FullCircle

These thoughts were triggered by Father’s Day…

I give everyone a hard time…if they take my feelings for granted. I have always been this way and in this moment…I have no intention of changing. To me…giving/receiving an authentic emotion is worth more than money. I prefer to feel the inside of someone’s mentality before seeing the inside of their wallet because I place more value on my emotions than I do on what I can spend. This is especially true in regards to the men who I have shared an existence with. Please don’t misunderstand me because I do believe in the importance of a man with a stable coin. But there should be more to him than the plastic he keeps his collection in. Unfortunately…most men have been programmed to believe their display of love is supposed to be confined to the four corners of their financial institution. My father was ‘most men’ and he struggled to make the kind of emotional connection I needed in order for me to build a solid foundation with him. He tried though. And in this world…praise dances are supposed to be invoked for ‘did the best I could’ parenting. I’m not a fan.

Financially speaking…my father helped me more than a little bit. He allowed me to stay with him a few times when I was kicked out of the homes of other family members in my 20s. And living rent free is what allowed me the privilege of saving up for my first two cars. I mentioned finding an old diary of mine a while back and in that diary was a memory of my fathers best attempt to connect with me on an emotional level. It came in the form of a note he wrote me during one of the times he housed me. I am traumatized from losing all of my childhood possessions to the unpaid storage units of my mother so when something has value…I date it and hold onto it for as long as I can. This note was written 2/26/13. About a week ago I was looking for something in a tote that I had kept that diary in and found the note at the bottom of the bag. I had no idea what the paper was because I hadn’t opened it in years. When I opened it…it read “HAVE A GOOD DAY AT WORK! LUV YA!”. (He wrote in all caps…all my life.) I was parked in front of the grocery store when I reread it…and the cry my body let out delayed my entrance for about 10 minutes.

That cry was for a few reasons but the main one was the thought he put into writing it. It seems like such a simple thing to do by picking up a piece of paper and writing words on it. But his intention was for it to make me feel good. And he stood to gain nothing from this act of kindness. It was done out of pure love. He wrote it before he went to work and left it for me to find on my way to work. I can’t remember how it made me feel when I initially read it…but reading it after his death, knowing how our daddy/daughter story ended, made me wish he was given the emotional tools to vocally show his emotional range as opposed to ball point penning it. The ability was clearly in him…but no one ever showed him how to verbalize it in a way that would foster a real relationship with his daughter(s). He was raised to believe that being a ‘funding father’ was more important than being a ‘deep dive dad’…so I was forced to settle with what he was comfortable giving to me emotionally. And that note is my reminder that he at least tried to step outside his comfort zone to connect with me in a way that aligned with my emotional desires.

Unfortunately for him, and a lot of other men, their seeds require the kind of connection that can’t be bought. We appreciate finances but solid relationships also require a foundation of feelings. If that isn’t given…it makes it that much easier for offspring to disconnect from parental presence when we have the option to choose for ourselves as we get older. It took me a while…but distancing myself from him ended up being my only option. My father was diagnosed with cancer a few years before he passed and I tried reconnecting with him because I figured his fear of dying would open him up to the idea of coming from behind his emotionally constipated curtain. To my surprise he actually agreed to get therapy. He never said whether he actually went but when it came time for me to make the trip to our home state to see him in person, I couldn’t get past all the hurt that his former self had caused in our youth. The fear of having a repeat of those memories allowed me to disregard his diagnosis, cut him back off and have a mock funeral for him in my head…years before he died. And when he died…I mourned for a few days and went back to my life as usual. I guess in the end…I ‘did the best I could’ too.

Love,

Choosy