Dear Dad, It's Been Almost a Year

--Personal Post--

It's been almost a year since I stopped talking to my dad. This time of year is met with a lot of mixed emotions, and it's fitting, really - it's also the time of year of my wedding anniversary. It's fitting that I would choose my relationship with one man to end while I promised to maintain a relationship to another for the rest of my life. The only time I shed tears over it all was the day before my wedding, after I texted my dad to ask if he was coming. I remember sending that text - I remember knowing, with dread, what the answer would be, and why I didn't ask him sooner. I had put that inevitability off, because I had wanted to believe that the RSVP that he had sent in January was reality. The truth was, however, that that RSVP was a metaphor for most of my relationship with my father. It's easy to commit to a "yes" on an RSVP - it's harder to put action behind it. I think of all the times my father let me down, or told me he would do something, and forget, or show up 5 hours late, or reschedule. Ballet recitals that he made right before they ended. Him telling me to be ready at 8am for an adventure... and me waiting by the window, ready, at 7:55.
He'd show up at 4.

My relationship with my dad has been marred by a lot of disappointment, but to be fair, it's not all that. I have a lot of fond memories of my father. Of Saturdays spent on the boat on the Wekiva river, swimming on the sandbanks, nervously looking for gators and steering clear of the lily pads. Weekend movies. All the times he let me set my Barbie tent up to sleep on the bed, how he wasn't (that) upset when I used all of his stamps to mail letters addressed to Santa, and mornings spent watching Tunami and Sailor Moon while drawing and eating an entire box of cheezits at the kitchen table, warm sunlight pouring in through the big windows. I loved that house, "the blue house", later painted a loud magenta, and years later, a tame light yellow. I visited the house, long ago sold, back in high school one day. It was so much smaller than I remembered. Things always seem larger in your childhood memory, it seems. Still, I loved the ivy growing up the chimney, My art desk in the corner. The petrified wood coffee table. I had an art business I ran on the weekends because, yes, even at 5, I was an entrepreneur at heart. I'd post my finished art creations on the wall and hand draw little ads to place around the house, advertising art - pre made or custom - at 25 cents apiece. I'd make the upstairs bedroom my office sometimes even, and when I had a new "order" come through from my dad or one of my siblings, I'd place the art in a little basket tied up with string and lower it over the balcony of the stairs for pickup. I'd watch tortoises dig up the back yard, pet the dogs, make dubious creations in my EZ Bake oven, play my Barbie genie computer game, and sit on the front porch. My dad was the first person I ever officially really visited Atlanta with. I remember the visit - staying at the Mariott downtown, and driving by his old home in Mableton. The city was vast, and I proclaimed that I would never want to live there. I had no idea at the time that 7 years later I would meet my husband there. Didn't know the 7 years later, we'd go on a date at 2 am, taking turns eating bites of chocolate cheesecake at Cafe Intermezzo, sipping turkish coffee and then getting the wild idea to sneak up to the top of the Mariott to see the view.

My dad missed a lot of my life. He missed almost all of middle school. He drove me to prom once Junior year. I still have a photo he snapped of me in my purple sequined dress that reminded me of Meg from Hercules. He wasn't around to give me advice on boys, but told me once that I should never change my last name. He didn't give me the talks that most dads do the their daughters. He gave me happy birthday cards for graduation. He came in bits and pieces. My mom and I moved down the road from him (on accident) in high school. Every few weeks, he'd swing by and take me to sushi in winter park, or let me accompany him on outings for his business that mostly meant driving around looking at property and taking photos or him pointing out billboards he said he'd built. The conversations we had were 90% my dad talking at 10% me saying "uh huh" and nodding my head. I remember on my 17th birthday that my dad got someone to put up "Happy Birthday Lacy" on his new triface billboard in the middle of town, and I was really excited. I showed all my friends. He'd come have dinner sometimes at my moms. He taught me how to drive, and showed me the backroads around Apopka and Zellwood. Then he wouldn't be there for weeks - would reappear again - and so on. We had a falling out my second year of college due to some family matters. My sister and I really bonded during this time, because she had chosen years ago to stop communicating with my dad for her own reasons. The end of my undergraduate days rolled around. My dad and I had tenuously made up over the last year after his carotid artery surgery. He promised me he'd come to my college graduation, but the night before, he said he couldn't come after all.

