So. Family. 

Here’s some background for you.  Mum and Dad are split.  Dad’s remarried (very recently in fact – at 71). Mum’s got her live-in partner.  I have a younger brother and sister.  Em’s 39, Nerd is 37. Without getting into the loooog drawn out story involving infidelity, lies, more lies, even more lies, cover ups, and all the nonsense that followed for years, lets just say that my Dad and I have a complicated relationship. 

I am exactly like him and nothing like him.  If that can even be true.  In fact, I would say the only thing that separates my dad and I is that in spite of the fact that we’ve made very similar bad choices, the difference between him and I is that 1) I have always owned/acknowledged/apologized for them and 2) I have honestly tried to learn from them and make different choices after the fact.

A child’s relationship with his or her parents is always a complicated thing, regardless of all the life events and circumstances surrounding it.  But I must admit, when it comes to my relationship with my dad, I am a giant cliché.  On one hand, he made me the woman I am – taught me to stand up for myself, never take shit (regardless of who was doling it out), told me I was good enough, smart enough – and genuinely encouraged and pushed me to be better than he was.  In fact, in terms of having a great male role model who didn’t give a shit about traditional gender roles and expectations, he was it.  There have been many instances in my career and life where I have literally told someone to go fuck themselves despite the consequences – out of principal.  It is all because of him. 

And yet. Until two years ago, I had terrible taste in men. Got involved in terrible relationships where I was the other woman.  Made excuses for weak men who wouldn’t get off the fence, constantly propping them up, and believing they could be better.  These men had one thing in common with my dad: they thought I was amazing, they thought I was strong, they told me I was all of the things – but they didn’t demonstrate the same values, strength and accountability.  And they didn’t act.

I love my dad, but at the same time, he is literally the most disappointing person in my life.  He has let me down – mostly by not being the person I thought he was (or that I think he should be?).  And despite all of it, I desperately want and need his love, and will forgive him everything.  And the most fucked up thing about it is that I actually understand that the weight of expectation is almost unbearable – and my expectations of him are probably unfair and totally unrealistic – but even knowing that, I still expect more from him.  I just want him to be the person he made me: direct, fearless, truthful, accountable, vulnerable, strong, action oriented. The reality, I suspect (not being a parent myself), is that parents want their kids to be all the things they aren’t. In making us who we are, there eventually comes a reckoning where we realize that they are not and were never that – we are everything they wanted to be.  And in making us so, they disappoint us.