The Right Man

Two Thousand and Six.

You kicked my ass. In a good way. You kicked it all the way to England, all over downtown LA, and then back to England again.

You gave me good sex, travel, and a bunch of different cocktails I'd never tasted before. (Hello WooWoo.)

I quit smoking with you, ate duck, Thai, and Curry for the first time.

(And it is because of this, 2006, that you have also helped me fit into a UK size 12, and showed me what I would look like with a full, plump ass. It was fun at first, but really, couldn't you have taken it with you when you left last night?)

You gave me a Kingdom, and the Eleventh of January.

I became a writer this year, a real one, because I finally let myself be one.

In 2006, my bank account was empty by July 3. I have made the least amount of money I've ever made since I've been able to work, and haven't been unemployed for so long since I was a student.

So, while I cannot lie and say I'd like to stay here forever, you'll go down as the best year yet.

By Christmas, I thought I had had enough lessons, and tests to call the year complete.

I have lost many people this year. None to death, but our friendships and relationships have died.

I have said goodbye, well, okay...I've said FUCK OFF to enough people this year, I'm sure I've set a "Getting Rid of Those in Your Life Who Are Worthless and Incredibly Stupid" record somewhere. Although, I've probably set it for the UK, and they'd strip me of my title because I'm a measly immigrant who is not worthy.

I've had to grow some big kahuna balls. Big, leathery ones that are built to endure long, Transatlantic flights, English Winters, and the disapproval of many English Women, Bay Area Yuppy Family Members, and Girls That Want To Throw Me A Hindu.

They've done me well, these balls. I've done a lot this year. And in return I get them regularly waxed, and buffed.

However, this past week I feel I need to get them bronzed or encrusted in Swarovski Crystals....

I've said goodbye to my dad.

He is alive, in California...probably at work, or maybe down at the gym. Or maybe spending time with his current girlfriend...I'm not sure.

I never really wanted to talk about my relationship with my dad, on here. Or anywhere. I always said if I did write a book, I would leave him out.

But, I don't see how I can just not mention it. It's like showing only a fraction of a "Before" picture and expecting the "After" to be appreciated and understood.

So, my dad.

My dad, is not a parent. He is a "parent", but title and definition, but a real farther and responsible adult, he is not.

My parents have been divorced for almost nine years.

In those nine years, I learned to see my parents as human.

As human beings who sometimes falter. Who make mistakes. Who love, Who get their heartbroken. Who fall.

And my dad, has fallen more times that he has chosen to get up.

He has chosen to be angry and resentful, more times than he has tried to be an hopeful.

And he has been an adult with no sense of parental responsibility, who has let his children suffer from his lack of effort towards being a father, a dad, and a protector and provider of his family...no matter what a "family" looks like.

When my parents got divorced, I always remember watching the movie Mrs.Doubtfire, where Robin Williams would do anything, and everything, just to be with his children.

I think it's at the end, where custody is taken away from him, that he looks at the judge and says, "But they're my kids...They're my air, without them...I can't breathe."

Sure, I didn't expect my Dad to cross-dress and pretend to be our nanny (like we ever had nannies growing up...) but just...

I always wanted to be Daddy's Little Girl.

We used to sing together. When I was 7, he played guitar while I sang Sunrise, Sunset at my Aunt and Uncle's Wedding.

I used to want to be a country singer, and he'd play the guitar while I butchered many Shania Twain and Patsy Cline songs, with my preteen voice.

I used to think I got my sense of humor from him, my voice...More than just my nose and my cheeks.

But he never let me be a Little Girl...

I was given the weight of the discontent he felt with himself, and his life, and with me, simply because I did not worship him.

I saw his mistakes. I saw his anger, his immaturity, his lack of responsibility. But worst of all, I saw his lack of interest in taking care of me.

All I ever wanted from him was effort...For him to try.

For me to be worthy of an unconditional love. For me to be enough, just the way I was, and for him to want to be a better father, and man to himself.

I wanted him to call me everyday, and to maybe want us two weekends in a row. Maybe he'd stop by one of my softball practices and surprise me.

The older I got, the more decisions I wanted to make for myself, the worse of a daughter I became in his eyes. I never did enough to prove that I loved him. I never called enough for him to believe that I was happy to be his daughter...Or that I missed him. 

I never showed enough appreciation for the "sacrifices he made" as a parent.

I was always guilty. Always wrong. Always lacking something.

I wanted to see him less and less, for every time I did see him I was on eggshells, trying to not piss him off, have him bring up my mom, or tell us how "down" he was feeling lately.

I don't want to go through every story of pain, or emotional abuse, the times he'd hang up on me, or leave me crying...

I don't want to write about the Christmases I had to legally spend with him, crying myself to sleep because I knew my mom was home on Christmas alone, and I just wanted to be with her.

I don't want to dwell in his anger. The fear I felt when he lost his temper. The constant guilt I was made to feel that he was alone.

I cannot describe my anger and disgust with the fact that he was unemployed for over a year, because he was too scared to look for another job.  The back pay in child support that he still owes.

I am disgusted at his lack or respect for his role as an adult. The lack of respect he has for himself.

The lack of respect he has his role as a father.

I have step father, who in the past 3 years in my life has shown me what it means to be a father. He may not be perfect, and didn't raise me. But he has provided me with love, and security when I needed it. He is always there, and has been there whenever I've needed him. He is there, when I do not need anything, but simply want to watch TV with him and have a beer. He has healed and taken care of my mother, and is a good husband. My sister and him do not get along perfectly, but he has given her support in ways I don't' think she can quite grasp yet, at her young, selfish age.  