My mom comforted me a lot the day before my wedding, when I called her, upset and trying to wipe away tears before heading to the venue for rehearsal. She told me, "I tried to shield you from the reality of who he was when you were little. Manage your expectations. But that's always how he's been."
She was right, and it crushed me. I look back, and I think that part of my disappointment was from unmanaged expectations. They're the kind of expectations that any child has, and frankly... for years, all I wanted to be was a child to my dad. I wanted my dad to be proud of me. I wanted to warmth of his love, his approval, his affirmation that I mattered. I wanted him at rehearsals and graduations and dinners. Those times he made it to those school dinners, accompanied me to my Phi Theta Kappa induction or drove me to school or taught me to drive - it made me feel special, like I had glimpses of something I had missed out on. I wanted my dad to have my back like I watched my friend's dads do. Part of me was immature - I wanted my dad to buy me things like my friend's dads did, or bail me out of trouble, or interrogate my boyfriends. I wanted him to help me with tuition like he promised, or with college textbooks. I wasn't entitled to any of those things, but I don't think that's wrong. I think it's what kids want. They want love, approval, help, normalcy. I wanted him to be a part of my life. I wanted him to take my side. I think what hurt the most was him pretending or saying he'd do so many of these things, but when it came down to doing them - he'd bail at the last minute. From "Can't make it, sorry!" texts, to, "If you have to drop out because you can't pay tuition, that's just God's will", after planning my college budget out for the year on his promise to help me. To my dad promising he'd spend the day with me and pick me up early, and waiting, looking out the window and wondering why he wasn't answering his texts. I'd wait half the day and feel like shit when he forgot.

I don't say any of this because I want pity or to feel sorry for myself. I think it's more cathartic to vent these things than anything. The hurt goes deep - deeper than I can write in a simple blog. It's a long story, the story of my father and I, that's been unfurling since I was born, and even before then. My experiences are mine alone, and these are how I perceived them. This is just one blog from a girl that wanted her father to be there all the time, not just when he felt like it. It's a blog from a girl that wants you to know that if anything like this has ever happened to you, I get it. Not having the love of a parent really hurts in a deep part of your heart that never really fully heals no matter how hard you try to fill it. I've come a long way from being that girl. My dad taught me a lot of things. He inspired me to get things done myself if I want them done. To work hard enough and be successful enough so I would never need his help. He taught me to be self sufficient. To listen to people. He taught me a lot of things through his shortcomings, that's true. He taught me a really important lesson: that just because someone is your dad, doesn't make them your dad. 

My father wasn't there to walk me down the aisle. In fact, I never asked him to be. I invited him... and didn't ask him to walk me down the aisle. Because the truth was, I knew in my heart of hearts that my father would bail at the last minute. My entire family said so. And I used the last of that childlike, girlish hope in my father to believe that he would make it. But I took precautions. I asked my grandfather. Because when it came down to it, my dad wasn't the one that had been there for me through my life. It was my stepdad(s), my grandfather, the other male figures in my life. The ones that weren't there when it suited them, but were there because they chose to be. I haven't had the most consistent father figures in my life, and that shows sometimes. But I had people that loved me, that picked me up after I messed up, that helped me when I was down, that gave me tough love and good love and fatherly love, at the times that I needed it. And the biggest person: my mom. My mom showed me exactly who I needed to be. She fought for me. She taught me algebra while I literally threw a temper tantrum meltdown in the office. She didn't pay for all of my things: she taught me to be a princess and taught me how to make a business pay for things for me. She taught me to fight for myself. She taught me to push harder. She taught me to never just settle for no. She taught me to grind.
My edges perhaps aren't as round as they could be. I handle things in my own messy way, I get too emotional sometimes, I push people a little too hard, I'm not always the most tactful or the best with people. It took me a long time to realize that the right person isn't going to just leave. It took me time to trust my husband, to undo what I had learned before. Having grown into an adult now, I see that I have a lot of the Lacy family in me - the hard work ethic, the grind, the ability to put my head down and push through until the job is done. The fight, the independence, the creativity. My dad wasn't there, but I've worked with what I had.

My dad was there sometimes, that's true. But there came a time in my life - that day before my wedding - when I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take the disappointment. The hurt feeling in my gut everytime he let me down or blamed me for upsetting my aunt or spent 2 hours telling me about him but never even asked what I was going to college for. I love my dad, but my dad hurt me. He hurt me over and over again and never apologized nor considered how much his actions hurt me. And that's why I made the decision I did: to not sit and wait for him to let me down, time after time. I chose to remove my dad from my life, but truly, he'd already chosen to not be there for me years before. I don't hate my dad, I love him, but I made the decision to walk away from him so that he couldn't hurt me anymore.

It hasn't felt like a year. I learned a lot of this before this time last year. Life doesn't always treat you fair. I have always tried to make the best of my situations, to fight for what I dreamed for, to be positive, to count my blessings. I take my relationship with my father in stride. It still hurts, but for me at least -- I think there's a power in choosing how you hurt. I can't tell you if my actions were the best or the healthiest, I can't tell you what will happen with our relationship in the future. Here and now though, one year later, this is where I'm at. Letting go of the hurt and embracing my new life. Making my own choices. And at the end of the day, I have the family I always dreamed of with my husband - someone who isn't going anywhere, who loves me despite my shortcomings and whom I love despite his. Life isn't perfect. People let you down. People pick you back up again. Life goes on. A year later, I am making my own legacy, apart from my father: built with the help of people that I am thankful to have love and care for me.