A Lost father - The Second Coming

So, I have finally been assured by a reader that I am normal; this is exciting stuff! Why is it that it's so easy to feel as though no one shares what you perceive to be your abnormalities? Do I really want to be unique so bad that I'd rather be perceived as abnormal? Is my striving for normality some false plight, some invented struggle? Perhaps. . . I know, for instance, that there are many women with daddy issues, so that must be normal.

This is not a story of death, despite what the title sounds like, it may as well be, but it isn't. It's about emotional loss. The loss of someone who's inherent duty, from the time you are born, is to protect you - to love you - to guide you. My father left us when I was young, but that's "A Lost Father - The First Leaving", remember, we are working our way backwards in time. After that, we were estranged for many years. I told people that he was dead. He didn’t exist for me. The men I dated, my co-workers, my friends, they all believed he was dead.

My brother decided he would reach out to my father via an aunt we still kept in touch with; my father's sister never made excuses for him. It often felt as though she loved us twice as much to make up for my father’s absence. Upon contacting my father, my brother reported back to me. He had re-married and had 2 sons. We had more brothers! I was conflicted, I wanted to know my brothers, but I wanted to keep far away from my father. I decided to wait and see what my brother's reunion was like before I attempted one.

My brother went to visit him, it seemed as though the reunion was luke-warm at best. My father blamed the situation on my mother. He said she was crazy, but my question was, why would you leave your babies with a crazy woman? Why would you not come to see about your children in 20 years? Why would you just leave? My brother spoke to me about his experience, and then ended our discussion with some advice, advice I had heard from the few people who knew that my father was alive. He said that I needed to try and repair the relationship with my father, that I had to be the one to reach out, otherwise I would likely not have a successful relationship with any man. My brother knew my history, I would get into relationships, and when things were at their best, I would run like a scared rabbit. I wouldn't accept gifts, phone calls, or visits - I would cut the unsuspecting victims off entirely. So, maybe my brother was right, maybe I should reach out to the man who changed my life in ways I was still discovering.

I made a phone call. He wasn't home, so I left a message. The sense of anticipation in my heart was overwhelming. I felt shaky and nauseous. When he finally called me back, the conversation was short. He said he would be in town visiting my aunt. I invited him to have lunch with me, just he and I, trying to hash out our difference in this intimate restaurant meant for happier occasions. I had a few weeks to prepare for the visit. It almost felt like I were about to go on a big day; spa treatments, hair appointments, manicures, extra work-outs, teeth whitening. I wanted to show him what he missed out on, what a great woman I had become, how successful I was.

When we met at the tiny stone restaurant in the park I recognized him immediately; he was a little grayer, but he looked like the same man who walked out the door and down that very long hallway - the man who never came back. We sat down and ordered a cheese and fruit platter along with coffee. He asked me what I did for a living, I told him that I was in the financial industry and preparing for another job. He told me that I should settle down and find a career, that I wasn't getting any younger. Right away, I felt insulted, I was making lots of money, not having a hard time finding jobs, and was living on my own without anyone's help, and immediately he begins critiquing me. I told him that he had no right to criticize anything I do because he wasn't there to help raise me, and that I had worked hard to get to where I was. I wasn't on food stamps, I didn't have any children, and I was living life and traveling around the world on my own dime.

It was downhill from there, but he asked for another meeting the next day; he'd bring my new-found brothers along. I invited them to dinner at my house. When they came, I was happy to see my brothers. They were tall and handsome and well-mannered. I made steaks and vegetables and rice. My father said they weren't allowed to have sugar, or second helpings of food. It was so hurtful to see the way he protected them, so hurtful to see his concern for them - even in that miniscule way, knowing how he'd abandoned my brother and I. My pain was so deep. It was like a black rotting seed veining through my body with darkness surrounding. Inducing thoughts of bleak self-hatred.

When they left, I knew I couldn't speak to my father again, I knew I couldn't experience that level of self-loathing again - it would destroy me. I had to look inside, and find something that made me worthy, something that would kill that spark of emotion slowly destroying me like ivy climbing and expanding in brick walls eventually turning them to rubble. And that something wouldn't come from my father, it couldn't come from him. It had to come from me. I knew, I had lost my father again, in my mind he would go back into the murky waters of death, and there would be no return or resurrection. He was gone.

Tomorrow, The Big Bad Wolf