Fathers be good to your daughters, daughters will love like you do
It happens every once and again - a few hours in a sporadically placed day. I know how time passes: seconds, minutes then hours, then days, weeks, months, and years. It's been almost two and a half years since my dad passed away. To me, the time doesn't sit well. The period of accumulated minutes and memories until now - they exist in a frame because time continues to pass and occur regardless of the meaning and weight we put in certain moments. It exists, but it doesn't sit well. Most of the time, because it is human nature to cope and carry on, the time and its meaning sit in a small weight around my neck - a light pressure on my chest. It becomes something livable.
But other times, like these past couple days, it becomes an empty heaviness dying to be filled but with nothing to feed it. Usually, these episodes of memory and recall waft in with a scent of melancholy - nothing too heady. Now seems to be a different matter.
Maybe it's because of the strange off-hand comments my mom had made these couple days. It would start off with a conversation and maybe I don't respond in a clingy way that she might like so she jokingly says something along the lines of, "Do you not want me around? Maybe it's better off if I'm dead." And maybe usually, I would laugh that off and agree or shrug it off with a noncommittal dismissal of the absurd. But now, even recalling these situations, I realize this something, had been there even before she uttered a word.
Whatever it is, makes these comments... makes certain notions... burn in me. It's a sensitivity a vulnerability that had always been there but rarely acknowledged or tested... I don't know how to say it the way I want to say it, the way it actually is. This feeling.
I'm used to this making me sad. Or guilty for the things I would have changed if I had known. But this time, I feel angry. Angry at my mom for being careless enough to say such a stupid thing. Angry at myself for NOT lashing out at her the way I wanted to. I let her see enough to know she had done something carelessly hurtful. I spoke curt words tightly laced with barely restrained anger.
Don't say that. Don't EVER say that. It ISN'T funny, mom. I don't want to go through that again. I don't want to do that again.
Even just reliving that moment stings tears in my eyes.
Sometimes I hate the rules she puts on me. I hate the way she treats me. I hate the way she does a lot of things. But losing her? Now? No. I refuse.
And the worst part? It's not even about losing HER - not completely anyway. It's because if she passed away, I'd feel like I'd be losing my DAD all over again. Shitty, right?
And now I miss him all over again. You know, he used to be alive. Think about it. There's this way people tend to think about people they don't really know who have died. There's a distance. A certain sympathy and vague wishfulness. But I don't miss him like that.
I miss our conversations. You know what conversations are like... the really good ones, the kind that sneak up on you while driving in the car or watching TV with someone. I miss those conversations.
Part of me is ridiculously grateful right now that I'm having a mourning-recall. It's a surge of something real - painful, gritty, unresolved, and it stems from something good and pure.
Recently, I've been feeling... fake. That strange girl-worldness that seems to have settled in me like a mist. And by bringing my dad back into my consciousness in such an active way... it let him look at the stupidity that is creeping back into me and call me out on it: "Stuuu-pid."
Sometimes I wonder and get scared that my dad is gone... for good. To wherever it is people go to or do when they pass. But he still helps me out. Even over something so trivial. Like he used to do. And I'm grateful - more for the reassurance that he isn't just gone than for the actual help.
But other times, like these past couple days, it becomes an empty heaviness dying to be filled but with nothing to feed it. Usually, these episodes of memory and recall waft in with a scent of melancholy - nothing too heady. Now seems to be a different matter.
Maybe it's because of the strange off-hand comments my mom had made these couple days. It would start off with a conversation and maybe I don't respond in a clingy way that she might like so she jokingly says something along the lines of, "Do you not want me around? Maybe it's better off if I'm dead." And maybe usually, I would laugh that off and agree or shrug it off with a noncommittal dismissal of the absurd. But now, even recalling these situations, I realize this something, had been there even before she uttered a word.
Whatever it is, makes these comments... makes certain notions... burn in me. It's a sensitivity a vulnerability that had always been there but rarely acknowledged or tested... I don't know how to say it the way I want to say it, the way it actually is. This feeling.
I'm used to this making me sad. Or guilty for the things I would have changed if I had known. But this time, I feel angry. Angry at my mom for being careless enough to say such a stupid thing. Angry at myself for NOT lashing out at her the way I wanted to. I let her see enough to know she had done something carelessly hurtful. I spoke curt words tightly laced with barely restrained anger.
Don't say that. Don't EVER say that. It ISN'T funny, mom. I don't want to go through that again. I don't want to do that again.
Even just reliving that moment stings tears in my eyes.
Sometimes I hate the rules she puts on me. I hate the way she treats me. I hate the way she does a lot of things. But losing her? Now? No. I refuse.
And the worst part? It's not even about losing HER - not completely anyway. It's because if she passed away, I'd feel like I'd be losing my DAD all over again. Shitty, right?
And now I miss him all over again. You know, he used to be alive. Think about it. There's this way people tend to think about people they don't really know who have died. There's a distance. A certain sympathy and vague wishfulness. But I don't miss him like that.
I miss our conversations. You know what conversations are like... the really good ones, the kind that sneak up on you while driving in the car or watching TV with someone. I miss those conversations.
Part of me is ridiculously grateful right now that I'm having a mourning-recall. It's a surge of something real - painful, gritty, unresolved, and it stems from something good and pure.
Recently, I've been feeling... fake. That strange girl-worldness that seems to have settled in me like a mist. And by bringing my dad back into my consciousness in such an active way... it let him look at the stupidity that is creeping back into me and call me out on it: "Stuuu-pid."
Sometimes I wonder and get scared that my dad is gone... for good. To wherever it is people go to or do when they pass. But he still helps me out. Even over something so trivial. Like he used to do. And I'm grateful - more for the reassurance that he isn't just gone than for the actual help.