scars from childhood is stronger too.   And of cause it is.   It is only natural to want to finish up unfinished business and move on.  
Yet stuck in the same old resurrection, our natural vitality, our spirit, pushing us forward to what we are capable of and need to become, is obstructed.   Free will is inhibited.   Free choice polluted.   Mind either too confused or too divided to be able to be crystal clear in its intent.   Thus we've lost control over our best life.  
It does not have to be this way.   We can get unstuck and take the big negative and turn it into a big positive. You can read in the article Breaking the Mold, Jumping of the Merry-Go-Round and Making a Bunch of Luck how to do so.

Quotes from:
*Pryor Convictions: and Other Life Sentences by Richard Pryor, 1995
*Tarnished Angel, A Memoir by Jennifer Lee, 1991