I am not much of a daddy’s girl in the traditional sense. I
don’t think my dad is Superman or that he can fix any and everything. I’ve
always seen him for what he was first and foremost, a man.
For as long as I can remember, my dad has tried to prove his
love to me. I loved my dad, but I hated his flaws. Somewhere along the lines of
loving the man and hating his flaws, rejection of his love got tossed into the
equation. That left me with a void that I would spend most of my adult life
trying to fill.
As an adult woman I have been searching endlessly for love,
the love of a man. I just want someone to love me past my hurts and pains and
see me, the woman behind the enigma, the scared little girl that fears having
her tender heart broken by a man whose life hers revolves around, a man that
will protect me even from himself.
My daddy was the first man to ever break my heart, and it
wasn’t because of anything he did to me personally. Initially I did think my
dad was Superman and that he could do no wrong. I wanted nothing more than to
be in his presence. There was a time he could soothe me better than my mother,
and mothers are the ultimate sources of nurturing and comfort. It was his
relationship with my mother that shattered the heart of the daddy’s girl and created
the mind of an analyst that thinks but doesn’t relay thoughts, feels but doesn’t
express emotions.
The man he was with my mother was a different man from the
one he was with me. This dichotomy of extremely different temperaments
befuddled and scared me. Little girls grow up to be women, so I thought the way
he treated my mother he would one day start treating me. In an effort to
protect myself, I shut down when it came to him. I rarely ever kiss, hug, or
even engage in conversations with my father, but I can clearly see his hurts,
pains, weaknesses, strengths, his wonderfulness and huge capacity to heal and
create good, and his ability to totally destroy anything good.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that I realized this is
exactly how I go about my love relationships with men. I can see them clearly
and love with an all consuming love that, the only way I can describe is via a
poem I once wrote entitled Persephone:
I don’t want companionship. I want to be your owner, your
devourer. I have raging passions that see only in shades of red, white, and
black. The multifaceted taste of your blood is requested upon my palate. My
lungs have need of the air that is your spirit. A need to consume your soul
lies in the abyss of my heart. The billowing smokes of Hell have nothing on the
need of my love to possess you. I am Queen of a kingdom that's not my own, longing
for the spring when I can emerge from the depths of dark love and bring to you
my gift of beauty, light, and a love that heals.
The problem with this kind of love is that though it
consumes me wholly, the men I love rarely ever truly know they are loved this hard,
this darkly, richly, and powerfully because I never really open up to them
because I fear they will become monsters that break my heart. It wasn’t until
now that I realized just how much my relationship with my father mirrors my
relationships with men. They love me and try to prove their love, but they
themselves never fully feel loved by me. Though I hail them as Kings in my
heart and spirit they never really know it because I treat them as mere men
that are flawed possessing the power to hurt me.
My goal is to work on the healing of my emotional
relationship with my daddy. I am at a point in my life that finds me wanting
marriage, a family, another baby, and just peace and happiness. You can’t conquer
what you won’t confront, so I plan to conquer the false sense of lack of love
by embracing and accepting the very thing that has always been readily
accessible to me, my daddy’s unconditional love. I am now challenging myself to
go on a journey of releasing false perceptions and reconditioning my mind to
line up with my heart with regard to love. I always say love shouldn’t be so
damn complicated, and truly it isn’t. I was the one making it complicated. Now
maybe I can unfasten the lovelorn sign from my forehead as I learn to openly
express what is consuming me inside: LOVE!!! Love is truly the very essence of who I am as a person, as a woman. I have so much of it to give.
Peace, love, and light
-Q
