2013: Transcending imperfections and starting anew. Part 1.

Relationships are not perfect.  How could they be, when they are products of inherently flawed beings?  Friends, coworkers, siblings, spouses, parent-child.  There will always be disagreements and opposing points of view.  There will be differences in priorities and unintentionally (or even purposefully) inflicted pain.  There may by competition, jealousy, and selfishness, or expectations that are out of reach.  There could be any number of shortcomings in a relationship, and it is up to us as individuals to decide whether we are capable and willing to transcend these imperfections, whether we can learn from them and become a wiser and better person, and whether we can do so while maintaining the relationship or only after we have let it go.

For reasons I still don’t fully understand, we seem to hold our families to different standards than we do the rest of the world.  Our innate desire to belong to a group often results in us clinging to our families, our very first social group, through situations when we would have otherwise readily turned our backs on others.  Conversely, when we feel that we have irrevocably been done wrong, the emotional attachment and desire for a solid family creates so much pain that it is easier to push loved ones away than work through whatever issues are at hand.  Anger and disregard are easier to endure than hurt and anguish.

Anyone who knew me as a kid probably knows “Mel’s mom”.  Like many girls growing up, I was always closer to my mom than my dad.  She listened to me go on for hours about the latest school gossip or childhood drama, she cheered me on at every gymnastics meet and school performance, and she was just always there.  She was my consistency; she was my rock.  My dad worked a lot and was more involved with my brothers’ activities- baseball and cub scouts and whatnot.  And like over 50 percent of the marriages in our country, my parents had difficulties that resulted in my dad being in and out of the house, followed by separation, and ending in divorce.  Personal details aside, I blamed my dad for most of the problems and spent many years dealing with my pain by not talking to him and deliberating cutting him out of my life.

As completely horrible as this sounds and as ghastly as it makes me out to be, I never felt like I had missed much by not having a father around.  I didn’t feel like I knew him all that well while he was living with us, and I never longed for more time with him or felt like a part of me was missing after he left.  I only knew what I lived, and I lived with a mom that could take the place of 4 parents, let alone 2.  My relationship, or lack thereof, with my father was just something that I accepted.  But like most things in my life that I am pretty sure I have “accepted”, it turns out that I had just pushed it back far enough that I wouldn’t have to think about it or feel it.  It’s not that I didn’t care or didn’t miss him, it’s just that I didn’t allow myself to realize it.  It’s amazing what happens when you truly open yourself to vulnerability and consent to feel whatever emotions are plunging to the surface.  I have reached a point in my life where I am finally able to do just that.

Some time this past fall, I was watching a home renovation reality show on HGTV.  A girl about my age was building a front porch on her new home, and she was doing it with the helping hand of her father.  I must have seen shows like this a hundred times, but never before has it made me think of my relationship with my own father.  Usually it’s like watching a reality show about a family with 19 children or a guy with 4 wives.  It’s outside of what I know, so I watch as an outside observer and don’t draw parallels to my own life.  But this time I did.  This time, I thought about how nice it would be to have a father to help me build a deck.  Is this a result of having a new house and wishing I had a helping hand?  Is it because it’s impossible to be a 31 year old female without thinking about your own future children, and hoping that they will have strong, stable relationships with us parents?  Is it because my father and I had just bonded leaps and bounds this past summer when we saw each other at his brother’s funeral?  I couldn’t tell you, but the emotions that passed me in that instant totally blindsided me.

That very same night, before I even had time to process the first wave of emotions, the tide came in again.  We were sitting at home and watching The Walking Dead, which is the only show worth watching when Breaking Bad is on hiatus.  Spoiler alert!  It was the episode from the current season when Hershel, the farm father, gets bitten by a zombie and his survival is uncertain.  As he lay unconscious on a prison cot (did you know that prisons are a great place to wait out a zombie apocalypse?), his daughter sits by his side, takes his hand, and tearfully tells him what a great father and man he has been.  And I wanted that.  Not the zombies, and not the dying loved one, but the relationship.  Who knew?

Continued here: 2013: Transcending imperfections and starting anew. Part 2.