daddy issues.

Some days, I ask my mother to tell me what parts of me remind her of my biological father.

My mother tells me I have his anger and pride. That I wear it the same way he used to when she loved him long ago. She tells me I carry it like a crown of thorns, the way only someone with his last name could do.

Since I was a little girl, my mother has always yelled at me to sit up straight, forever complaining that my posture is just as awful as my father’s. She tells me she thinks it is because my anger sits on my shoulders in the same spot it did his. So apparent and heavy that it is no wonder I inherited it.

My mother says that his anger fueled his arrogance, that pride of his, the way he always thought he was so much smarter than anyone else in the room, and that much was apparent in the way he smiled, a smile that my mother swears she sees on my face every time I smile.

Sometimes, I stare at my reflection and wonder if my father would think our eyes are really the same light brown my mother promises we both have. The ones that kind of turn golden when the sunlight catches them just right.

I wonder if he loves his eyes the way I love mine.

Some days, I wonder if my father ever really loved me at all.

I wonder if he overthinks the same way I do, or if that was something that I may have only inherited through my mother.

However, all that pondering manifests itself into thought spirals I cannot will myself to stop and of all my bad habits, overthinking definitely tops the list because my thoughts do not just race like cars speeding down a highway but they spiral like the hurricanes that wipe out tropical countries.

My thoughts twist and topple over one another, an endless tug of war between the thoughts I will allow to seep into the crevices of my mind and the ones I continually try to push away, thoughts I push further and further into a place I know has not seen the light in years.

And unfortunately when it comes to do with anything with my father, my thought process reverts back to the tactics and mentality I remember using as a child, a little girl so hurt and damaged beyond repair that all she knew to do was shove that pain inside a box, tape it up ten times over and label the box in bold letters that say “DO NOT TOUCH”, and spend years never once allowing myself to fully open it.

However, these days the box threatens to break loose all on it’s own, because lately, I do not know if the box is inside me or I am inside the box, trapped and drowning in thoughts that fill my mind like water fills an overflowing sink.

And I try my best to contain these thoughts, make my best effort to try and differentiate these two stream of thoughts but reality and disillusion blur together like a piece of art, saturated colours of truths and lies dripping over one another on the canvas that is my mind, spilling onto the pages of my self doubt, inner fears and the brightest color of all is my desire to make all of my thoughts just shut the fuck up for once.

But they do not stop, they will not stop, instead, my thoughts spill around the edges of my mind and seep into the back of my throat, tasting all too much like the tears I must learn to swallow down.

In these moments, everything threatens to break around me. My composure, my grace, my exterior and for fuck’s sake, my sanity.

That box threatens to open more so these days than ever before and I try to tell myself that I do not know why, cannot understand why that box would have worn so thin after all the years I spent taping it back up and stapling it shut.

I try to tell myself why the fuck does this box still exist when I do not give a fuck about a man who only seems to give a fuck when it conviences him.

Often, I play the part of the girl who never gave a fuck at all.

A part I have played long before I ever grasped that I was cast in the role, because if you do not care, who can hurt you?

Because if you do not love fully, who can walk away?

But when the curtains close and the audience finally gets up to leave, I wonder why I am still waiting for some sort of applause as I stand on the empty stage that is my heart. I wonder why I am still awaiting some sort of award for consistently playing the part of the girl who appears cold and hard, despite how warm and soft her heart truly is.

I never was the best actor.

Even as a child, I could not pretend it did not hurt, however, I suppose ignorance was true bliss, because it used to be easier and it was not that it hurt less back then, it is simply now, I understand all that hurt more than ever. And despite the fact that perhaps the adult version of me could learn to forgive my father for how absentee of a role he played in my life, the little girl in me cannot and will not forgive him.

I suppose it is because no matter what my father says or does, nothing can take back the years that little girl spent watching parts of her rip apart like shreds of papers, written on each piece the words I lacked as a child.

So instead of forgiving him, instead of attempting to chase a skill I do not think I will ever have, the way a bird with broken wings can never take flight, instead, I repress.

I repress and repress and continue to play the part of the girl who does not give a fuck, the girl who is cold and hard, and who most certainly does not love.

And the loneliness I feel on that empty stage that is my heart is as blinding as the stage lights, as loud as the echoes of the audience full of the men and women I keep at arm's length away from me, still close enough for their applause to fall on deaf ears but never close enough for it to becoming from people that actually matter.

However, the repression becomes harder when I stare at the people I sleep with for far too long.

My friends tell me I break hearts far too easily and I laugh like it’s the most brilliant joke I have ever heard. I tell my friends if I can break someone's heart before they can break mine, they will not interest or excite me long-term.

My friends tell me that it is because the ones who get heartbroken by me are not the ones I care to stare at longingly.

It is the ones that keep their distance.

It is the ones that never want me back.

I see the way they keep themselves close enough to me that I know they existed for me when they needed me, but far enough away from me for me to know I am merely not what their life ever revolved around, or ever will, and for some reason, the ones who want me never interest me, and the ones that continually push me away, those are the ones that make me want with a type of want I know I should not have.

And maybe it is because to me, I always fall for the ones that I still have to wonder about constantly if they truly have feelings for me, but somehow, it’s all just intense yet fleeting feelings they felt, and I suppose those feelings were never consistent, never enough, certainly not strong enough to sustain a lasting relationship.

Quietly, those thoughts truly make me wonder how long I have been chasing a feeling I thought only my father could ever make me feel.

Perhaps I seek comfort in the familiarity of it all.

There is nothing quite like the chase and I suppose that feeling is comforting, that feeling that I constantly lived and existed in as a child is something I hold on to like a baby blanket. It drapes over me the same way, the dependency of it is frightening, because like a child, I cannot imagine life without it.

The idea of love being something you must earn just feels like it has always made sense to me.

And perhaps that in itself is the very problem of it all.

Maybe that is why the first man I slept with sexually assaulted me.

Maybe that is why the first man I ever thought I loved broke my heart multiple times and I just kept running back for more until he made it abundantly clear that there was no place left for me to run back to.

Jenny Holzter conceptualized a piece of her writing with art, it was a public art exhibit in 1982 that displayed on a billboard in New York city. On that billboard flickered in neon letters were words that said your oldest fears are the worst ones and that always stuck to me.

Because before I could even comprehend it, the first man who was supposed to love me did not love me well, and did not provide me any type of stable ground for my legs to stand on and now as an adult, my legs are still shaky like a child who never truly learned how to walk, except when I say never truly learned how to walk, I really mean I never truly learned how to love and receive love healthily.

So lack of learning how to love meant that for me, love has never felt easy and that always seemed natural, and so I gave people parts of me they did not deserve, rushed in like they say fools do and blamed myself when they walked away with parts of me they did not even ask for.

And then the sadness began to creep in every so often, but somewhere and somehow, the sadness turned to fear, fear into hurt and hurt into anger, and it is a cycle I still battle with.

However the stage I get stuck in is when I become angry, the type of anger that I feel wash over me from the top of my head and trickles down into my chest, blooming there in a way that feels like it is seconds away from bursting out from within my breast bone. And then it travels to my back, where it sticks on me like an old backpack, fitted to my back in a way it is so evident it belongs there.

Like it is hereditary. Something passed down to me.

Just like my father’s anger.

My fathers first name means resurrection in Greek.

I suppose that is why despite my best efforts to rid him of my mind, despite his physical absence burning a hole in my chest, despite all of that, that man still manages to resurrect himself in so many aspects of my life.

-m.m