The Reckoning, pt 1. Homework from my therapist.

Getting it Out or Something

    It is the 5th of February, 2024. I was given homework by my therapist to write about my dad. I don’t know where to start. It is now 9.5 years since he killed himself. 

    I am an only child with siblings. My dad never had any other children in his life and he found out about me when I was two because my mother could no longer take care of me by herself. She and my dad were always friends with benefits--they weren't ever partners, never married. They broke off their relationship because she began having feelings for him. In her words, she became pregnant with me during their "last hurrah". She had told another man that I was his child (Daddy Phil) and came clean sometime around their divorce. That’s when she reached out to my dad to tell him that he’s a father. Like a sane person, he asked for a paternity test which proved I was, indeed, his progeny. I still own these pieces of paper. Maybe I’ll frame them one day as a dark joke.

    After what, I assume, was quite a lot of turmoil and reconciliation, he chose to become part of my life. I vaguely remember meeting him at Salon Sinier, and I was confused and frightened. He would regularly take me in for weekends or evenings and I made it incredibly difficult, but he never gave up. He suddenly became a brand-new father to a two-year old, tempestuous child as a single, 37-year-old man. What a fucking upheaval that would have been.

    I suppose he partially did it because he always wanted children but never had stability or a long-term partner. I might have been just what he needed at the time. He had recently finished his Bachelor’s Degree and was sober for several years by that point. I think this is the part where I start to get weepy. At some point during my childhood, my mother wrote him a letter asking if he could be my primary caregiver–I also own this letter. I won’t frame that one. 

What only became clear to me after his death was his immense struggles with depression. I don’t know if my mom ever knew how much he conflicted with his inner demons. Both my parents suffered from severe depression and coped with substance abuse–what great genetics I was gifted. When I was about 15 (five years before his death), I stayed with my mother for a couple months and she told me how she tried to kill herself several times. She would call my dad when she was having difficulty and he would come over and comfort her until she fell asleep–then he would silently leave. There are parallels from when I was a child, afraid of the dark; he would lie in bed with me and tell me affirmations until I fell asleep.

I am constantly awed by his selflessness towards me. While I had the converse with my mother who left me at two years old and was in and out of my life from there on out. I would stay with her occasionally, but my dad would always need to step in. He threw me extravagant birthday parties, took me on exotic holidays, and encouraged me to have many hobbies. And when I was thirteen or fourteen–just the time when fathers and their daughters begin struggling to connect–my mother attempted suicide and it was the first time I found out about her issues. I was at gymnastics, inconsolable, and he came to pick me up in the cherry-red corvette. I assume this was to remind me that I was lucky and loved, and to cheer me up.

I got into the car with him, sobbing. I can only remember one other time as a cognizant youth that I cried in front of him and that was when our dog died. He cried with me too, then, and that was the only time–until I was older–that he ever showed such emotion to me. This time, though, was entirely different. I told him what my mom sent me and his way of comforting me was by saying, “It’s okay, she’s just doing it for attention. She’ll be fine,” and I shut down. It felt so callous at the time and maybe it was. I’m sure it came from a place of malice for my mother for putting me through that, especially considering his struggles and how he kept them from me. He also likely wanted to make me feel better but didn’t know how to do it. I still wonder if he knew how badly it made me feel. We didn’t speak for the rest of the drive home, so I suspect he had an idea but didn’t know how to respond further. 

Turns out, my mom was just doing it for attention. After a fraught night talking to my family, constantly crying and fretting, she was finally found and committed to the hospital for a few days. I don’t think my dad and I ever really spoke it properly but I vaguely recalled him saying something like, “I told you she would be fine.” I don’t know if I’ve made that memory up or if the conversation actually happened, I just remember struggling from there on out and knowing I couldn’t really ever engage my dad in topics about depression.

Throughout my pre-teen and teenage years, I suffered from depression without knowing what it was. When I was 12, my dad paid me $20 to read Being a Happy Teenager. I thought it was silly, but I really engaged with it and identified with the problems it was trying to combat. I did some self-harming when I was in middle school and suffered from bulimia throughout high school. I had an incredibly privileged childhood with my dad, but I had no choice in the matter of my depression because of my genetic brain chemistry. 

