Reverberating Heartache
There was a hearse parked next to me on campus yesterday. It was decked out with stickers, some emo kid was obviously driving it as a lark. It made me think of my dad. (He's been a funeral director for 60 years.) I started to take pictures of it, to send to him. Then I remembered that reaching out, sending pics, would make him think we were ok again. It'd make him think that I was getting closer to forgiving him, instead of the truth- which becomes clearer every day (especially on days when I find hearses to show him)- I might forgive him, I will forgive him. But things are never going to be ok again.
I'm never going to send pics to him again, I'm never going to try to be friendly with him again. I can't. Because relationships have to have two sides to them. And he doesn't do his part. He doesn't hold up his end of the deal. He doesn't even know how!* So I can't hold up my end anymore. I can't keep sending pics, reaching out to say hello. I can't think about how to make him smile or laugh. He broke me. He shattered my life. And his narcissism keeps him from seeing the damage he caused. If I forgive him, if I go back to sending hearse pics to make him laugh, he forgets the damage he caused. (Not that he spends time thinking of it, anyway.... Not like I do.)
I've always done my part, and it's allowed him to ignore the problem, ignore my needs. It's allowed him to disrespect me, to see me as less-than. So my part has to stop. And that is so much harder than I expected.
I have this pang- this... reverberating heartache. I WANT this relationship. I WANT him to be my dad, to love me, to tell me everything's ok. I want him to tell me he understands what he's done, that he empathizes with my pain. I want him to tell me that he'll stop. That he'll do better.
But he won't.
Because he can't.
Because he doesn't know how.
Because no one ever made him grow up. Evolve. Empathize.
*No one ever showed him how to really love someone.
So I have to settle for a one-sided relationship, or I have to end it. Those are my choices.
My choices are bullshit.
My choices are hurting my dad, my mom, my aunt, my brother. They're devastating me. Because I can't pass a hearse- can't pass an old-timey car, I can't hear an old 60s song or see a boy with his dog- without thinking about him. Without feeling all that heartache AGAIN. And AGAIN. and AGAIN.
All I ever wanted was a father. He was there every day of my life. He slept in the next room, we watched the same tv, talked to the same people. And all that time, every moment of my life, he chose not to treat me as anything but less-than. He chose to be... not a father, but just an authority figure to fear and respect.
He never saw me. He never learned the names of my friends. Never asked what I was doing in school... He was right there, but a million miles away. Looking down on me the whole time, not caring to see me.
And I have to go through all of this- all the reminders of why I've cut him out- every time I think of him. Just so I don't let him back in.
He's already got his hooks in me- and it would be so much easier to just submit, let him back in and have the regular amount of pain- pushed down by a mound of denial. Gods that's so much easier.
Am I doing the right thing?
The other part of this is seeing the pain on my mom and aunt. Knowing that it would lessen, or be easier for them to bare, if I submit. Jesus, they look worse every time I see them. The stress is killing them, quite literally.
What's worse? (What is healthier for me?) Mounds of denial and the pokes and jabs of his narcissism? Or this reverberating heartache? Someone tell me-- because I really, truly don't know anymore.







