baserinstincts

On Daddies

January 16, 2008 on 2:16 pm | In Freudianisms | Add Your Comment

I blogged about my mom the day after mother’s day so it’s only fair I do the same for dear ol’ dad.

Daddy – My First Love

He was my first love.

I was crazy about my daddy when I was younger; in love with him beyond belief. He was my hero, larger than life to me.

He was my favorite.

I liked him much more than I liked my mother.

He taught me how to fight, made me eat healthy, pushed me to get straight A’s.

We were the best of friends for eight long, happy years.

In essence, a father really is his daughter’s first lover. We learn much of what we come to understand about love from watching him. He sets an example for our future lovers and inevitably, we repeat and emulate the relationships we have with our fathers, good or bad, consciously or unconsciously, for years.

When my dad dumped my mom, in essence he dumped me too.

As it much as it hurts and as long as it take to get over a lost love, so it is when a girl is dumped by her father. This plays out of course in the myriad of fucked up relations with men that have taken place over my life (my ex fiancee was just like him. Freud would certainly have a field day with that).

The years I spent chasing and trying to get men that were unavailable or just didn’t want me was of course my way of trying to recapture my father.

If there are any father’s reading this, DO NOT let your daughter ever become used to not having you around. When you decide you want her back, it just may be too late

Hey Mom. Happy Father’s Day.

When my mom and dad split, my dad wrote and called in the beginning but over the years it kinda dropped off.

He wasn’t as bad as other dad’s I hear about in countless stories. He didn’t beat me or abuse me.

He ignored me.

He was simply not present. Physically or emotionally. And he was present financially only because he was forced by the courts. I learned not to count on his presence. I learned not to count on him for anything. To do so would only bring bitter disappointment.

What makes a father?

If you think of it solely in terms of biology, a portion of sperm, well then we all have one.

But I refuse to believe that’s all it takes.

It’s about being there for your children. My father wasn’t. I doubt he even really knows me as a person or anything about the woman I’ve become. Maybe he doesn’t want to know because I became this woman largely without him.

He couldn’t tell you my favorite color, what I like to eat, what I do for a living. I haven’t even laid eyes on him in several years. The last time I spoke to him, he was asking me for money.

It sucks. How do you go from being best friends to painfully obligatory phonecalls on father’s day, birthdays, and major holidays?  We should have a better relationship. I want us to. But there’s miles and miles and years and years of bullshit between us that we can’t seem to cut through.

It’s tiring.

And so I keep my distance.

And I’m certainly not going to try harder than he is.

Maybe one day we’ll make things right.

In the meantime, mommy and grandma are the ones who get the cards on Father’s Day.Practical Magic move