“One day you were just this tiny little thing with crossed eyes, and then the next thing I know we’re sittin’ here … and I can’t remember anything in between.” Sadly, it’s not a scene from a National Lampoon’s Vacation movie. These were the last words my father spoke to me before he dropped me off at university. I was almost nineteen years old, and my father was a stranger. That was a time when psychologists hadn’t learned to stress the role of a father, and I don’t think any of us knew the price we would pay for a father’s absence. Over the years I’ve wondered how this affected my twisted little view on relationships and I keep coming back to this question: what happens when a woman’s first relationship with a man is simply nonexistent?
The answer to that is probably more complicated than all the people who have been in this position, and truthfully, I only know my answer. Let’s set the stage. I was born with a rather nasty birth defect, and there was a point early on where a particularly long surgery left me at death’s door. My three-year-old body had lost its entire blood content four times over and I convulsed with a near 107° fever. The doctors advised my parents to say their goodbyes and prepare themselves—my dad did. I really think he lost me that day, that he said goodbye and let go. When the miracle came, it was too late for my father, something inside of him had died, and he let me go with it. After that, no matter how hard I tried to be close, to be his little girl, he pushed me away.
In all honesty, I wasn’t exactly the sort of daughter that inspired pride and joy in a father. I was fat, ugly, mouthy, tomboyish, and always, always right. My father kept an embarrassed distance from me. I thought it was because I was such a failure as a girl; now I think it had more to do with his fear of the unknown … and by that I mean me.
I didn’t attract any amorous attention from boys—the most feared event in any father’s life—but cruelties and teasing stuck to me like flies on shit. To be fair, I provoked some of it. There was one incident in particular that was unprovoked, and to this day, it’s quite mysterious to me. A boy in my class (we’ll call him Daniel) had developed a rather blatant hatred of me. He tormented me in some of the usual ways: teasing, posters on my locker, and other pranks. Then there were the less usual methods: urinating in the back of my car and threatening me with a rifle.
Daniel’s turn towards the homicidal got around town. My father heard it through the gossip mill and not from me, and he wasn’t happy about it. When asked, I told the truth. He was silent, and I forgot about it … until the day that I was driving home from school and saw my father driving away with Daniel in his front seat. The boy was white-faced and obviously terrified. My father, always a joker with other people, wore a strange mask of cold rage. My first feeling was terror, then common sense took over and I had the presence of mind to let my adolescent self-centeredness take over. I was embarrassed by my dad. The next day at school, I walked in, expecting the torment to begin. I mean really, whose dad fights her battles for her when she’s seventeen? And yet, everyone was strangely silent. Daniel kept his distance.
For weeks I tiptoed through the halls of my school and waited for the backlash. Nothing. I later heard, through tense reenactments done in Dirty Harry whispers that my father said this to Daniel, “You pull a trick like that again and I’ll make you disappear. I was a cop for twenty years and I know exactly what to do and where to hide a body. You so much as drive on the same road as her … I’ll make it happen. We clear?”
I’m certain that most people would gasp in horror at my father’s switch to the dark side, but I was secretly thrilled. The idea that my dad would kill somebody to protect me was the first time that I realized he cared enough to bring danger upon himself. From all of this, one might gain some insight into my peccadilloes with men. First off, I’m a commitment-phobe, and not just a minor one. I can’t wear my wedding ring; it gives me a rash, and I’m not speaking in metaphor. Marriage is the hardest work I’ve known. It’s not just the effort of restraining my wandering eyes, but the endless drudgery of trying to define myself in a relationship. Commitment makes me feel ugly, bored, and ultimately … unloved. And in my past, I sabotaged relationship after relationship because I really didn’t know how to just “be” with a man. I knew how to exist amongst women, and how to live on my own. But men … they were very, very tricky for me.
I know that for years I found myself crazy over men who were almost entirely incapable of loving me. The first was the most painful, but he was just one in a long line of players who would reenact the part that I had written for them. It was the autumn of 1997 and I had dumped one of the most wonderful men I’ve known so that I could chase after a stoner with a roving eye and an illegitimate child that he barely saw. I’d never been crazier in my life. I joined theater groups to be near him, walked by his place of work in the hopes that we would “run in” to each other, and did the occasional drive-by. I wallowed in my Fatal Attraction moment, maneuvering my car outside his house, lights off, and my head ducked low. Hide your bunnies, boys! Freya’s here. Okay, so it wasn’t that bad, but I’m certain I broke at least three minor traffic laws while spying on him. Despite my insanity, the affair wasn’t entirely one-sided. It was intense, horrifically painful, and as always, ended by me in an anticlimactic whimper of disappointment.
By the time I got what I had wanted—his love and some semblance of devotion—it was too late. I didn’t want it anymore and I knew the change would never be enough for me. How typically insane. I fell for these men because they were emotionally impotent, then dumped them for staying that way. Or maybe, it’s not that insane. To tell you the truth, I think I wanted to rewrite my relationship with my dad, except in this one, after all the distance and indifference, this man would eventually turn to me, confess undying love, and everything would change, he would change … my dad would change. It was the day that I realized that this was behind my behavior that I stopped doing it. Ripping some guy (and myself) to shreds in the hopes that his changes would heal old wounds, it was the oldest of follies. So, I stopped.
It’s not that I’m any less commitment phobic or any easier to be with in a relationship. I still covet my freedom and restrain my compulsion to stray. I still struggle to feel beautiful and attractive while attached. The damage is done. And, like any good woman, I just practice a little damage control. Then there’s the relationship with my father. I still long for one of those relationships like my girlfriends have, one where my father secretly counts me as his most prized possession. At least now, I know better, and I’ve learned to build something new with my father, something separate from the little girl that he let go all those years ago.
Euripides said, “To a father growing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.” I hold on to that and try not to feel bitter towards other women who go through life prized and adored by their fathers. I feel hopeful because it makes me think that despite what was lost in the past, the future may actually hold a chance for me to rewrite my relationship with my father, but this time … with my father.
