Daddy Issues

I know that my last post probably sounds fairly petty and pathetic, but I stand by it. This morning I received an email (calling would be too based in reality) entitled “fighting.” I opened it. “Dear Frankie, it sure doesn’t take much for your anger with me to flare up. I am stumped. I’d like to stay in touch with you to see you at your best. Love Dad.” This is a quintessential email from my father. Not only was the argument my fault, seeing as I’m an overly sensitive woman, as he believes all women to be, but apparently I am also a business associate or student he’s had a slight miss-communication with.

I didn’t respond. I’m not going to for a little while. Maybe what I really need is a break from him, some time to just live without his endless judgement haunting me in everything that I do. I know that it’s immature to avoid him, to give him the silent treatment the way that I used to when I was eight, but there’s no possible way to resolve it otherwise. There’s no reasoning with him. Anything I say to him right now will make him assume that everything between us is fine, and I’ll go on feeling angry and hurt and guilty for feeling that way, guilty for feeling anything at all. He makes me ashamed of my emotions because he doesn’t have them, because it involves a level of human understanding that he’s never been able to grasp.

My father is a smart guy, but when it comes to any kind of relationship, he simply cannot comprehend how to make it work and I think that’s why he’s so angry all the time. That’s why he gets so frustrated by it all and why he resents me for living by my heart. He can’t hear his own, but more than that, he makes no effort to. I used to say that it wasn’t his fault that he’s so emotionally unavailable, but really, it is in a way. It’s not just that I feel closer to my mother, it’s that I feel so distanced from my father, exiled from his little world of approval.

He’s never let me feel like I deserved his love, and because of that, I’ve grown to feel like I’m undeserving of all love. I’ve grown to feel like I’m undeserving of any respect or relationship or happiness. I live each day with so much guilt inside of me for things that I shouldn’t feel guilty for. I’ve spent my life apologizing for who I am. It’s important to tell the people in your life that they are valued and important, but I do it constantly out of the sheer amazement that anyone could possibly love me. I do it out of the fear that one day they’ll realize how undeserving of their love I actually am and leave me. I do it because I’m so endlessly grateful that they can’t see what my father sees. I wish that I was the same way. I worry sometimes that I’ll go my whole life never allowing anyone to love me because I’ll never be able to allow myself to love me. I worry sometimes that I’ll always feel undeserving.

I don’t want to go on and on about this. I just need to work through it and I can think of no better way than through writing. I hate that I’m this girl with “daddy issues.” I hate that I sound so whiney and bitter, but maybe I just need to allow myself to be this way. Maybe I just need to allow myself to accept that I am a girl with daddy issues. Maybe I just need to allow myself to be me, with or without my father’s approval.