Two part blog from Father's Day 09

Part 1

A day to celebrate the man responsible for half your creation. Honor the one who taught you to ride a bike, encouraged you, taught you to drive? (I'm grasping at straws to find father/daughter activities because I know absolutely nothing of what a father is supposed to teach his daughter.) For those of you with awesome dads who stepped up to bat for you and were there for you, awesome. Enjoy your day, enjoy your dad, be thankful that the fates chose to bestow that gift on you.

For me, however, this day is wrought with a myriad of negative emotions and confusion. I try to remain positive, and be thankful I had any father at all, but then I remember what life was like when he was around. I remember helping him with his funny smelling plants in the basement that I couldn't tell mom about, I remember how he used to have me help him roll joints by having me lick the gum at the edge of the paper. I remember sitting on the front porch all day long, waiting for him to come spend time with me like he promised to, only to have my mom bring me inside at dusk. I remember, probably most vividly of all the memories, him beating the fuck out of my mom. I'm terrified of all men, thanks to this man, and I'm sure as fuck not going to celebrate him.

Part 2

I blogged earlier, when I was angry. Well, when I was VERY angry. Now I'm just generally upset and feel guilty and righteous at the same time and that has me feeling confused. I have a huge hurricane of emotions going on in my mind and I really need to lay them out. Hopefully I can do that in a manner that's not overly confusing for anyone who may read this, but if I can't pull that off then I just can't. So, if that's the case, my apologies to those of you who do read it.

Where to start, where to start, where to start?

I guess since it's father's day, and that's what my previous blog was about, I'll start there. Firstly, I feel that I should express that I do love my father. It's kind of programmed into people to do so, regardless of the family you've ended up with, you love them somewhere inside yourself. It's what bonds us together. For the first few years of my life, I was even a "daddy's girl". I didn't know yet that the things he did were sometimes bad things. All I knew was he was my dad. It wasn't until I was older and reflected on my early memories that I actually realized how inherently FUCKED UP things were. Most of my life, he wasn't there, and that hurt. He hurt my mom, both in front of me and behind closed doors, and that hurt and scared me. He didn't ever hit me, but he didn't need to. That seed of fear and pain was planted. Despite this, I loved him. I grew up mainly without him in my life, just occasional weekend visits, occasionally saw him at my grandparent's. Despite this, I loved him. -Ugh, I'm having issues with keeping my thought flow from jumping around, this is probably gonna get messy- Anyway, I love him. Sometimes I hate him. Most of the time I'm scared of him. As far as I know he considers me a joke, or not worthy of being his daughter or something anyway, so I doubt my opinion of him matters much anyway. Despite the mixed feelings, I still yearn for a relationship with him. I still want to know the mystery factors in the equation that equals me. He gave me (and all his kids) his eyes, I know that. His nose, for sure. My face is a fair amount his, though my mother is there, too. He shared his back and neck problems. He passed his temper on to me, on to my brother. I'm scared of my brother, and I'm scared of myself. I'm scared of intense anger. I'm leery of confrontation. I'll stand up for myself and others, if I feel the subject is something worth fighting for, but I hate having to argue. I will fight, physically, to defend myself or others who can't defend themselves, but I hate having to resort to it. I hate it because of the place it takes me to. I see red and lose myself. Literally. When my vision goes red, my mind shuts off and I have no grasp of what I'm doing. That kind of anger terrifies me. Knowing it's inside me, makes me sick.

I do not advocate men hitting women. I do not advocate parents hitting their children. Spanking, smacking a hand, that's one thing, but leaving bruises and marks on your child is ridiculous. There is not a case where beating up on someone who cannot feasibly defend themself against you is ok. No matter how you try to justify it, it just isn't ok. No matter when you grew up, how you grew up, this is something that should be universally accepted. No one should be made to feel smaller than they are, no one should be made a victim. This is what abuse does.

I've lost my train of thought entirely, but my mind is less cluttered now, so maybe that was all I needed to get out.