Control Your Tongue

Where to begin? Father's day has always been a weird day for me. My father was, and still is at times, verbally abusive. Part of this stems from his disappointment with himself. He gave up on several dreams to do what he thought was the adult thing to do. He had aspirations to be a broadcaster. With the exception of his time being drafted to the Army, he has worked at the same factory since age 18.

My dad discouraged my dreams on a regular basis. He wrote them off as stupid and a waste of time. At times, he was physically forceful. I don't use the phrase "abusive" here because he never beat me. What did he do? He would hold me down and pull my teeth. When I was growing up, I would hide a loose tooth and not mention it to him because I knew he would hold me down and grab it. I had a couple years of bad acne and he would hold me down and "pop" my zits. To this day I have a severe issues with people touching my neck and face. It takes my last nerve to visit the dentist.

Enough of a reason to not enjoy the day?

Jump ahead a few years. I meet and get married to Kristina. I thought I would finally have the father figure I desperately needed. We scheduled a September Wedding. In February, he was diagnosed with liver cancer. We moved up the wedding to April. He died in October.

Jump ahead a couple more years. After 5 years of non-fertility, non because medically we are fertile just no success conceiving, we get pregnant with no medical assistance. We were extremely excited. I was very nervous about becoming a father because of my own father. I wanted to believe that I would break the cycle, since I broke through his discouragement of pursuing my dreams. Still, Kristina and I grew more excited day by day.

December 2003. A day after being told my mom has a brain tumor, Kristina and I find out that our child has no kidneys. New Year's Eve our baby died. I'm a father with no child. I don't feel normal celebrating or even saying I'm a father, but I technically am.

Jump ahead to January 2004. My mother goes into surgery to have her brain tumor removed. She hemorrhages and goes into a vegetative state. She died in August.

So you ask, "why does your Mom have to do with Father's Day?" Well, my father has somewhat changed. In a lot of ways, our roles have reversed. He calls me for advice or to bounce things off of when dealing with my adult brothers. When I've visited Indiana, for the funeral and once after, he has sobbed when I left. This, of course, has made me lose it emotionally. I have a hard time understanding why my mom died. The emotions I have when I talk to dad are weird and range from complete frustration to sadness, anger to astonishment.

I don't even know how I feel about him sometimes. I love him, but I don't feel the closeness I should feel. Now I worry about losing him, but for my sake. I hate the feeling of losing someone.

Basically, Father's Day sucks for me. It's a reminder of sad and painful memories. I hope yours was better than mine.

While this was depressing, I'm not depressed. You don't need to worry about me. Writing this out and processing the thoughts have been therapeutic for me.