part 42

So still doing really well on the whole dead-dad front.

These are the things I have specifically found much easier and – gasp! – pleasant to do since I found out the bastard bit it:

-        Be awake

-        Fall asleep

-        Stay asleep

-        Wake up

-        Get dressed

-        Take a shower

-        Brush my teeth

-        Wear makeup

-        Clean stuff

-        Be affectionate with my husband and kids (that’s a HUGE one)

-        Homework

-        Help the kids with homework

-        Relax

-        Stop obsessively reading the news online

-        Smile

-        Laugh

-        Snuggle

-        Be around strangers

-        Talk to people I’m not totally comfortable with

-        Plan tasks and then do them

-        Eat

-        Breathe

-        Run errands

-        Mail the bills

-        Stand in front of a window at night and not be scared someone with malicious intentions is watching me

-        Be inside the house alone for more than two minutes without the front door locked

-        Write

-        Put my laundry away

-        Appreciate my husband for doing my laundry

-        Appreciate my husband in general

-        Have warm and positive feelings for others

-        Stop yelling (so much)

-        Just hang out and live

Some things on that list may seem trite, but they are all things I have struggled with every day, and sometimes every moment. I also know there are a lot more things that have gotten much easier since my dad died, but I don’t feel like thinking of any more to add to this list right now. However, I can say that I have never felt the simplicity of going about living life the way I have for the past two weeks.

It has REALLY been nice.

I used to fantasize about my dad being dead. It made the fact that he was alive a little easier to live with. I would wonder how I would find out that he died. I would wonder if I would be upset. I would wonder if I would go to his funeral. I would wonder if I could get away with peeing on his grave without getting arrested.

I have written his eulogy over and over and over in my head. I have delivered it over and over and over in my head as well. I have imagined what his grave stone would look like, and what we would have engraved there.

Sometimes I would think that I would not even go to his funeral – it would be all the way across the country, and it just wouldn’t be worth the hassle. Other times I imagined attending and delivering the eulogy (which would not have been very complimentary), and wondering if anyone else would show up. I thought maybe his wife and her daughter might show up, but I didn’t know if anyone else would.

Sometimes I would imagine what I would do if he had left me anything in his will. Would I want to have it? What if it was a giant chunk of money? What if it was something that he kept from when I was a baby, something that he could take out and look at every now and then and remember that I am his daughter?

I already knew that he didn’t have any money, and if he did, he probably would not leave it to me. I would have been more shocked if he had kept a memento of any love he ever had for me than I would have been if he’d made me the sole beneficiary of a million dollar life insurance policy.

Something like a memento would have been all it took for me to feel any pain about losing my dad. It would have given me a little glimmer of hope that he did love me, and that he kept loving me until he died. It would have shown me that some part of me was important to him.

That little glimmer of hope bound me to that man like melded steel for almost my entire life. No matter how shitty he was, or how evil he was, or how cold he was, I held onto that little glimmer of hope that he somehow, somewhere deep inside of him, felt love for me. If he had, it wouldn’t have mattered what he had ever done to me or anyone else - I would have loved him and mourned him and done all the other things most people do when their dad dies.

He didn’t leave any mementos, though. He didn’t even leave a will – nothing. And there was nothing real in my life with him that could have in any way fulfilled that hope of him loving me in some way – it simply does not exist.

But that is all it would have taken for me to be sad now that he is gone. I wonder if he knew that, or if he even cared. I wonder if parents realize how much they mean to their children, no matter what they have said or done or not said or not done. The love of a parent, completely regardless of any situation, is always a blessing to a child, completely regardless of that child’s age.

I know that no matter how much I fuck up, or do things that hurt my kids, I always know it is never too late to keep trying to do the best that I can. I know that my child will never one day turn from me with no love in his heart, and with no desire for me to love him back.

The reason I know that is because my dad is a monster, but I still love him, and I still wish he loved me, too.

Sometimes, before he was dead, I would close my eyes and try to believe he was already dead, just to see how it would feel. I could imagine it, but I could not fully let go of that constant fear long enough to even get a second of what peace or pain his death might bring to me.

I feel it now. It is amazing. It is like a fairytale, like there has been a cold, heavy, dark sheet of metal that some bad wizard guy put inside my skin when I was born, and it has been really tight around my rib cage and my heart for my whole life, and I have just always been wondering if I will ever be free – and now I’m free.

I mean, wow. WOW.

As it happened, I didn’t have to make any decisions about the funeral or eulogy or anything else. There was no funeral, there was no eulogy, there is no grave – there wasn’t even an obituary. Some people find that in itself to be tragic and terribly sad.

I just think that is what happens when you have been a monster for your whole life. I feel it is just like anything else that is obvious and predictable: if you have unprotected sex over and over again with a lot of different people, you will inevitably get some kind of disease; if you keep doing heroin, you are inevitably going to die of an overdose; if you keep banging your head against a wall all day long, you’re inevitably going to have a headache.

If you’ve been a monster for your whole life, no one will be sad when you’re gone.