Escaping Daddy Issues Through the Looking Glass

In continuing the discussion of My Father Did Not Abandon Me Because of a Shortcoming in Me,

We come to an integral piece of the logic chain that separates us from the notion that he did,

That it was, indeed,

personal and directed at me specifically.

My father, like some, abandoned all three of his (known) children.

Ask me why the “(known)” add-in isn’t just snidely thrown in (although I will own this bit of bitter root I’m sucking)

But WHOLLY necessary to the understanding of the

*gasp**growl**sigh*

man he was.

And why the FUCK do I need to understand him? you may ask?

Because I do,

In my bones,

Need to understand that I cannot change myself--

And could not have changed myself then--

To change that outcome.

And understanding him is a piece of that understanding.

It helps that he abandoned me before I understood what he had done.

It helps that he was never there to begin with, really;

He was googly eyes glued to a popsicle stick.

It helps that my mother—fucking bless that woman to death--

Worked so hard to spare me the realization that he had done so

—Although she failed, I knew love in that gesture,

More than I could have ever known in NOT knowing his truth.

BUT HE! I realized recently

Did not abandon me.

He abandoned his offspring.

As I said, he abandoned all three of his known children—

My father didn’t abandon me

or my sister

or the brother we didn’t know until I was 19;

He abandoned responsibility for the consequences of his actions.

I am more than the consequences of actions.

Something that has come from this life experience is a tenuous relationship with relationships.

I have seen that blood can pull people to your side, I have!

But I have also seen that blood can mean bupkis as well.

But that has also opened the door to understand that some of the strongest, healthiest, most...family-like love and care has been between me and people I don’t share DNA with.

Or even people we assign the traditional Love Labels.

I have seen romantic love between people not in a relationship

And paternal love between a group home staff and a child was terrified of his real father.

And I can say with perfect integrity that I love my friends

Like I love my family.

I used to be stingy with I Love You.

I used to withhold that feeling from myself,

From sharing it with others.

I used to stubbornly wait for a lover to say it first,

For surely I would not be the fool who puts their heart out first only to not have it reciprocated.

Surely I need to see that it is safe to love before I love.

But that led to so much loneliness

And sadness

And feeling unworthy.

If nobody will show it to me first, who can I love?

And one day, embarrassingly recently,

I looked myself in the mirror,

Truly LOOKED at me,

Not at my face or my tattoos or the shape of my waist and thighs and breasts,

But I truly looked through the mirror and tried to see me apart from myself.

And I saw someone I longed to wrap my arms around.

I saw someone who was tired

and scared

and lonely...

...but so full of love she was scared to share.

I saw someone wholly worthy of everything she was keeping locked behind a glass door,

Afraid of shattering shards into the beauty she saw,

Ruining it by pursuing it.

And all I wanted for her was to see the FUCKING KEY hanging around her neck,

Waiting to unlock those glass doors to the veritable garden around her.

You know when you’re watching a horror movie and the ridiculous characters walk down the spooky hall, lamp held over their head like that’s actually gonna stop whatever horror they’re walking, willingly, toward?

And you just writhe in emotional frustration as you scream for them to fucking stop, you idiot! Why would you walk toward that?!

This moment was both not at all like that but exactly like that.

There was this emotional turmoil of “Why can’t you just unlock that damn door? You have the key!”

And the horror of realizing how long she had been standing there,

Quantum locked in that moment,

Afraid of wanting anything truly wonderful for herself.

Like the Whovian Weeping Angels frozen to stone forever, staring into each others’ eyes, me and my poor inner child.

And as I looked at this scene, I realized that

I, the author I have always been,

Have the words to rewrite this scene.

And so I fucking did.

I reached through the mirror, took the key from around my own neck, and placed it into my hand.

I brought our hand to the locked glass door, helped her turn the key;

The timbre of brass turning against brass echoed through to the other side of the mirror where I still stood—where I was also not standing, in this mirror world.

And then I placed our palms, all four of them, on the glass panes of the door and pushed.

We pushed those glass doors open.

And then!

They shattered and dissolved around us,

No shards spoiling the lush greenery now sprawling around us in place of the loneliness.

I smiled, and I smiled back.

Tears filled and then overspilled the rims of our eyes and flowed freely as we smiled deeper.

I wrapped my arms around me, and I returned my own embrace, sinking into the folds of my own arms with a sigh.

We sobbed together,

Me and I,

For a while.

And we smiled again when we looked back into each other’s brilliant green eyes.

We whispered, “I love you.”

And I chuckled a little bit. “No,” I said, louder, so loud in my empty apartment. “I love you.”

The sound filled that space until it felt like there was no room for anything but that in this space.

Love without worrying about getting it back, my friends. I love you, too.