Non-traditional Daddy's Girl

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