There are several times of the year when I let life consume me, and I have to stop and take a breath. It is usually followed by a short bout of depression and then I am back to my usual cranky self. Right now, I am in the middle of my brief trip down depression lane, and hoping to reach the end of it soon.
What I usually do is take an inventory of life… I stop and think about my past and what I want for my future. I cry at the drop of a hat.. things that shouldn’t affect me but do. It sucks, but I think its therapeutic. It reminds me I am human.
It also reminds me that I am not my past.
Right now I am struggling with parenting issues. I consider my mother to be one of the most amazing women on the planet. I adore this woman so very much and honestly can not fathom what I would do without her here. Just thinking about it gets me all choked up. People are constantly telling me I need to “prepare myself” for it, but no thanks. Every time I think about it I see myself just paralyzed… I don’t know how I would move forward.
My father and I have never seen things the same way. I love him because he is my father, but outside of that I feel close to nothing… And that saddens me. He is one of those people who believes that I should do as he says and not what he does. He was never (in my opinion) a good husband or father.
I am sure in his mind he remembers being there as a father should, and taking care of me and my mother… but it’s not factual. Life was basically mom and I and even though he lived with us, it was as if we had a third wheel who occasionally stopped in to say hi.
I spent my youth secretly wishing my mother would get a divorce but she never did. She would later tell me she had made the choice to stay thinking it would be the best thing for me. It wasn’t. Or maybe it was… how would I know?
I have no doubts that 80% of the awful decisions I made with the men of my past were directly related to my upbringing. Watching him do as he pleased and my mother not really putting up much of a fight… I figured that was the norm. And granted I never saw my father hit my mother1 but for me, it was all the same. I did not know where the line in the sand should be drawn… I mean if it was ok for my boyfriend to cheat, it must be ok for him to push me around.
My father used to beat my ass as a child… and even a teen. And I know I was a handful at time, but no where near as bad as I could have been. Or maybe I was. My friends were drinking and doing drugs. I did neither. My friends were having tons of sex and getting pregnant… not me. I think it was a way for him to work out his frustrations with the shit he was doing. And the beatings were always worse when my mother wasn’t around.
Once I came home late from a school play. I was 4 minutes late, and as my boyfriend pulled up to let me out I saw the front door close. I got out of the car and decided to sit on the front porch and wait for my mother to come home. She worked the third shift and I knew she would be home any minute. But it just my unluck that she was working overtime. When I realized she wasn’t going to come home on time I got up the courage to knock on the door. My father opened it up with such anger, and before I could even speak he began slapping me around, punching me because I was late. He never allowed me the chance to explain that I was right outside and that I was just waiting for my mom because I saw him close the door…
I had welts on my back for days.
His big hand prints covered my body.
I had bruises.
And I am sure he has no recollection of this… or at least no memory of it being as bad as it was.
By the time my mother came home I was locked away in my room. She remained oblivious until I told her the following day. By then she had his version of it and just told me that I shouldn’t have come home late. I didn’t bother to try and tell her my side…
Since that day I closed myself off from both of them. And while I still share parts of my life with my parents, neither of them honestly know me. If I were to die tomorrow, I would have friends who would be sharing stories and I am sure for them it would be like listening to the life of a stranger. They know nothing about who I am or what makes me me. And that’s sad.
My mother recently sent me a letter asking me if she had done something wrong which is why there is such tension between us. As much as I would love to call my mother and speak to her everyday, I don’t. In fact I don’t even call twice a month. I let their calls go to my answering machine because I just don’t want to deal with him.
I guess what hurts the most after all this time… what still gets me down… what still keeps me broken after all these years is that he has never apologized for his actions. Because he is the adult, because he is my father, he is justified in his ill treatment of me. All of his cruel words are ok. The fact that he has watched me suffer through physical and emotional pain, and did nothing to even try to make it better… That he could act like it doesn’t matter…
And even after all these years, I just can’t overcome it. So I spend these weeks down and out.
And yet I still love him.
- and I am sure if he had she would have left [↩]
