This week is my dad’s birthday.  It’s the second one since he passed away.  The relationship we had was not necessarily a good one. I started understanding him a lot better before he left this earth, and I was able to tell him how I felt and why.  I was able to give him at least a glimpse of my pain, why I blamed him for a lot of it, and how regardless of all that, I still understood he had his own torment.  He wasn’t able to push through the hard stuff and heal.  I could forgive my dad for not being the dad I thought he should have been for me and my sister.  That didn’t mean that our relationship changed, though.  He was still in such a deep suffering that, regardless of my own traumas, I can never begin to understand.  His demons came out in self destructive behaviors that I wasn’t keen on subjecting myself and my children to.  I would bring him food if he needed it, and help him as much as possible, but though he wanted it, I could never open up to have a close relationship with him.  There was too much hurt and pain there for that.

My dad couldn’t help that he suffered.  He didn’t cause his pain, but he couldn’t pull himself out of it. His pit was too deep and painful.  He never learned how to start planting flowers and building steps on his way up and out of it, using coping skills and helping others grow, as well.  That’s such an important part of the healing process.  I can’t let mental health awareness month go by without talking about him.  My dad, our relationship, is the picture of why we need to have more conversations about mental health. It needs to be something men feel comfortable talking about. The leaders of our families are suffering.  The toxic traits of abuse are passed down from one generation to another.  When you are raised in abuse, your base needs aren’t being met.  If you don’t feel safe in your own home, you develop defense mechanisms at a young age that are so hard to fix as an adult.  My dad turned to coping skills that he later couldn’t shake.  He carried his pain and drowned it in drugs and alcohol which, oftentimes, led to drama and violence.  He lost his family, more than one, more than once, because of it.  He lived a life of struggles and despair, despite years of off and on stability, because of it.  He passed his pain to others, to me….. 

This song isn’t about a father/daughter relationship, but it’s hard to find a song whose lyrics really portray the feelings I have when I think about my dad.  

“I thought I saw a man brought to life

He was warm, he came around like he was dignified

He showed me what it was to cry”

When I was little, I was a daddy’s girl.  He would take me hunting, show me how to do guy stuff, and we were always outside.  He loved music and partying, and there were summer nights  I would fall asleep listening to a live band playing on my carport.  I adored my daddy.  But he also scared me, sometimes. 

“Well you couldn’t be that man that I adore

You don’t seem to know, seem to care 

what your heart is for

I don’t know him anymore”

As I got older, he let me down more and more.  He would pick me up and take my sister and I to his mom’s house, and we would barely see him.  He would miss my birthday. I wasn’t important, not important enough to feel that way, anyway.  He wasn’t the dad I thought he was.

“There’s nothing where we used to lie

Conversation has run dry

That’s what’s going on

Nothing’s fine.  I’m torn”

As an adult, I had felt no connection with him, but pain and trauma.  I would visit but our relationship was a very shallow one.  Our relationship was not ok.  He didn’t completely break me, but he started the process. He definitely tore me.

“I’m all out of faith, 

This is how I feel

I’m cold and I am chained

Lying naked on the floor

Illusion never changed into something real. 

I’m wide awake and I can see

the perfect sky is torn.

You’re a little late, I’m already torn”

I lost faith in our relationship because what was I to do to fix it?  I felt exposed around him.  I felt claustrophobic and anxious.  The vulnerability of it felt like being naked. I knew that the dad I wanted was inside him, I’d glimpsed him once, but he never fully formed.  It’s sad.  It’s hard.  And it really instills a feeling of unworthiness when from a young age, you feel more afraid of and unwanted by your father than anything else.  Don’t get me wrong, my dad loved me as much as he could possibly love anything.  I know this, but it still wasn’t enough.  His own pain was too great a weight to bear.

“So I guess the fortune teller’s right

I should have seen just what was there

And not some holy light

But you crawled beneath my veins

And now I don’t care

I have no luck

I don’t miss it all that much

There’s just so many things

I can’t touch.”

My dad is gone.  I will never be able to have a relationship with him like I wanted.  Even if he had been more of a dad to me as we got older, there was still so much trauma and hurt there that it would have taken me a long time to get to that point, as well.  But he was my dad.  I spent years hoping he would take the first step in making our relationship a better one.  He did try talking to me as we got older about what the issue was, why I couldn’t open up to him.  It was too late at that point. All the childhood trauma, the emotions no little kid should have to bear, the mistrust I had of him and the uncertainty I felt around him, l didn’t miss having a dad because I never had one to begin with.  So no…..I don’t miss it all that much.  But because of how my dad was raised, because of the trauma he grew up in, because mental illness is not a conversation people want to have, because my dad didn’t know he was strong enough to overcome, even though he tried, because he passed that fear and unworthiness down to me, the cycle of mental illness continues in our family.  

Mental health awareness is my purpose and my calling.  Some people may say that I share too much, and you know what, sometimes, maybe I do.  I am a very reserved person.  I don’t talk much if I don’t know you well.  But I will always be an open book about these things.  The traumas that happened in my life helped form me into who I am today.  God’s purpose for me started out on rocky ground...being conceived out of wedlock to teenage parents into a traumatic and abusive situation.  All the pain and violence and fear I have faced, the monsters that were placed in my path, all the people I loved who took advantage of me, all of the people who abandoned me, the enemy has been after me from before I was even born, but here I am... 36 years old and God is using me.  He’s using my pain, my story, my dad’s story. So, I will keep posting and sharing what I feel led to share, because if this helps one person, connects with one person, I have done my job in helping one more person feel heard and maybe, just maybe, strong enough to reach out and speak.  You are strong enough.  I understand the weight of the pain you carry every day.  It’s so much heavier than the uncomfortable feeling of telling your story.  You are worth it, no matter who made you feel like you weren’t. && Your life touches and matters to others.  Your healing is important, not just for you, but to stop the cycle of these passed down family traumas.