As far back as I can remember, my dad has been a funny man. He has a unique sense of humor that I’ve always appreciated. I can look back and not be plagued by memories of an angry, mean father, or one who behaved badly. By all accounts, he was a normal, nice guy.
I am the youngest of four children. The other three are all close in age, while I lag behind six years. Both of my parents made a lot of mistakes with us, though I’m not sure they will acknowledge them. Mostly it seemed that they were both ready to be done parenting while I was still several years from reaching adulthood.
While I can honestly say that I was not abused as a child, and that my parents were nice people, I was very lonely and and unhappy with the dynamics of our family.
This was exacerbated by watching my friends’ families and how they so differed from mine. They had meals together; their parents were at home and involved with their schooling, things of that nature. I felt ignored a lot of the time and envied the secure and warm homes that my peers lived in. One thing I began to notice in particular as I got older was the difference between my female friends’ relationships with their fathers and my own with mine. These dads openly expressed love to their daughters, they were “Daddy’s little girls,” a concept completely foreign to me.
While my dad was never mean to me, and was actually very nice to me, he was still quite distant emotionally. I didn’t ever feel like he had an interest in me, or a desire to be with me. He also seemed to very clearly favor one of my sisters.
It got worse when he divorced my mother. He did the right thing and supported me, he also kept up his visitation with me. I enjoyed these visits and the things we did. But even at 11 years old, I got the distinct feeling that he would rather have been doing something else with his time. He was just doing this with me because he felt obligated to, like he would be a real jerk if he didn’t. That’s how I felt anyway.
As I got to be a teenager, and quite an unpleasant one, I didn’t blame him for not wanting much to do with me, but I still wished he would. I always felt like merely a visitor in his home, quite a contrast from the comfortable closeness my friends shared with their protective fathers. As I got into young adulthood and began making ridiculous mistakes, he was obviously ashamed of me, and I felt like he didn’t even like me. I believed he would never be proud of me, and I really wanted him to be, even though I continually did things to ensure that wouldn’t happen.
I craved so much to be able to call him when somebody hurt me, or share with him when I was proud of something, but it would have just been an awkward, polite encounter. He still didn’t seem to have that interest in me.
When I was nineteen, I had a roommate whose father was her best friend. If she needed something, he was there in a flash. One night, she had this stupid fight with her boyfriend at our apartment, and I remember her calling her parents crying. They came to get her and took her to their home where she could stay for a couple of days. Watching that was like having a knife driven into my gut.
I spent years being angry at my dad, mostly because I was hurt. Most of those years were extremely drunken ones, making one bad choice after another. There were times where I was drunk, and all my manners would leave me, that I would confront him and try to appeal to him to be the kind of father I wanted. This is something I would never dream of doing sober. I also had frequent blackouts when drinking and wouldn’t remember the things I’d said to him. He really tried to make it right. But it is just not who he was.
It wasn’t until years later, and a couple of years into my sobriety, that I stopped being angry at him for what I now realized he could not do. He could not be someone he was not. It does not come easily to him to put himself out there and be all gushy, nor is it in his nature to interact with his children the way most people do. He is more distant, but he certainly isn’t cold. He prefers to handle most things with humor and keep it lighthearted. But I do believe that he has a good heart, and is a really good man. I also know now that he loves me very much.
I am certainly not angry at him anymore, and even though it hurt all those years not having the father-daughter relationship I so wanted, I would feel terrible if I hurt him. I feel a sense of protectiveness over his feelings, and wouldn’t want him to think I don’t love him. I’ve seen his vulnerability, and I wouldn’t want to exploit it. I want him to know that I love him, and that I understand he loves me the best he can.
