Break the Chains... Be Free...

I have spent three days trying to write about my father. Why him? Well, because I am working on becoming a better me, loving myself more, and my deeply rooted issues with my father have everything to do with that. I cannot move forward until I deal with it, with him. I cannot learn to breathe and love and live again until I have given life to truth and by speaking it and death to pain by forgiving. Until I do so I will forever be a prisoner of my past hurt, watching people live and love through these prison bars. 

I don't believe fathers really understand the affect their presence, or lack thereof, has on their children. More importantly I don't believe they know the effect it has on their daughters. Some of a father's main goals as a parent are: being an example of how a man is supposed to carry himself, showing what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman looks like, and ultimately showing his daughter the love she deserves, should expect, and demand from a man. It is impossible to fulfill these goals as an absent father. Hell, some men have a hard enough time accomplishing that while they're present in their children's lives. 

My father never afforded me the opportunity to know what he was like as a parent. If he did, I was too young to remember and it wasn’t meaningful enough to leave an imprint on life. There are a few moments however, that did. I remember my mother and father arguing outside one night when I was young and when I went outside I remember my father holding a beer bottle in his hands as if he was going to hit my mother upside the head with it. That’s one of the few childhood memories I have of my beloved father.

The crazy thing about my relationship with my father is that I love him unconditionally no matter how wrong he is or how wrong he’s done me. That is also the problem. Through my relationship with my father I have learned to accept things from men that I shouldn’t. I have learned that no matter how messed up a person treats you it’s okay to still love them, still want to be in their presence, still want to prove yourself to them. I’m like a baby crying out for his love and attention and he isn’t even paying me any mind. I have taught myself to go out looking for the love I couldn’t get from my father in other, most times older, men. I realized that I don’t necessarily value myself like I should because I’ve never felt loved, never felt like I was worth anything to anyone. Because of this I have allowed men to talk to me and treat me in ways they never should have been able to. I’ve learned to have expectations and expect to always be met with heartaches and heartbreaks. I’ve learned to overextend myself and my love for people who will never appreciate it.

I’m tired of living like this. I am tired of letting myself be devalued when the reality of it all is this: I am priceless. Living in my pain left me angry, bitter, alone, resentful, and dangerously guarded. Living in my pain turned me into a depressed shell of myself who didn’t care about who she hurt or the fact that she herself was hurt. All I cared about was my momentary satisfaction no matter who I had to use or what I had to do to get it.

The biggest issue I feel has come from my relationship with my parents, my father more than anything, is my fear of abandonment. When I was still a newborn I was sent to live with my father in the Virgin Islands. The only thing was, I wasn’t living with him, I was living with my grandparents. I don’t remember that time in my life. I stayed until I was five and then I was back in New York City. One Christmas vacation I went to visit the Virgin Islands with my mom and my little brother and my mother left us there. I don’t remember a good-bye or even an explanation. I just remember her being there one day and gone the next. We stayed with my father this time, but he might as well have not even been there because his girlfriend was the one who took care of us or we were left with my uncle’s girlfriend at the time who managed a hotel and had a nanny for her daughter while she was at work. I have no memories of him then either. He’s always been one of those parents who was there, but wasn’t there. My mother came back for us a few weeks or months later as magically as she had left.

Back in New York other than the one other vacation we spent at my father’s where he wasn’t really too much present then either. Back in New York my father because a voice I heard on birthdays and holidays. He was like an appointment that you knew about when it came around, but you weren’t always sure about the time. Kind of like the wizard behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. You knew someone was there, but you couldn’t see him. Except for a vaction once during high school that I less than vaguely remember, I didn’t really see my father again until I turned eighteen.

It was crazy, when I first moved to St. Croix. My father seemed to actually be happy to have me around. Either that or he was just enjoying showing me off to his friends. That is at least until he felt as though I wasn’t worth showing off anymore. Living on that island six years was an emotional rollercoaster. My father cared for nothing that I was going through and caused some of it himself.

As a daughter, you expect that when you’re going through something with a man you’re dating that your father is going to come to your rescue when things get crazy. That’s not always the truth. I remember when I was dating a guy and we got into a physical altercation. I called my father and he was so unconcerned. He didn’t ask me if I was okay or anything. Never did, even to this day. I wouldn’t have been in that predicament in the first place had my father not forced my hand to moving in with him after changing the locks without my knowledge and essentially kicking me out of the only home I knew. For at least a year, if not longer, my father would pass me on the streets and not even speak to me or look at me. It was as though I was nothing to him. Not worthy of even a passing glance. All the while I still loved him, even though I hated the way loving him through his treatment of me made me feel. Unwanted, unworthy, just down right worthless. How could I love myself when the one man I loved more than anything treated me like I was a nothing?

Somewhere at some point I cannot recall things got better. Not great, just better. I feel like it was more for show than anything else. We still barely spoke. To this day I barely speak to my father. I won’t hear from him unless I call first. He doesn’t tell me he loves me. Well, he does if I say it first, but you can hear how empty and hollow his words are. These days I’ve learned to just live with it and move one. I’ve learned not to expect a single ounce of genuine love, acceptance, or care from my father because it will continue to lead to disappointments. I refuse to let myself continue to live like this. Waiting for something that will never come…

I am at a place in my life where I am just ready to let go of all the hurt, pain, unhappiness, abandonment, and loneliness I have felt over the years. I am tired of building walls around myself and my heart to keep people out knowing that’s not what I want. I am tired of not being able to be totally and completely open with someone. I am tired of allowing myself to let myself be devalued because of my past, because of a man who probably NEVER really loved me and more than likely never will. I am tired of feeling like and letting myself be treated like and option and an obligation. I am a PRIORITY. I am ready to break free from my past and just start genuinely loving and living my life.

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