8:06 a.m. | 2005-03-11
On My Own There's No One Here Beside Me
I've never had a problem throwing around the words "daddy didn't love me," and, personally, I've always had a definition for why I chose my words. Recently I've found that they're so harsh that while I understand what I'm saying--the majority of the populous doesn't.
See, my father does love me. He's quite fond of me actually, most would label me as a daddy's girl. He's never left me. He never abandoned me. I was referring more to the fact that he disappeared emotionally from my life when I turned 7 or so. This wouldn't have been such a huge shock had he not been my daddy and utterly loving up to that point.
He had always been wonderful with me and I had always been his little girl. We have hundreds of pictures of the two of us because my mother wasn't "present." We played hide and seek every Sunday and I'd run around the house as he'd cheat and move. He was my daddy.
More things happened in these two years than I could ever imagine. A few days before my birthday Elsa, out prized show German Shepard died. Six days later we moved into a new house very far away from my old neighborhood and friends. My mother got two new dogs, my father finished his PhD and got a new job.
His hours clocked over 70 a week. I started first grade at a new school that year. My father admittedly stopped being gentle and loving with me. By the beginning of the next summer my mother got a new job where she traveled every week. In the middle of the summer I was hit by a car and hospitalized. I have no idea where my father was. And my mother, in an intimate conversation later, admitted that she never felt like my mother until she saw my body on the ground.
Within two months my father slipped off a ladder at work and I remember hearing my mother talking to the hospital. I never got to see him. Two days later he was back, but in pain. My world continued as I was tugged along into school.
Six years with my mother not wanting me and then working night shifts. My father becoming afraid of my age and approaching womanhood and all of this changing me in ways that I never realized until now.
My mother, even with her "new found love" for me, still traveled every week. With a father who wouldn't talk to me and a mother who wasn't there...I was fucked.
I was in before school care and after school care, at school from about 6:30 am until 6:30 pm. I'd return home every night and I'd go to my room, coming out when dinner was ready, and retreating when it was done. During dinner my father and I inevitably got into a fight (generally relating to the small fight we'd had on the way home) and at some point later in the night he'd come back down to say he was sorry.
I remember sitting in my room not wanting to go up there. I remember getting up each morning and being so god damned excited to go to school simply because when I was there, people wanted to see me. My teachers thought I was bright, my administrators thought I was devilish but they all mired at how cute I was just to get their attention.
The more I think back on this time the more painful it is. I was so terribly alone. At a time where most kids are vulnerable to that and parents coddle them because of that. My first day of real school? My mother always laughed and said she remembered how when I'd be dropped off I'd never say goodbye to her like the other kids, I'd just run off and start playing. I've never had the heart to tell her why.
