He should miss me. He should miss me. He should miss me. He should miss me. If my father loved me, he should miss me.
That he won’t is hard to accept. It’s disturbing the way magic tricks sometimes are, the ones that make you question the inside as much as the outside — what I believe to be true about the known world disproven by the facts at hand.
I was up half the night, jaw clenched until I could hear my own heartbeat slushing through my eardrums, my head a stubbed toe. He should miss me. He should miss me. HE SHOULD MISS ME.
Around two in the morning, I think: You’re in a trap. Dad wants you to be like him. But if you were, which one of you would ever contact the other? Neither, that’s who. So, Anne, what would you rather have — A dad who cringes away from your neediness, or a stranger for a father?
I think: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
But on closer inspection, it’s right. I approach my dad belly up submissive because he is so lacking in any of his own overtures to have a relationship. I’m afraid if I speak my mind, he’ll take any disagreement as an excuse to put more distance between us.
Driving around town the next day, I try it on for size: Goodbye, Dad. Not gonna miss you either.
It feels light and easy. What a relief that is, to not be overextended, reaching out in perpetuity for something that isn’t going to grab you back. But it also feels like a magic trick, one in which you know better than to trust your own witness.
Well, damn, this makes me cry. Because my dad is alert and well. Because he is as remote today as he was 40+ years ago. I force simple affection on him, just for me, while I can. But I’d give a leg to hear or know that I mattered. To be engaged even in his disengagement. He should love me. And yet. I’m so sad for this hard loss you’re going through, to know once and for all that you’ll never have the love you deserved, to feel so wanted that he opened arms and heart to you. Some people get that, I hear and read of them. But you and I, we’re from a different tribe. And it just purely sucks.
*hug*
Fuuuck. I’m going to need to save this post for my kid – when she needs to figure out the same thing about her father in about 20 years. Sucks, sucks, sucks. But I console myself with the realization that he is giving all he can even if it’s not as much as we all need. Perhaps your dad is also loving you as much as he possibly can.
I don’t know if it’s fair to call it parental indifference, but that’s what it feels like.
We have this with my in-laws, and it hurts me that they’re so willfully disconnected from the wonderful people I love so dearly.
I don’t understand their motivation (or what emotions they may actually be having), but I do understand the depth of the injury. Sorry.
And maybe it’s his magic trick too. Maybe he will miss you more than he knows how to express, feels it deeply, and the hard exterior is his coping mechanism.
My heart breaks a little bit for you, reading this. It is very difficult to come to terms with the fact that a parent will never be the warm/fuzzy/approving/loving person we would like him or her to be. Hell, that sometimes we NEED him or her to be. It’s a daily task: to try to let go of the wish for things that will never happen, and to accept how things actually are. (I know I’m more successful some days than others.)
I hope it helps you to know you’re not alone in this particular struggle. And I appreciate tremendously your writing so candidly about it.
I am sending warm thoughts your way.
Oh, honey.
That’s about all I’ve got, but it’s heartfelt. Oh, *honey*.