Day 19 - Father knows best

My Father's Day story doesn't have an UNhappy ending but I am not going to give you the cotton candy version either. I have a great man in my life who I do call dad. I love him. I know that he loves me. I know that I could go to him with anything and he would listen to me in his own way. We certainly have a special relationship but I do not delude myself into thinking that it is the same kind of relationship that he has with his other kids; the ones he sired or the ones he married into. I also know that this is not a fault of his. This is a relationship that could be a lot stronger, a lot closer and the hold out here is me. This is not my first go round with a father figure, and while it has technically been the longest, the first two left such deep gouges in my soul that I will never be able to fully commit myself to a male parent.  The scars are so deep that I don't even feel a genuine longing for that type of relationship. I watch other people, specifically my female friends, to see what they are like with their dad at it is utterly foreign to me. And it is not just the Daddies Girls, although it seems like that is more often the case, but most daughters seems to have a deep connection to their father or the man that raised them. All you have to do is look at facebook today to see the number of people who updated to their status to say that their father was "the best in the whole world" and ... well you get the sentiment. And I am not shitting of that AT ALL. I think it is WONDERFUL. It makes me happy that there are so many great dads out there. I just don't get it. I don't crave it. I don't miss it. It is like the scar gave that part of my brain/heart/soul amnesia.
And this is something that I believe pretty much started out of the womb. Maybe everything that I heard while I was in there started to prepare me to one day feel like a father was lovely like an uncle or a grandfather but not a necessity, not like a mother.  I remember being 5 or 6 and crawling up into my mothers lap, wrapping my arms around her neck, staring lovingly into her face and saying "Mommy, I love you so much more than I love Daddy." I wasn't trying to be mean. I wasn't trying to curry favour; it was a simple, honest childlike statement of fact. I didn't see any use for my father. He did nothing beyond make our lives difficult that I could tell. I didn't hate him. I hated how he treated the people I loved but he was always good to me when he was present and sober. I think he certainly scared me, specifically when he was drinking but I didn't hate him. I still don't. But I think that is because by then the amnesia had already started to take hold. Watching for so long the insanity of my parents relationship. Watching my alcoholic father spiral further and further out of control. Each emotional cut added to the scar tissues so by the time I was 6 I was already going numb.
Things got worse after my mother died. Someday maybe we'll talk about it but not now.
When I was 13 I found out he wasn't my father at all. I found out that the scaring had started even earlier by a biological who was only a whisper of a memory.  But then I found a gap in my scar tissue and I let the idea of this biological father in and he grew in my brain, along with my hunger for a father, a REAL father, a good father. I became convinced THAT was why I had never truly loved my dad, I knew at a genetic level he wasn't my own. I was a teenager what did I know. My life became a song from Annie ...

Maybe far away
Or maybe real nearby
He may be pouring her coffee
She may be straightning this tie!
Maybe in a house
All hidden by a hill
She's sitting playing piano,
He's sitting paying a bill!

Betcha they're young
Betcha they're smart
Bet they collect things
Like ashtrays, and art!
Betcha they're good --
Why shouldn't they be?
Their one mistake
Was giving up me!

So maybe now it's time,
And maybe when I wake

They'll be there calling me "Baby"
Maybe.

Betcha he reads
Betcha she sews
Maybe she's made me
A closet of clothes!
Maybe they're strict
As straight as a line...
Don't really care
As long as they're mine!

So maybe now this prayer's
The last one of it's kind...
Won't you please come get your "Baby"


Maybe

He became this epic, perfect, handsome, doctor/scientist/humanitarian Father who was out there somewhere looking for me. Like I said I was kid, what did I know. It didn't matter that my brothers tried to gently warn me, or that my Auntie tried did her best to give me a truthful picture without hurting me. They didn't know him like I did. They didn't know how he'd changed.  He just needed to find me and we would be a family. 

a deep, dirty cut, the kind that is so deep that your pain receptors can't cope so they turn off. I don't feel sad about it, I am not angry although if I push on it a little harder than normal, like have done in writing this I feel a negative emotion that my brain steps in and deflects before I ever get a chance to qualify it.

I guess in the reading of this it may come off as sad, but sincerely that is not how I feel. I love Dave, that's my foster father. I think he is truly one of the great men of this world. I look up to him, I am very loyal to him, it was important to me that he like the man that I married. A few years ago when he had a heart attack I  felt my whole world come to a crashing halt. I can't even contemplate a world without him; but my heart will not let me take that one last step, the one that makes you feel fully 100% accepted by him because as long as I have one toe out the front door I can trick myself into believing that I am safe.