On a two-hour drive with my dad over the weekend we got to talk about the things I had been avoiding discussing with him. My relationship with my dad is not like other women's relationships with their fathers, I can talk to him about pretty much anything, about my sex life, about his sex life, any partying related substance abuse, relationships, religion, politics, football, my madness, his work, family, everything. But lately the part of me that communicated with him, and others, freely had been sorely bruised. It was not just a particular incident, but the sum of a variety of experiences, realisations, encounters, conversations, scares and unfortunately loses. All of it had just left me a bit frightened, and I became very skilled at avoiding the deep conversations, or those that required me to engage in the things I just didn't want to think about, let alone let someone tell me what to do about them.
My dad, however, is not just anybody. In the same way that my mum intuitively knows not to ask me about things and knows exactly what will sooth me, my dad knows that keeping it all inside, unsolved, will be worse, and so he talks it out of me. On this particular occasion what came out were mostly tears, I think because there hadn't been any for a while, or perhaps because what he was saying was cutting through so many layers that all I could do was cry. He demanded I stopped apologising for every little thing I did, as if the space I occupied was already too much and tresspassing even by an inch was a capital offense, as if every touch was a cut. He was not far from the truth, but I know there is a lot more behind that I am still discovering, like we all do as we peel through the layers of our fears the older we get.
The hardest thing he asked of me was to remember who I was 11 years ago when my first damaging depression hit and I was away from home, in an abusive relationship; 6 years ago when the panic attacks where so intense I couldn't leave my house for days on end, and I had to defer my masters degree; 3 years ago when on the edge of psychosis I had to return home and abandon my life; 2 years ago when a broken heart broke my will to live and the only way to stay alive was to be committed, and the sacrifice for my life was the loss of another; and at last he asked me to remember who I was 8 months ago, holding onto a ghost, watching it die and finding solace in a glass of wine.
As I went through all those painful memories I also remembered the truly wonderful ones that outnumbered them, and that have become more permanent thanks to my family and friends, because I opened up and let them in. And my dad reminded me that I pulled through all of those moments. Against all odds, I did, sometimes all alone. That I ought to feel proud because he was. Having lowered my guard he asked me the questions I had been avoiding, and gave me answers to questions I didn't want to ask. And little by little I started to see myself once again through his eyes, I steadied myself and thanked god for such a bossy dad.
People can only ever know facets of you, not always the ones you want them to see but often the ones they can see with the limited experience they have of you, but also determined by what they want to see. My father can be proud, see me as truly amazing, strong, beautiful but also vain, stubborn, proud, perfectionist, private, etc., like the rest of my family do (maybe, you can always ask them!) but they have known me all my life, they have seen me through the very best and sometimes the worst, although I have learnt to hide this from everyone but myself. Everyone else just sees glimpses of who I am, snippets, some larger, some smaller, some darker, some brighter, but just stills of who I am, the movie I just play for myself, in the theater of my mind.
Feel free to judge the glimpses of me you see, they are never and will never be the whole picture. The whole picture is often messy and incomplete, but what I know is that the life I have lived, what I have had to overcome, has earned me the right to call myself amazing because my dad does :-)
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