He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 If my father loved me, he should miss me.<\/p>\n
That he won’t is hard to accept.\u00a0 It’s disturbing the way magic tricks sometimes are, the ones that make you question the inside as much as the outside\u00a0 — what I believe to be true about the known world disproven by the facts at hand.<\/p>\n
I was up half the night, jaw clenched until I could hear my own heartbeat slushing through my eardrums, my head a stubbed toe.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 HE SHOULD MISS ME.<\/p>\n
Around two in the morning, I think:\u00a0 You’re in a trap.\u00a0 Dad wants you to be like him.\u00a0 But if you were, which one of you would ever contact the other?\u00a0 Neither, that’s who.\u00a0 So, Anne, what would you rather have — A dad who cringes away from your neediness, or a stranger for a father?<\/em><\/p>\n I think: Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n But on closer inspection, it’s right.\u00a0 I approach my dad belly up submissive because he is so lacking in any of his own overtures to have a relationship.\u00a0 I’m afraid if I speak my mind, he’ll take any disagreement as an excuse to put more distance between us.<\/p>\n Driving around town the next day, I try it on for size:\u00a0 Goodbye, Dad.\u00a0 Not gonna miss you either. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It feels light and easy.\u00a0 What a relief that is, to not be overextended, reaching out in perpetuity for something that isn’t going to grab you back.\u00a0 But it also feels like a magic trick, one in which you know better than to trust your own witness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 He should miss me.\u00a0 If my father loved me, he should miss me. That he won’t is hard to accept.\u00a0 It’s disturbing the way magic tricks sometimes are, the ones that make you question the inside as much as the outside\u00a0 — what …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dad","category-ranty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5148,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions\/5148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annenahm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}