Growing Pains

The sun sits low in the sky during early autumn in Scotland - it seems to travel horizontally rather than in an arch, and the light it casts is like rich, golden honey. It drips over the world slowly and makes everything thick and hazy. When I think of my dad I think of this period; the gateway between the last, dying ebbs of the summer and the first gasps of autumn. I think of the dusty, cracked roads somewhere between the outskirts of the town and the forgotten byways past the last street lights. I think of campfires, tents, scraped knees, a hot, musty car, the smell of cigarette smoke and sharp aftershave and...

I think of the moment he disowned me.

And every time I do it's like a kick in the gut so powerful that three years later I still tear up. I still wonder what I did to deserve it, and I know that the answer is nothing. Does that sound strange or unlikely? I'm sure it does, but I think it's the truth. I suppose you can make up your own mind.

In his late teens and early twenties, my father was in the army, the name probably doesn't mean much to most people these days but he trained at Deep Cut Barracks. This was before the infamous incidents, of course, but whenever he spoke about his time there it was brief, curt, and sparse in detail; a world away from the blindingly bright man who can weave riotous stories from the most mundane events. Discharged, possiblly dishonourably, he lived first with family, with my mother and me, with his brother, and finally on the streets of Glasgow.

I grew up without him. He was a passing specter that came and went as he pleased. I have a vivid memory of him turning up hours late to a primary school parents' day, hopping the fence in a leather trench coat with a beat-up guitar in hand to make small talk with the teacher and leaving before it was done. Another of him telling me not to wave at children from my school when we drove by because "they'll think you're only waving because you're in the car" (whatever that meant). Another of swimming against the current of the river in Strathyre with my cousin while he stood on the shore watching - my lilo (an inflatable dolphin with a demented smile) had floated into the river and been caught in a patch of stillness. I asked him to get it and he told us to retrieve it ourselves. He taught me to swim in theory, but this moment taught me to swim in reality. That was the moment the seed was planted; the seed of mistrust. The seed of self-reliance.

When I was small told me He would take care of me and guide me - and protect me. I felt so lucky, so sure of those facts until I got old enough to need actions that matched his words. His magnanimous patience and praise became brittle when all the sharpness he instilled in me started to cut him, too. As I got older, our relationship eroded, and I've never been able to figure out whether it was because he couldn't deal with having a child that was now a woman or a result of deteriorating mental health. Perhaps both - the thing about my father is this: he is, or at least we believe he is (because he and the truth are tenuous friends at best) a paranoid schizophrenic, potentially with PTSD.

My engagement broke down in 2017/18 and I lost the house I had just sunk every penny and all my credit into. It went to my ex, and I called Dad panicking about my dogs. They were all I was walking away with, in my mind, and my ex was refusing to sign them over. I asked dad to come to the house with me to collect my things and reason with my ex - a large man commands more respect from a large man. If my ex wanted to scream and threaten, I thought, well I would have back up.

He called me a stupid bitch, told me the dogs were irrelevant, that it didn't matter if they were all I was taking, that my being too exhausted to fight over money or the property made me weak and that it wasn't his job to fix things for me. As he hung up I heard a woman on his end of the line admonishing him.

Three hours later he texted me -

"Sorry if I called you stupid."

But he never did turn up to help me. As has always been the case, it was a contingent of women who made the world right again and soothed the wounds in me.

But he did show up to see me graduate with a Masters' Degree (and merit). Late, as usual, and he left before the ceremony was done. I walked out of the hall with a smile on my face, and the other graduates floated to their families. My great aunt had taken my elderly grandmother home; she had recently broken a hip and the day was too much for her. The family groups floated away.

Thirty minutes later I was standing alone in the rain. I didn't have a car. All the taxis were booked. I didn't even have an umbrella. I had to ask my aunt to come back for me, fifteen minutes out of her way.

He found God in his late forties, or I should say he found himself and assumed that it was holy. My father likes to reinvent himself, and as I aged I began to fall into his least favourite category of people; those who remember his past selves and do not pretend they never existed. The split started, I think, because he saw himself as a calm, wise, spiritual man and leader - the kind of father who has well-adjusted children that respect him unshakeably and act accordingly and I...

Well, I remember lying on a mattress on the floor of his girlfriends' house while they screamed at each other and he dragged her through the living room by her hair. I remember the tin foil balls I wasn't to touch. I remember him fighting my uncle and turning to me with a raised fist the size of a gammon when I got on my tip toes to tug his shirt. I remember his addiction, his wrath - I remember his jokes about my career, his vulgar comments about my aunts' teen pregnancy. I remember every time I sat on the stairs waiting for him to arrive without even a phone call. I remember when he helped me to save a bird with a broken wing from a barbed-wire fence. And I remember the sound of its neck breaking when he decided it was too hurt to help.

And I simply would not forget. Perhaps that was wrong of me, but I couldn't swallow it - the way he tried to jump straight from absentee aggressor to redeemed and born-again while the rest of us had to play along. I couldn't stomach the pretense that he had made his amends when he had yet to even acknowledge the destruction he had carved through the world around him.

I will never forget him accusing me of being a witch when the angels started to talk to him - that is not a metaphor. That's why he disowned me. Not drugs or theft on my part, not homophobia or abuse or some other -ism on his part. He disowned me because he found God, started speaking to angels, and decided that my spiritual beliefs made me a witch. And I cannot reconcile that with the man whose only pure and untainted gift to me was the belief that the world is bigger than any single doctrine. That curiosity and learning are as close to divinity as we can come.

My dad taught me to be strong, but not confident in my strength. To be sure I was smarter than others, but not smarter than him. To be fearless in the face of the world, and terrified of displeasing him. He never hit me, but he never had to, either. He's the only man who can make the words "stupid bitch" stick to me like glue. I cannot say I don't love him but my relationship with him has never made me happy.

And with all this poured onto the screen, pulled from me like ropes of clotted, tangled pain and love and anger, I have to admit that it may be because he's never been happy, either.

I believe he wanted to be good to me. I really do. I'll even concede that he tried, and perhaps that's what makes this so sad; even the moment we parted ways can be summed up with that sentiment. Whether his accusation was caused by genuine religion or paranoid hallucinations, he feared for my soul and didn't know how to resolve that. The only comfort I have is that I am more than what he made me, and my children, if I ever have them, will never be uncertain of my love for them. I may wound them in other ways - all parents cause some pain - but I will be for them what I wish he had been for me.

For that, at least, I am grateful.