Days Without Incident: Six

trigger warnings: mention of assault, assault on minor 

My dad texted me this morning. He used to sing this little jingle every morning. I never remember thinking much about it when I was little, but now it plays in my head most mornings. Sometimes I’ll sing it to my friends in a voice memo! I can’t wait to be able to sing it to my own kids. It went like this: 

Rise and shine! Your beauty rest is over—you’re pretty enough! 

Just a short, silly little phrase that stuck with me. This morning he texted me “Good morning, sunshine. Time to get going…beauty rest is over…you’re pretty enough….”. It was pretty close. I hope he didn’t beat himself up for too long trying to remember how it went. Whose to say his version isn’t the right one? I could be misremembering. 

Like a lot of members in our extended family, my dad has a lot of undiagnosed mental disorders. He turns bright red when he has to speak publicly, he avoids the drive-thru like it's the plague, and then there is the irrational fear of windmills. It’s probably best we don’t dig into the last one. Mostly because all four of us kids have a different idea of where this fear originated, and none of us have ever been right. Last time I asked him, he said, “they’re big, they make scary noises, and I can’t trust them.” Fair enough. 

I just wanted to bring up my dad because we’ve had such a confusing relationship for so long. I want nothing more than to be closer to him. We are so alike in such different ways. Both of us are too stubborn to change, but I’m starting to realize maybe that's not what either of us wanted. It’s definitely not what either of us needs. I don’t need my dad to respect all the choices I make, I just need him to love me at the end of the day. And I know he does. We’ve just been going around and around, tip-toeing on eggshells, trying not to upset one another for so long that even just the mention of the other person brings on an anxiety attack.

Maybe I’ve applied more meaning into situations that I could have let go of sooner. Maybe my dad still thinks of me as that bratty little girl who would tell him to shut up and slam the door in his face while he was going through a divorce. I was probably twelve, but I could have also formed my own opinions about my father instead of listening to the stories my mom filled my head with on a daily basis. I was her only support system during the divorce. She was going through a hard time too. But I was just a kid. Imagine, a grown adult relying on the advice from a child who had only just recently started reading the likes of Nicholas Sparks and John Green. 

Couldn’t she have relied on the man she chose to be with instead of my father? Why couldn’t she have gotten a therapist? The only support I had to offer was immature, dramatic, and destructive. I was already starting to deal with more frequent sleepovers with my abuser, so just living with her meant that I was stuck juggling the three F’s: fight, flight, or freeze.

I’m surprised I didn’t turn to stone how often I was stuck, frozen in place under that roof. I wonder if I could have escaped that reality if I’d been able to form positive opinions about my father during the divorce. One of my brother’s spent some time living with him. They fought like siblings from what I’ve been told, but I bet he felt safe. I’m sure he felt loved. I know he wasn’t in danger each night. I wonder how different my life would have been? 

Anyways, I know life took us in different directions, and we became completely different people, but I will always love and respect my father. Even in those moments where I feel guilty, ashamed, or bogged down by the way my life has turned out. There are so many things in life that could have been changed had we just done XYZ, but there is no path to healing when you think that way. It’s all about becoming comfortable with your own thoughts and finding the balance between “what could I have done better?” and the “but what did I learn?”

Day 6!! Woo-hoo!