It’s therapy day, so I’m sitting here trying to overcome the resistance I feel to going. I’m sipping coffee, listening to podcasts, and eyeing the clock as it tick tocks down to 12:30 – therapy time! Oh noes!

This is the first time I haven’t looked forward to a session.  I had an experience with my dad this past week that I’m going to have to talk about, and I dun wanna. I had an experience with my son last night that I’m going to have to talk about, and, yes, you guessed it, I dun wanna. Good stuff happened too, but the heavy stuff feels really heavy, and I want to enjoy this beautiful sunny day without mascara running down my face. Know what I mean?

But, as much as I dun wanna, I’mma hafta.

Booerns.

I think I’ll skip the eye makeup today.

Some Of The Deets

Last weekend my dad drunk dialed me. What else is new? I really don’t hear from him anymore unless he’s out of his mind blitzed on his beloved Molson’s.  I seized the opportunity to ask him some questions about my childhood, since the history taking portion of my therapy is still not complete. He answered. I got way more information than I wanted, to be honest, and in the process of gathering this information, I had an epiphany.

The man is still not over my mom.

Know how I know?

I know because when he talks about her, he does so with such rage, such bitterness, such vile language, that the only explanation possible is that a part of him is still living back in the late sixties, early seventies.

He slags my mom off so bad every time she comes up in conversation that it makes my head and heart hurt.

And I am still not over my mom. Know how I know? See above sentence, only apply it to yours truly.

Before therapy, before acknowledging that my mom’s relationship with me was never an actual relationship in which she was relating to me as a human being that was separate from her, these slag sessions didn’t really bother me. This time, though, it really did. It really hurt my heart to hear him talking about another human being that way. It hurt even more that he was essentially tossing off every responsibility he had to me as a father and to my mother as a husband and throwing it right into her lap. Everything was her fault? Really? You had no responsibility for anything? Really?

I called him on it. Told him what I remembered, what I knew about his marriage to my mother. Got some tearful confessions – yes, he cheated on her ALL the time. Didn’t come home some nights. Drank the hyrdo bill, the rent. Yes, he was ill-equipped to parent or to partner her in parenting…but he was traumatized as a child, and his father beat him, and he never felt loved and yadda yadda fucking boo hoo.

I felt something for my mother that I’ve never, ever felt before.

Fierce compassion.

Not the kind that makes me want to invite her over for tea and scones, mind you, but the kind that just broke my heart with understanding for how difficult it must have been for her, and how much pain this man brought into her life. Her experiences do not excuse her from accountability for the choices she made that hurt her children, no. But knowing what I know now has cut through my anger like lemon through grease. I still feel a lot of bitterness, but at least this fierce compassion I feel allows me to put it all into perspective.

I’ve always aligned with my father against my mother. It was easy for me, before therapy, to agree when he blamed everything on her…

Not anymore.

This fierce compassion also gives me the gift of relating to my mother in a new way – as a woman whose heart breaks for another woman. She’ll never be my ‘mommy’. Never was, really, when it comes right down to it, but she is a woman who experienced horrible things in her life – things that might have broken her…

The longing I’ve always had to have my mom in my life is dissipating.  The desire to align myself with my dad because he doesn’t reject me is dissipating, too. This is a huge step in excavating the person I was beneath all the sludgy layers of who they think I am/thought I was/told me I should be.

I’m the only one I will never leave or lose, and I intend to take fierce, compassionate care of myself.

And on that note, I’m off to get ready for therapy.

Thanks for listening. :)