The Stranger and the Strangeness

So... my "dad" has called.

I'm not quite sure who would have given him my phone number because my entire family has taken the "just don't talk about it" approach to any paternal aspects of my life. Since everything was such a big secret, I am surprised that whomever gave him my number didn't first ask for permission.

But he's got it. And he called.

His message was pretty brief and neutral. Hearing his voice was quite strange to me, since the last time we spoke it was 1989. When he had called me then, I certainly wasn't emotionally ready to excuse him for his complete and utter absence in my life; nor was I mature enough to realize that he, himself, had his own inner battles. There were other "forces" preventing us from having any form of a relationship... and a cruel cloud of surrounding silence that neither of us fully understood.

When we spoke in 1989, I was devastated. Having my own father ask me how old I was, and when my birthday was, broke my heart. I couldn't comprehend a father not knowing when his own daughter was born. I couldn't comprehend his inability to simply say he was sorry. Knowing he had a kid out there somewhere... who could have needed him... who did need him... and simply carrying on with his life without a care in the world; how could he?


And now I'm a "grown up." Someone who admittedly has made her own serious mistakes. Participated in her own life tragedies. And most certainly, I'm tired of allowing this cancerous silence to continue. Now that I am someone who is strong enough to deal with the pain, resentment, and loss of my fatherless childhood... I'm ready to slowly let him in. I'm not going to say there isn't some level of fear involved. Having a relationship with my father could just as easily become hurtful, as it could become beautiful and rewarding. Healing.


Regardless of the outcome, he is half of who I am. Most of what I like about myself... I get from my father. This is what I have always found ironically profound. I internalized the denial of my father, as a denial of me. Add to that the failure of schools, and my family to support the creativeness that is so deeply ingrained in my very being; and you wind up with a confused little girl feeling unloved, unwanted, ashamed of who she is; trying to be something else... anything else... so that someone would love her for who she was meant to be.


We can't change the past, and that, to me, is the beauty of it. I don't have to spend months on end trying to make sense of the last 37 years without him. Trying to right all of the wrongs. Bandage all of the old wounds. I've got today, and tomorrow. I've got an open mind; a fairly healed heart, and a healthy willingness to simply meet the man who helped to create me. And hopefully, I'll find peace in discovering all of the things I didn't know, before I never get the chance.