So I never trusted my dad to be present for my misery from that moment forward and I can see now that it was both of us struggling to communicate for fear of the other. I think he felt he had to be strong and invincible around me, and I felt I had to be satisfied and grateful for my lovely life that he worked so hard to provide. I find that it makes my reconciliation of the future so troublesome because of how things could have been different if we had been able to share with one another.

I had a lot of problems with my dad after all that. I felt that he didn’t really care about my issues, which I felt stemmed from my mom. He had such a difficult childhood that I truly believed he didn’t like me for being ungrateful. He started going abroad for several weeks at a time every month or every other month and I felt it was to do with not loving me and wanting to be away from home. Nowadays, I recognise that it was due to his unhappiness with life, seeking sex with strangers and exoticism, something I have definitely done in adulthood. He would still do little gestures that he hoped would make me happy and I can’t remember how I reacted–if I dismissed them or genuinely seemed grateful. I was a teenager, it was likely the former. 

My grandma Judy came to visit when I was about 16. We were in our newly remodeled kitchen (the result of a flood) and I said something about my dad not caring about what I was up to. She closed the fridge with abhorrence and grew very stern with me. She said something along the lines of, “Your father loves you more than anything in his entire life. You are the best thing that has ever happened to him and you need to really look towards the things he has done to show that to you. He struggles to communicate, but he loves you more than life itself.” I cannot remember her exact words of course, but I can remember the urgency with which she attempted to convey it. It has since become clear to me how sincere that was. I remember crying over it at the time, and it was the only time I had ever cried with her. She didn’t let me out of her embrace until I agreed that what I thought was untrue. I know I told her I didn’t believe it, but I definitely wasn’t convinced. 

The first time I realised something was wrong was in 2011 after I moved away. His amenability to my desire to move away at 17 was quite remarkable. I moved in with my sister before moving in with my boyfriend and his family. He still paid the father ‘room and board’ for me to live there, but something felt shaky about my suggestion and his reception of the request. He never really liked it when I was too troubled to continue public school, but reconciled with my needs. I think he was always willing to do things he didn’t like if it made me happier. In retrospect, it is likely that he knew I was bound to a life with depression. 

We would email very infrequently and virtually never spoke on the phone. The only time I really remember speaking on the phone with him was when Grandma Judy died. He had a rather fraught relationship with her, but they had a form of reconciliation over the years and I was her only grandchild. It was the third time I ever heard him cry. 

And then I graduated high school. I didn’t actually expect any of my family to come up for it, which was certainly absurd. My dad, my mom, my sister and my nephew all came to celebrate with me. It was the first time I felt celebrated on such a large scale, despite all the effort my dad put into celebrating me during my childhood. I was just shy of my 18th birthday. 

That day was really beautiful. My dad recorded my whole graduation speech and took so many photos. There are really sweet photographs from that day. I think I remember he thanked my boyfriend's father for taking care of me. I cherish the day so dearly because of how connected my dad was to the celebration. He was so present in a way I’d not seen since I was a child.

My dad seemed even more disconnected than normal, but I didn’t know anything was wrong at the time. I chose to be in the car with my mom and sister when my dad drove with my boyfriend and my nephew. We went to a restaurant (was it Applebees, Olive Garden, or TGIFs?) and had a really splendid time, but I’m really upset to admit that I don’t remember anything we said to one another the whole night. I just remember when he was off. He had bought me a beautiful emerald bracelet from Columbia but lost it. I didn’t care at all. 

We were parting in the parking lot. The rest of my family was staying another night but he couldn’t. As he was about to leave, he came to say goodbye to me. We embraced in the parking lot and he tried to tell me he loved me and was proud of me, but could get very little out and didn’t look back at me as he left. 

I got a text message later that evening where he apologised for not saying much but that he was feeling very emotional. I felt something wasn’t right when he said goodbye, but it was the first time he cried with me and I didn't cry back. It feels so selfish and distant now to think of the pain he was in, while I was delighting in my life and the future. Maybe he was doing the same, but was upset he wasn’t really a part of it anymore. 

This is where I take a break because of the agony I am feeling.