Daddy’s girl.
A piece on forgiveness.
My father is a runaway.. .
No one knows where he is, very few people have searched, and ever fewer really care. He doesn’t have much family and his last known appearance left a bad impression on everyone he came in contact with. He’s run away before – a perpetual flight risk he is, so his disappearance is complex. Given his troubled past, it’s not surprising but still tinted with a layer of shock and a shimmer of disbelief, so maybe that’s why no one talks about it much. Maybe that’s why he comes up in conversation every few years as if recalling a grade school teacher or an old neighbor:
I wonder what happened to old so and so. You remember him? I wonder where he is now and what he’s up to these days.
It’s a bleak conversation wrapped in a casual tone.
“Have you had any contact with my Dad recently?”
“Nope. I haven’t seen or heard from him in years. Last I heard. . . “
It never matters after that because most likely it’s the same story I’ve been hearing for years. Everyone he knows has a last I heard moment that they cling to as if it were not really in the past. It’s like time stopped on their relationship right at that moment and it will pick up from last I heard if he’s ever to be seen again. It’s a funny thing we do, break our relationships up into pieces with last times and next times as if it’s not one continuous story.
Conversations with my siblings are lightly worded.
“Have you looked for Dad?”
“Nope.”
The mood is cool but miserable when I’m still enough to wrap my brain around who we’re talking about. It’s a very surreal feeling to be disconnected from a parent. I get a knot in my stomach when I’m alone I think “Where is that bastard?” The subject fades as quickly as it appeared and I go on thinking about laundry or pondering if plants really do like it when you talk to them.
My mother died when I was 16 years old and very soon after her funeral, my father signed over his parental rights to my godparents – my mother’s childhood friend and her husband. He lied and said he would come back for me and my brother, that he just needed some time to “get a few things together.” I knew it was a lie because I’ve never known anyone to completely give away their parental rights for “some time.” Luckily for me, my godparents were good to me, so about a year after my mother died, I developed a bond with them, and I was especially close with my godfather.
My father called me to check in, a formality I was familiar with, and at the end of the conversation he asked in a sad voice “Do you love your godfather more than me?”
Just like he did a year earlier, I parted my lips and lied, “No.”
And just like myself year earlier, he knew it was a lie.
That was the last conversation I had with my dad. I saw him months after that, at his mother’s funeral, and he was thin and mildly disheveled, hazy and probably drunk. We barely spoke and our encounter was so awkward, I wondered if he even knew who I was. When the service started he sat to my right and very gently stuck his hand out and patted me on my head like a curious child reaching for something unfamiliar. I remember thinking “oh, he does know who I am. And I think he still loves me.”
That was the last I heard of him.
Sometimes people ask me how I felt about it so I attempt to feel something. I tried hate most recently, but honestly, how much can you truly hate a person you barely know? Clearly, my hatred for him came from myself. It came from a feeling of betrayal by someone I never trusted to begin with; a feeling of disappointment from someone I never had a chance to gain expectations for. It was all from this chant in my head that sang “Father. Father. Father” and one I believed without any proof. Nonetheless, it made me heavy, and gave me a sense of identity that was comforting, no matter how bleak: the girl abandoned by her Dad.
I sat with my label and meditated on what I should do with it. I went back and forth between two options:
Option 1. I look for him, but before I could start my search I had to be sure I really wanted to find the truth. I asked myself what exactly did I want to find?
Either he is alive and not well. That would make me sad. I would feel obligated to rescue him and with his track record of toxicity, that would mean signing up for a mountain of stress.
What if he is alive and well then? That would make me angry. I would always wonder what was so bad about his family that he never tried to find us and without having any life circumstance to blame I would truly feel abandoned – talk about major daddy issues.
Dead? That would make me feel empty. Anxiety would soon follow when my questions never got answered and regret sure to follow up. Without answers, my emotions would lay victim to my imagination and my imagination cannot be trusted.
Looking for him didn’t seem like it would end well. There was the alternative:
Option 2. Don’t look for him.
What if.
What if.
What if
I felt that I had to do something but everything made me scared. I danced between ignoring my dilemma until it pushed its way to the top of my consciousness and shoving it back down because facing it was too burdensome. I was irritated by having to deal with the madness in the first place – who wants a complex? Besides, I got better things to do than fret over someone that doesn’t care about me right?
Then I realized most of my resentment came from this predicament. It was less about him and more about how his actions affected me. Search for him or not, my negative feelings would remain the same, only with a new name. Right now nothing reasonable can be done because nothing good can come of it; pain knows no closer.
What if I forgive him? Forgiveness means letting go of the grief I feel entitled to and If I choose to forgive, I have to let go of the story behind his absence in my life.
(queue eye roll)
Another thing I Know is right, but one I am not excited about. I was harboring this precious pain and deeply attached to that story. I get to feel sorry for myself when I feel lonely and I use it as a get out of jail free token when I decide not to trust someone. Without my story, I have to take responsibility for my own feelings . . . and that’s a lot of work.
Not to mention he was wrong for what he did. Forgiving him feels like I’m letting him off the hook.
I also know that if I choose not to forgive, my dad will hurt me forever, even if he’s dead. There is nothing he can do to fix it so this one is all on me. Between balancing things that make me happy and trying to find room for more, the story hardly seems worth the effort. Why attach myself to pain when I can be free?
As a child I always imagined myself a daddy’s girl. I yearned for that special connection and maybe deep down I really am one. Maybe my heart is broken because in some strange way, I am bonded to him. I imagine what he’s really like outside of memories of his sporadic appearances. Sometimes I think back on a trip to the park or a conversation after a movie and try and dissect his tone and body language to find some clue to his personality. Then I wonder if we are alike. I daydream about how our relationship could have been if he stuck around. It’s all good things, but a standard I held him to without his consent. Ultimately that pain seemed like a decent exchange for the pain brought about by the reality that forgiveness sets in my lap: My father is a runaway. I do not know him. He is not a part of my life and so he is not a part of me.
This is not a reality I’m eager to accept. The thought of ripping the pain from my heart sounds scary and the healing process looks bleak, but at least I can heal. And healing is a gift because scars may be ugly, but they don’t hurt anymore.