Our Story

I wasn't certain of how to begin this. It's been eleven days since it happened, and I've had time to think and discuss and numb myself to what needs to be felt. Most of what needed to be said has already been written in emails. I regret not writing here first, when it was raw, when I was open, when my emotional outrage would have sounded more heartfelt and less like whatever analytical composition I'll form here. Still, I feel the need to write about it. I feel like this story needs to be told.

The thing about stories is that once they are told, they no longer belong to just the narrator. They become part of someone else's story. They are released out into the world to be observed, to be understood, to be retold and retold until they become part of a larger story, the story of being human. I once posted something very personal about my mother and she immediately called me and requested I take it down, which of course I did. Certainly I didn't blame her for it. In fact, I agreed and felt foolish for having released her experiences out into the vulnerable lens of the public eye. Years later she told me she had made a mistake. Partially, I think, because she understood the point I am trying to make. Her story belonged to me too. Once told, even the events that took place before I was born became part of my history. They are stories I think about and feel things about. They are stories that have shaped my perspective and my sense of self. They are stories that are an important part of my story.

This story, the story of father and daughter, is just as important. I've been looking through old posts from years ago and what strikes me most about this story is the way in which it has remained unchanged. It is a story of the devastating cycle through heartbreak to forgiveness to heartbreak, time and time again. It is the story of a young woman asking, pleading, begging for love and all of the attributes that accompany love, encompass love - honesty, respect, affection. It is the story of a father who not only denies her such love, but denies that such love is even possible, not only between her and him, but between anyone. "Love unconditionally is a line for children to beat their parents with," he will tell her. And it will break her heart. Not only because he cannot love her, not only because he believes this to be true, but because believing such a thing means that her father is a sad, sad man who has never experienced the joy of loving something, someone, unconditionally.

And it is a joyful thing to love that way, to love as I do, so openly, so freely, so unconditionally. My very existence is based around the knowledge of, the feelings of, the faith in such joy. My whole life revolves around love - for the grass, for the trees, for the sky, for every other person I have encountered in my life. Yes, even for the father who is incapable of feeling the same way. I still love him as my father. Otherwise none of this would matter. Otherwise it wouldn't hurt that he cannot see that.

The details of what instigated the latest fight don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. It was only a manifestation of things that have gone unsaid for the past seven or eight years. I have tried more than once to say them, but they have fallen on deaf ears. They continue to this time around, as is made evident in completely unfair and irrelevant remarks made towards me. I'm still uncertain of what exactly is happening, but it's somewhat comforting not to understand. It only convinces me that so little of it is actually about me.

Why can't you love me? You claim that what I speak of is movie screen, soap opera love, but it's not. It's real. I know because I feel it daily. I feel loved. I feel an infinitely vast capacity to love. I know, more than anything else in this uncertain world, that love exists. Why can't you love me?

You tell me to stop acting like a child, but you seem equally upset that I am not a child, that I don't need you like a child needs their father, that you can't control me like a father could their child. Also, I am not a child. I am the oldest twenty-five year old I know. I am independent and thoughtful and responsible and I have asked so very little from you over the years. And yet that little has been much more than you are willing to give. I express to you my very genuine emotions. I ask you to share yours. I attempt, over and over, to allow you to be a part of my life. I stand up for myself when your responses seem unjust. You tell me to stop acting like a child, but I don't know what acting like an adult is if not doing all of those things. "Love isn't whining" you tell me. Is telling you I'm hurting somehow whining? I am not some whiny child. I know that about myself.

You tell me I am disrespectful. You tell me appeasing you is not enough, but you seem equally upset when I offer any authentic emotion that isn't happiness or love. You feel disrespected by my "polite courtesies" but also by my honesty. What is it I'm supposed to say? You cannot demand affection from me. You have to earn it. You have to allow me to be who I am, say what I feel, feel what I feel. Or you have to accept the fake front I offer you, my attempts to please you, my attempts to be someone you deem worthy of your love. Those are the options. You have offered no choice or solution, simply anger and frustration at my inability, at the inability of all people, to be both genuine and fake all at once. I cannot be both. I know that about myself.

And I know too that a year ago I would have allowed this to destroy me. I would have allowed your inability to love me unconditionally make me feel as though I am someone unworthy of unconditional love. But I know better than that now. I am not a child. I am not a little girl feeling sorry for herself that her father won't love her. I am an adult feeling sorry for another adult because he cannot love his daughter. I used to think that I needed your love, your approval, your opinion of me to matter in order to define myself, but part of my definition in the story of my life is that I am who I am without you. You have helped to create me, in good ways and bad, as the person I am today, but your chapter is over and I can continue on without you.

One of my good friends told me that I needed to grieve for you, for this, for us. And she's right. This is a loss. So I will grieve, and slowly, I will begin to heal. There will always be a scar, of course, but it can be a symbol of my past rather than my future. It can be a reminder of who I was rather than who I have to be. It can be contained to part one of my story, trapped in my childhood, as part two opens upon a new stage of adulthood, a stage that doesn't contain stories of you.

Our stories are intertwined, of course. This is your story as much as it is mine. I would like to think the best of you and assume you too will be saddened that your final chapters will not contain me. I hope you too feel the loss. But mostly, despite everything that has happened, I hope that you find happiness. I hope that you discover what it means to be loved and feel love unconditionally, even if it cannot be with me. I hope that you get to experience such joy. From one adult to another, I hope for you. From one storyteller to another, I hope that your concluding lines are genuinely lovely and consisting of something real.