My Dad’s Piece
When I was little, I was a daddy’s girl.
My dad had the best stories, the best laugh, the best love.
It’s rare for me to speak about my father through a lens that isn’t heavily coated in anger, disgust, and vengeance.
Maybe age is showing me to be understanding of my father’s faults. More importantly, I am starting to understand everyone has faults. I thought for most of my life, there were the Good people and there were the Bad people, and a few people now and then who I would consider a shade in between the Good and Bad.
I would deem people Good or Bad after a few small encounters and my entire attitude would change depending on an ignorant judgment I thought I had the right to give to people.
As I learn the techniques needed to heal the childhood trauma I endured from both of my parents, I am now looking at a wider picture of where the trauma stems from. I have been narrow-minded on my Mom and Dad and how their actions had the largest impact on my life — even to this day. I solely have blamed them specifically for every bad occurrence that has happened to me since the day they abandoned me yet I know that is not logical. I blame them illogically because a voice rasps to me none of this would be happening if what they did to me hadn’t happened. Now I know, the hurt inside my family started long before my parents.
I have only recently started to wonder:
How did my father’s trauma begin?
Where did it start?
Why did it start?
Was there a catalyst?
Who was his hero?
Who was his enemy?
Why did no one protect him?
I will never have these answers but now I have a theory on why he could never heal. I consider no one believed in my father, no one mentored him or gave him the time to feel heard and nurtured. My father was not loved in all the ways he needed so badly to be loved. It is believable for me to suspect heroin, speed, and meth were always there to keep him warm when the world failed him and when people failed him.
I came to this thought after musing on what I do when I am feeling spent and when I cannot take on anything new. When I have contemplated giving up, I asked myself what my support system is.
Who is my support system?
It is everyone who has helped me arrive at where I am right now.
I do not think my father ever had a support system.
If my father did have a support system, it was a fragile ecosystem that crumbled at the smallest infraction; once there was the smallest fissure, his world never recovered.
By sharing my speculation, I want to make it clear I am not giving him a reason for his behavior and harm — not only the mistreatment he caused me but many others. I share because I want to be part of the dialogue about why hurt people, hurt people. I don’t want to continue to hurt others even when I am hurt. Even when it feels beyond satisfactory to lash out.
I think of my father often primarily because he is who I see when I look in the mirror.
I look like my father; it is his profile I see when I look in the mirror. I do not know how many similarities he and I have in common, especially now that I am an adult and have grown into the person I am rather than the person he showed me how to be.
At my side, I notice my father’s nose: long and pointed. As I lean over the bathroom sink to study who I am and what features were passed onto me, I can confirm I own his shallow blue eyes. As a child, staring up at my father, his eyes were cool and cold. His eyes were never cloudy but crystal clear.
Those eyes have been transferred to me but I am transparent, unlike my father. My eyes are not a mirror-like his. They are an all-embracing openness where all I feel is revealed. Even when it is dangerous for me to reveal how I feel, it spills out of me, like an oil reserve dumping gallons of oil into the clear blue ocean.
We both have a wrinkle that forms in the middle of our forehead when we twist our faces into a menacing frown. I have his thick blonde hair. I have my father’s laugh. I have his skin; rough and dry.
I am my father’s daughter: my personality and body will always be aligned within his origin because he is who I came from.
I have two origin stories. The one I was born into and the one I built and have constructed for myself.
I don’t know or will ever have a true understanding of the father I had because I did not know him for very long. Many children grow up with the privilege to go out into the world and share stories about their fathers and what they have been able to learn through them. Good or Bad. I wish I could write that I wish I was ok not having more positive stories to share; my stories are ghost stories filled with maybe’s, what-ifs, and what never will be. My stories are shadows and hues of memories I question if they are real or not.
My father had a temper. He would smash property, take scissors and cut up our clothes, stomp on cellular devices and scream at the top of his lungs. My father was scary when he was angry but in those everlasting moments, he felt so powerful. I could feel his power. I wanted to be powerful like my father and in unassailable bits, I am.
Growing up and watching my father metaphorically bleed people out by slicing them open with words effortlessly slipping out of his mouth, felt like a tangible skill I didn’t even notice I was picking up. My father’s anger, quiet or loud, worked for him. It forced people to do what he wanted. I can’t remember if I knew they were doing what he wanted out of fear, maybe that observation came later, but I do remember, the anger worked, each time.
My anger has always been fundamental to who I am. When I pour out sweat or bleed between my thighs, I see the anger leaving my body. The anger does not want to leave me, my body feels betrayed when I work through how I feel instead of keeping the anger bottled up, waiting to be completely full until I tip and the anger comes erupting out. Until I cannot bear to keep it within me any longer and it lands on either someone near and dear or a complete stranger.
Adults told me growing up my anger would mellow out as I age but it hasn’t. I have obtained the skills needed to express my anger healthily: writing, waiting to respond, walking, masturbating, communicating. I do not want my anger to ever completely leave me as it has saved me numerous times throughout my life. My anger has been my motivation to better my life. To prove to the world while at the same time to prove to no one, I can be better than who I am and to be better than who gave me access to this world.
My anger is an ever-flowing well of fuel that does not need more than a flick of a match to ignite and burn down an entire world. I am proud of this attribute of mine but I am also appalled. It has ruined friendships, relationships and has ruined parts of myself in certain circumstances. My anger protected me from getting into the cars with strange men, my anger protected me from being bullied by the girls in middle school who pretended they didn’t know how to pronounce my name, my anger protected me when the ones I loved most weren’t treating me right.
That is my father, living inside of me, urging me to release my anger the way he demonstrated. This is my father protecting me. I admit it does feel good when I lash out at who has hurt me. I feel the skin on my arms raise with excitement when I silence someone with my words and see the same look my father would receive from people he had used his anger towards.
I am his opposite and I am the same.
My legacy is filled with rage, despair, and spite but that is ending with my lineage.
