i suppose there has been a lot of research done about fathers, their role in our lives, the way their role has changed in families etc etc. I'm here to ponder and contemplate as to whether the art of fathering has gone to shit, whether it never was worthy of being called an art, or whether all my bitterness is in my head.
i've lately had some um,
unsatisfactory dealings with my father. i suppose that my relationship with him has never been that great, particularly since i was about 14, started hanging out with boys and other bad kids, and basically gave the one-finger salute to my father, who was (and is) a terrible communicator and if he had a problem with how I was conducting my life, didn't know how to tell me. so yeah, from about that age i lived with my mom full-time (they split when i was about 7) and saw my dad kinda sometimes. he never seemed to mind or care that my sister and i weren't really hanging around with him any more.
when i was 19 he moved away and for about the next 6 years or so i had a continual, nagging guilt at the back of my brain (sometimes at the front) that i failed to take good care of my dad, and now he was off trying to take care of himself and feeling terrible that he must be so lonely and sad all the time. of course this wasn't true and even if it was, it wasn't my problem. it is not a 20-something year-old girl's job to create a comfort zone for her own father. it is not any child's job to be responsible for a parent who is healthy and sane and fully capable of caring for his or her own physical and emotional self. however, it is a
parent's job to be responsible for his or her child for the duration of that child's life or until the parent is physically or mentally incapable of doing so. this is something i am more and more sure of the older i get and the longer i am a parent.
the thing is, it seems like every woman i talk to, every woman i know, has a shitty history with fathers, whether they are their own fathers or the fathers of their children. okay not
every woman but an alarming number of them. fathers who took off. fathers who fucked up. fathers who said they were going to do things and didn't. fathers who said they never would do things, and then did. fathers who became fathers and then seemed to lose interest in being fathers and just decided to stop doing that job. the problem is, being a parent is like being alive. once you are it, you don't stop being it as long as your child is still on the planet. however, lots of men seem to have missed that message.
so what's the deal with
my father? well. without going into details, the long and short of it is that he made a promise to me about 9 months ago. about 5 months ago i acted on that promise, which seemed to be taking forever to be fulfilled and which i really needed to have fulfilled. at the same time, i reminded him that the promise had been made and told him i was going to act on it. about 2 weeks ago i reminded him that the promise had been made, i acted on it, and for the past 5 months i have been struggling to deal with the difficult situation i got myself into, thinking i'd have help getting out of it, since the help never materialized. tonight i received a response to my reminder. it was another promise of help, bracketed by on the one side, a reminder to me that i could have been more supportive during a time of difficulty in his life, and on the other side, an offer of professional advice about how to deal with the situation i find myself in, which i wouldn't have been in if he'd followed through with his original promise.
so. i have a passive-aggressive, unavailable father who doesn't know how to have a relationship with me and who fails to take responsibility for his role in that relationship. another man in my life, one whose role and relationship couldn't be more different, has shown me some real support and sympathy for my plight, and for the difficult job i face, extracting myself completely from this bad relationship with my father. but i told him, removing myself from my father's life won't actually be that hard, since at the best of times, our lives merely brush each other in passing. but even in writing this, i have a knot of sadness in my chest, realizing that i will miss having a father. i have always missed it.
the end.
