To the in between fathers
I may be committing a cardinal sin with posting twice in one day. As I was on a run this morning, words started to well up in my heart and I have to put them to the page. My hope is that this short post will be a blessing.
There are fathers that are in between
I presume social media will be a mess today so I’m gonna be scarce. This day is bittersweet for me and I know many will honor good fathers. But. I want to honor the ones in between. My father was always my greatest enemy. Abusive. Angry. Disappointed in me. My father made it a point to remind me regularly that I was never the son that he dreamed of. As a child I felt lost because I don’t know what I did to make him despise me. We were always at war. And he’s serving a life sentence in prison so we will never have the chance to be physically close.
And a few years ago, in my late thirties, something shifted. I will never know why, but my father told me he loved me for the first time. I’m strong but I’ve always needed a father. Every son needs their daddy. Even when that daddy is a stranger. These days we are creating a relationship from scratch. Hurried phone calls shared between the two of us unearth the simple fact that we don’t know each other at all. He can’t make up or atone for our past…but.. today he is trying to do something new.
We shall see what becomes of us.
Here is something to the fathers that are in between. Not quite yet who they want to become. To the fathers that are starting over and desperate to rewrite previous stories. Not quite good and running away from the bad. To those who are grieving and have lost everything…Love y’all
Excellent post and transmission of thoughts / experience for those on both sides. I know what it’s like to have been despised and/or abused and abandoned by both parents. Spent my entire life trying to figure out why, mainly by recreating the same dynamics in the partnerships I’d choose - only to have made that wound within me worse. It’s been only within the past month or so that things have shifted. It wasn’t anything we did wrong. We had war from the jump in our households because the parents who brought us into the world were already at war with themselves. All relationships are mirrors, but especially so when it’s an SO or family, even moreso children. People hurt others when they mistake the mirror for a window. So I finally saw it was nothing I did, in my case it’s a repeat scenario of: I can never compete with someone’s alcoholism - alcohol will always win. I can never be enough to someone to change when they are addicted to the vice of their own narrative that keeps them stuck in suffering that was there long before I was. So I’m grateful to be seeing that, even though it can still be very painful. And I’m glad you guys are able to form something now, even if it is over the phone / between prison walls.
Thank you also for acknowledging the current parents “in between” - I don’t have kids but for many I know who do and are young parents who didn’t have actual parents growing up, it’s very hard for them. The shame they feel for not measuring up often makes them act even worse. Hopefully they get the message that they have every opportunity in each passing moment to pioneer something new and break the cycle. Otherwise it just keeps going until one day someone does. Let it begin with us now. 🙏❤️🙏
Spent my morning with incarcerated dads (who are also often sons of incarcerated dads.) This poignantly speaks to the complexity and persistent hope, even the loss and the grief, of it all. Sending love all around. 🖤