Fathers and Other Accidents

I’ve started re-evaluating myself recently. Mainly as an attempt to figure out why I’ve been hurt so many times. I have been attracted to individuals who will forever treat me like shit. It’s not just because I like them, because I do; but because the male figures in my life have not always shown me the manner in which to express or feel my affection.

I mistook their tolerance for affection, and the fact that I had to jump through flaming hoops to get their attention as signs of what real relationships are supposed to look like.

A female friend of mine recently had a shouting match with her dad, regarding his treatment of her mother. She was devastated by his response: if you don’t like the way I treat any of you, you can get the fuck out of my house.

My dad didn’t live long enough to allow me to have this shouting match with him. He just lived long enough to ensure that I hunted approval and mistook it for his being proud of me. I worked so hard, for so long, being the first in everything, in the hopes that he would notice.

Then I’d visit my cousins for the holiday and chill with their father. He’d sit cross legged on the floor to be at a closer height to me, and hear me out. Regardless of how completely extra I was being, he would hear me out. And then let me come to the conclusion I was being extra, all by myself. And, I’d then have to go back home, and ask myself why I didn’t deserve a dad like that.

So, the fucked up thing was, from really early on, I could tell the difference between love and approval. And I wanted both. And I hunted them both down, with such an intensity that they morphed into one ultimate combo: if Dad approved, he loved. And the math was strong. And the math worked. I’m sad to say, I have a C in mathematics. So basically, my math has been pretty awful from way back then.

It took my father dying from a disease that ravaged his nervous system and fucked with his motor skills for me to realise he didn’t deserve me. And though it’s generally true that most parents don’t deserve their children and vice versa, it hit especially hard at his funeral.

It was one of those “preview” days in early September that are laden with signs of the coming heatwaves. The heatwaves that make you take a cold bath, only to start sweating as you dry your body off. The grave had been dug, we’d all filed out of the homestead to the graveside, and were subconsciously fanning ourselves. We were a sweaty bunch, me and my half siblings. See, my father was the kind of man who did not believe in sleeping alone whilst on work trips, nor did he believe in condoms. Or any other form of birth control for that matter. As a result, I have a veritable forest of step-siblings.

The difference between me and them, I noticed, was the manner in which we behaved. My siblings and I were unmoved. We might have been at the burial of the homeless man down the street, for the fucks we gave.  The wife of a family friend was scandalised by the apparent nonchalance we exhibited, stating that we were “unfeeling brats”. We took it all in stride, before my older brother finally burst out, pointing out at the other children my father’s unrelenting loins, that the only reason they were crying was because they didn’t live with our father.

It’s safe to say that didn’t go down well with anyone, with literally the rest of the world fighting to claim a piece of my progenitor. I haven’t talked to any of my paternal aunts and uncles in close to ten years. Not because of the shit I said during his funeral, but because I cannot stand to have people remind me I’m the spitting image of a man I still have unresolved feelings about, which fuck up my own way of life.

I blame my dad for a large chunk of my insecurities, not because he caused them, but because he never taught me to deal with them. Or rather, I blame him because it’s easier to do so than accept that I might be a fuck up.

I avoid Human emotions like the plague, mainly because I don’t know any healthy way to accept, or give attention to someone. So, I do what I’ve been told men in straight and gay relationships do: I lie about it. I easily get bored by people. I lose interest in people the second something shiny comes thru the door.

These are issues I connect with my childhood, but they’re honestly issues I’ve built to avoid intimacy, connection and general development of attachment. All this hard work to avoid feelings, and I still get jealous of people able to connect instantly, and for long periods of time. I’ve also realized that I need to start blaming myself for my shortfalls, and not my fucked up relationships with a deceased pensioner.