I remember the day I felt like my dad had died like it was yesterday. Here my parents, who I thought loved each other dearly, were getting a divorce and my mother was devastated. The night they talked to my brother and me, I felt like someone had just hit me with thousands of pebbles. They started out small and grew in size slowly at first and then rapidly until I hit the floor. I couldn’t breathe and my whole body didn’t want to function anymore. All I could do was grasp for air and cry. I cried so hard I couldn’t see, my body shook and I felt sick. I remember pushing my body as close into the cabinets as possible so that no one could get me. I just wanted to disappear. Here we had just spent an amazing day at an amusement park over the weekend and now my entire world was spinning out of control.
Everything was really hard. The day after, I was such a mess I screamed at my gym teacher, was sent to the guidance office, and balled for 20 minutes. Then I went home where I proceeded to cry more to my older brother on the phone. For some reason my brother and I had some uncanny connection since I was little, he was always able to make everything clearer. My younger brother didn’t seem to be as a mess as I was. I still don’t know why he seemed better off than me, why he seemed to understand. I think the reason it hit me so hard was because my dad, the guy I had just written a 3 page essay about how he was my hero, had just smashed my entire world into millions of pieces. Pieces I couldn’t even begin to figure out how to put them back together.
Besides the fact that my parents’ divorce was a big helping of dysfunctional, my mom was trying extremely hard to not say anything bad about my father. She had remembered how it was for our older brother and sister. She didn’t want to mess up any type of relationship we might and most likely would have with our father. She just wanted us to be happy. My dad, I think, tried to not say bad things about my mother. Though there were times, mostly when he was really angry, he would say horrible things. Things that didn’t make me hate my mother; things that made me hate him for saying them. He used to say that my mother was keeping us from him, when it reality, we just didn’t want to be with him. We didn’t want to listen to those horrible things that he and his side of the family would say about my mother. We hated it. I remember one time we were at my grandmothers and my little brother went to the bathroom. While he was gone I got grilled about my mother, what she was saying and how she was such a horrible person for not letting us be with them. When In reality my mother had told us that anytime, anytime at all, that we wanted to go over to our fathers or grandmother’s house she would gladly take us. She wanted us to be with our family.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming one particular party. I am not saying that my mother did nothing wrong. That is just not true, but she tried very hard to do what we wanted and to take care of us. She just wanted us to be happy. She took us to councilors so we had someone outside of the family to talk to. Counseling was both helpful and unhelpful. I mean really, after 4 counselor’s never call you back a kid starts to get a complex. My dad’s view of counseling was reading a book. I am not discounting reading in any way. Sometimes those self help books can be helpful for some people. However, if our case we felt it made things worse. All of a sudden my father was doing and saying weird things, things that made me rather uncomfortable to be around him, even in public places.
Finally, the court system made him go to counseling with my brother and I. Most of the time my brother and I dreaded it, counseling with my dad was like having your life force slowly and painfully drained out of you. I imagine it is similar to a Dementor draining you in Harry Potter. Poor harry, I feel for you. There were times we left and my voice was horse from yelling. It also got very repetitive. We would try and tell him the same thing session after session and he didn’t ever seem to get it. Even the councilor tried to explain it to him and none of it really seemed to ever get through. I actually started writing down the conversation word by word so that way I could go back to it as a reference at a later date. My father and I used to get into such petty arguments that I saved all the e-mails. Most of the time people wouldn’t believe what they said, even councilors. I remember printing them and giving them to one of them. That was the same day I was asked which of us was supposed to be the adult and apparently I had an excuse for my behavior.
I look back on it and I feel rather disappointed in myself. What had possessed me to burn all of that energy? Why had I let this situation make me so depressed I was medicated for a year? It became so difficult to explain what was going on to people that when I said that my dad had “left” or was “gone” I let them assume that he was dead. It was just so much easier. I was able to keep what little energy I had left. There were so many times I remember crying myself to sleep feeling like he was dead. I even thought that maybe my real father had been taken by aliens and they had replaced him with a robot. Where had my super hero gone? The man that picked me up when I fell and wiped all my tears away? The man that had hugged me so tight sometimes I couldn’t breathe? Where was the man that would listen to my real and make believe stories? That man, the man that would slow dance with me in the snow when I was little, would never have left my mother and his family as shattered as they were.
The whole things messed me up pretty good. I didn’t trust very many people and I thought most people were lying to me. Even now I still have that thought in the back of my head that worries about the people around me. What if the man I love with my whole heart leaves? What if he shatters me like my father did?
There were times when I tried. I tried to have a relationship with my father again. Right when I thought I could see my super hero at the end of that long dark scary tunnel, he would morph in front of my eyes and break me all over again. Every time it happened, my mom was there to pick me up again and trying and put the pieces back together. She would let me scream and cry at her for hours, even in the middle of the night. At a certain point, I gave up. I gave up on ever being able to see my real father again. He was going to forever be that monster that ate my energy for breakfast.
The interesting thing about all of this is that after I met the love of my life, things started too changed. I got up the courage to try again because believe it or not I missed my family. I missed all the fun times I used to have with them. If it wasn’t for him I might not have ever given them another chance. He would let me squeeze the crap out of his hand until he couldn’t feel it anymore and he would let me babble completely freaked out the whole way there. He is the whole reason I was able to slowly spend more and more time with them. I went out to lunch with my dad on my own not too long ago. I had that glimmer of hope back again, that maybe my real dad was in there somewhere. That day gave me even more hope that there might be an end to this tunnel. He invited me to come spend a week with him and his family at the beach. I knew I probably couldn’t do a week, but maybe a few days. I would have my love right next to me the whole time and I knew he would keep me safe.
That long 3 day weekend at the beach was the break through point for my father and I. I saw my super hero dad again. The man that had kept me safe and loved me no matter what I had done when I was younger was back. I was so happy, that I cried. I didn’t let him see it because I didn’t know how I would even attempt to explain it. I had the most fun with him that I had in a long time. I felt like a little girl again. I wanted to curl up in his lap and cry asking him where he had been all these years. I wanted to tell him about this horrible monster that had pretended to be him for so many years. The day my love and I left the beach, I cried again. I didn’t want to leave my dad. What if he disappeared again? I don’t think I could handle that. I couldn’t watch my dad die again, it was too hard and I don’t think my heart could recover from that again. Not now, not since I’ve seen and been with him again. My super hero was back and even though his suit might not fit quite right anymore and might be washed out some, it was still him. He had come back to life. It might still be a little while until we have even an ok relationship, but I’ll take it. I can’t wait to catch up with him. I’ll keep my zombie dad thank you very much and if you want him, don’t expect to get away with it without a fight.
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