This is not at all what I expected to be doing today. June 1, 2014. A year too late for birthday wishes. And it's all kinds of f'd up that I think about it every year. But there is a lot that is f'd up about the whole thing,..always has been.
Today I googled a phone number and found an obituary. From time to time I've looked for him online. I've even traded comments with his niece on a family website,..but I've never found him. I guess I could have asked where he was when I was busy commenting on him,..never thought about that.
So, I finally know where he is. In a grave in Safford Arizona. Another search gave me a more recent picture of him. I honestly don't believe I would have recognized him if he had walked right up to me he looked so different. Finally all gray. Grecian must have gone out of business when he gave up the battle.
A thousand pictures run through my mind,..laying on the beach in Mexico,..sunning in the back yard, family and friends hanging on his every word,..laughter. Him and my mom having cocktails and dancing in the living room before the Sorority Club Christmas dance. Christmas,..he spoiled my mother every year and it was fun to watch. He adored her. She adored him. They never ever yelled at each other in front of me. Sounds almost idyllic,..ya,..not so much.
I cant get a handle on all of the things that I am feeling at this juncture. Remembering the good, the bad,..thoughts are ripping through my brain like daggers,..."why is this making you cry?",.."why did you think of calling him in the first place?" "why did you always pretend everything was okay between you when it definitely wasn't?",..."say it"
"Say it",..say it OUT LOUD for God's sake, the man molested you. He knew that the birth father had done it and he did it anyway (or because of it). TWICE! The man tried to blackmail you into sleeping with him when you were only sixteen.
And yet,..I continued to have a relationship with him. I called him Daddy. I told people he was my Dad. I introduced him proudly. Even after they divorced,..I'd call, he'd call. My life would fall apart and he was always the first person I called. Something I did and never understood. It wasn't like I forgot, or even kept it a secret. Twice in major meltdown mode I told the tale to counselors. The second time I even told the counselor it was my Dad who was coming to see me that afternoon. He just looked at me and said something about visiting the subject later,..but I never gave him the chance. Who continues to hang out with the person that violated their childhood in the most hideous way possible? Who continues to have a relationship with someone who swung between being a caring parent to being a monster who thought it was okay to touch me. I've never understood the why of all of that. Never.
After the blackmail fail he never made a pass at me again. We just moved on.
And now, he is dead. Just like the other father, dead. Neither have been a part of my nightmares for a long, long time now. I have been long past the whole thing. Seriously. I have a good, but stressful life, children, a husband who is a good and normal man. I haven't been a victim my whole life (not the whole thing anyway). Not that I'm naive enough to think that that he, or the birth father and their actions had no affect on who I am, or who I have been. I'm sure I could pay someone to attribute all of my current failings with the shadows of my past. But what is the point really? Sure, I beat myself to death with criticism,..and I'm a veritable vat of guilt. My self esteem issues can be directly linked to those moments when I laid quietly staring at the ceiling of some old address, waiting for something horrible and ugly, and painful, to end. I get all of that. I have just refused to be defined by someone else's lunacy. It was a process, not a decision. It was years and years before I could be alone in a bed with anyone without the shadows dancing over me. I had to hate myself for a long time before I learned, at least in part, to love myself. What took me there was loving others and loving them enough to work at being a whole and complete me. I didn't want to look into the eyes of my children and see disappointment.
In a way, I can close that last window still ajar with the issues from the past. I can think of him and know that he is no longer of this world, and that when he met the maker I was one of the things he was called out on. I can stop feeling guilty for not calling him out myself.
Done
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