Loving is risk. It is the hardest, most vulnerable risk. Didn't I think I knew that already? I thought so and right now, in the freshness of this new painful awareness, I am not clear on what I thought I knew.
I longed to be loved by my father a certain way, a way he was not able to love me. I suspect it is the way a father can love a daughter, if he is able, that supports the daughter to soar because she knows she is special, smart, lovely, beautiful, strong and capable and worthwhile. As I grew into adulthood I began to feel even more distant from my father. I think he became less comfortable in knowing how to love me in his actions once I hit a certain point in adolescence. That was a pulling away on his part of what was the established norm. Maybe it was going away to college and seeing more of the world that showed me more of what I longed for from him and could not get. I look back and remember times of visiting home as a married woman and leaving with my husband, turning to the window on my side of the car, letting my tears fall silently down my cheeks. Subconsciously I must have sensed then I married a man similar to my father. Men can be incongruent and love their wives differently than they love their mothers and/or daughters. Maybe the neglect is just as harmful as the harsh treatment. I know as an adult I bought a book for my father as a gift. It was a journal. It had questions and spaces to lead him in topics to journal to me. He asked if I thought he was going to use it. Sign #1 there. Yet, I hoped and I spoke that hope out loud to him in response to his question. I told him I hoped he would and that I would have the opportunity to get to know him, truly know him, after his death. When my father did pass away from the cancer and I made the many hours long drive home to view him one of the urgent things I did at the house was to search everywhere for that book. I did not find it. I asked my mother and my brother about it. Neither knew anything about it. THAT spoke to me. And, yet, I still have lessons to learn about the men I love, what they cannot give to me and the hope I continue to hold. How terrified will I be when a man comes into my life and wants to stay in my life that can love me like that and its being different is scary and threatening? How patient will he be?