That is more than my father has given me....because he has made the unconscious decision to revel in his own dispair, fear, and depression.

He doesn't have house for us to visit him in, as he blames his ex-girlfriend (who was like second mom to us) for breaking up with him and taking away money, that was never his.

He has not accepted responsibility for us, or more specifically the mistakes he has made with me.

My dad is a narcissit, and suffers from depressive disorders...

Once I finally learned (from my own therapist) what a narcisstic parent is, and that there is such a thing as emotional abuse, and that I'm a victim of my dad's emotional abuse..... I had to make a choice.

I've known for the past 2 years, that I would eventually have to break whatever ties I had with him.

The only way for the pain, disappointment, and hurt to go away, would be to kill  whatever hope I had that he would change.

Whatever glimmer of expectation that kept me going back to him, I had to suffocate and let die.

I could either go through my life, pretending, and expecting that one day, he will love me unconditionally. That he would be responsible, and apologize for the hurt...the tears, the disappointment, and the guilt he has caused me...And then be dropped over and over by him.

I needed to learn he would never catch me. He would never cushion my fall.

I barely saw him last year, which was my own decision. A decision he didn't fight.

I saw him 4 times before I left this past April. I called him when I got to England...a call that was never returned.

An eCard on my birthday. Promises of "care packages" he'd send me, once he had enough cash.

Nevermind the fact he could call us for free on Skype.

 Nevermind wanting to know our address and spending the $2 it would take to send me a real letter. 

I got silence from June to October.

A belated birthday card when I saw him for 2 hours in October, with $150 to make up for the silence, and a "So, are you marrying him beacuse you love him, or just to stay in the country" when I told him I was getting married.

Then, on December 27 I got an email...Asking what he's done for me to ignore him.

He claimed he lost my email address over the Summer.

"What have I done?" he said.

While I have known that this day would come, the day where I would lay it out for him, where I would give him a golden opportunity to walk away or apologize and get his act together and realize that he will lose his daughter if he doesn't accept responsibility and fucking WAKE UP.

I say and tell everyone that I was afraid to tell him why I was upset with him all these years because I didn't want to hurt him.

That I didn't want him to get more depressed, and possibly kill himself. That I was afraid the thought that he has been such an awful father would break him, and the thought that he hurt his daughter, his little girl so badly would cause him the greatest pain...And I didn't want to cause him pain.

But really,I knew that this wouldn't happen...

I knew that he could never accept responsiblity or aplogize, and take blame.

And how could I handle that? How could  you handle that?

The fear I felt, was the fear of hurting myself with my own expectations.

...So, I wrote him back, a day later. Basically explaining all of the disappointment, anger, hurt, and pain that he has caused and inflicted over the past 21 years, but especially the 9 that has half assed as a human being.

I did not hold back, as I had nothing to lose.

I'm telling you all of this now, because I really don't have anything to lose, do I? And this is all very sad. Very, very sad. Because, you are my Dad. My father who doesn't really know how to be a parent. And that hurts, it hurts me more than it could ever hurt you.
 
I forgive you. I forgive that you don't know how do do this.
 
But, I'm choosing not to live with that hurt anymore.

In return, I got back excuses. Excuses, and more excuses. He addressed every financial issues, and claims he DID pay every single month of child support (there are many,many  court papers that say otherwise) and that I will never understand the sacrifice he made for me, and that I cannot talk to him about what it means to be a father, until I am a parent.

...I am a CHILD.

I AM YOUR CHILD!

I can tell you everything about what it is like to have a father that will not allow his daughter to just simply be loved.

I do NOT NEED TO BE A PARENT to understand unconditional love.

I am a daughter. I am YOUR daughter. I am a sister.

I will soon be a wife.

One day I will be a mother.

And YOU will not be there for any of it.

I am walking myself down the aisle.

 My children will never know that pain. That anger, and the bitter disappoinemtn that I was forced to feel.

I will never have a daughter that isn't allowed to be Daddy's Little Girl.

I will never have a son, that knows the pain of disappointment when his Father is not at his baseball games. 

So do not tell me that I cannot speak of parenting to the man that claims to be my father.

 I have lost my father, because I have given him up.

I do not know if I love him. I do not know if I truely forgive him.

And that is my burden, now. My burden is dealing with his absence, which will be far less painful than dealing with his presence.

What I do know, is that I feel ligther.

The question of "Will he...?" has been answered. The answer is "Never".

And I am strong enough to face a future without the comfort of my expectations.

I have the edgy, sharp honesty of reality to hold onto..While it is less comforting, at least I know it is real.

....And so now, a new year.

I am getting married.

I have cut myself loose from the thorned vines that have held me to my abuse, and disappointing past.

And now we move forward.

Always forward, always up...

And always strong.

Never mind the past pain.

I know how to love unconditionally...

And have learned what it's like to be loved unconditionally.

And from now on, that is all that matters.

"So many years have gone by
Always strong, tried not to cry
Never felt like I needed any man
To comfort me in life
But I'm all made up today
A veil upon my face
But no father stands beside me
To give this bride away"
.

 

 **The first time I heard this song, I started bawling in the car like the lead actress in a Lifetime movie. It is beautiful. And speaks the things I am sometimes afraid to say....