Listening Blindly

                 Obsessive Reflections of My Father

The mirror shows a reflection that is not my own. I was a young girl of thirteen when I turned all feelings inward; no one could know me or reach me no matter how hard they would try. They, meaning, my desperate mother, teachers, school counsellors, psychologists, and “friends”; from there came bullies who learned not to cross me and then silence when I passed nosey neighbours and those who feared my peculiarities.

I don’t want to remember you Dad, but I do. Tears spill and plop down onto the paper I am writing on. I don’t hate you; I hate your lying, bullying, witnessing the grooming of your new young spouse who you encouraged to dislike me, (due to your fear of what she might hear me say or find out?). I am not your enemy, you’ve done a good job at hating yourself for eighty years, I remember just “US”; fourteen years of just me and you and I took all your ugly behaviours and stuffed them into a closet with a heavy lock for I needed to be loved and love you even if you said and did very inappropriate things. The parts I hang onto are our singing in wonderful harmony, our love of sentiment and this unspoken code that read, ” I got your back”. I had your back until I just, just couldn’t, until I watched you try to turn the world against me, make me out to be some terror that I wasn’t and never would be. You were a stupid teenager and human; parenting was out of the question from you. I feel sorry for your sons who could not be seen because you took up all their space with your ego.

I mirrored many of your behaviours which I so wish I could erase. Thing is Dad, no matter how much my heart can be set afire with a desire to see you and hold your hand again, you will never admit the truth. It’s completely impossible for you to tell a straight up honest story. I love my siblings which you have strayed like breadcrumbs across the globe for me, yet the pact is, ” Shut-up or get lost”. I won’t go down that road with you or your wife. You manipulated my dearest treasure, my first baby sister, then my unforeseen siblings and embalmed your wife with some sick, dysfunctional image of herself as your saviour. She is the enabler you needed when I quit the job. So, while my tears are justified, and memories can be good, I tell myself you are dead. I can talk to you without any fear and through heaven’s ears where you can hear me; you must because God makes you listen. He or She or They sit on you and force you to hear me and threaten to send you back to earth and do it all over again yet with honesty. Oh, this dream is a good one. I wish you were not a dream, a place I fall into when I see a photo or visit a place we were once together and laughing. If I were to see you in human form again, it would be so brief that you could only cry and say, “I love you, I am sorry” and then I would walk away stronger. But it’s not a movie, a western where I win, and you lose. The reality show is we both lost.