Tag: identity

well, something’s lost, but something’s gained in living every day, oh, I’ve looked at life from both sides now, from win and lose and still somehow it’s life’s illusions, I recall, I really don’t know life at all…

One year ago today, my father died. It’s weird saying that.

I lose track of time a lot, and I often don’t know what day it is. I don’t sleep much and my days are very routine, so most days kind of blur together. I was aware of this day though. Painfully aware of how long it had been since my father died.

One year.

I didn’t think that I would grieve my father. I know that probably sounds terrible. It sounds terrible to me when I say it out loud. Unfortunately, it’s the truth. Our relationship was complicated. I had done many bouts of grieving throughout my life. I spent a lot of years being angry, disappointed, resentful, and all the things that come with loving someone who has hurt you. We hadn’t spoken in any meaningful way in a long time. There were birthday texts. That’s about it.

So if you knew that, it’s probably strange to hear that his death affected me the way that it did. It’s strange to me too. When he died, what I felt first wasn’t heartbreak. I felt a massive release. I remember feeling it physically, like something had finally loosened in my chest. It was something that I had been carrying for years that I wasn’t even aware of.

After the release, I felt forgiveness. Not the kind of forgiveness that erases what happened or pretends that everything was okay. I wasn’t about to rewrite history. It was forgiveness in the way of like “it’s enough now”. Plain and simple, textbook forgiveness. For the both of us. For a lifetime of hard work that never really paid off the way either of us hoped it would. For things he couldn’t give me and vice versa. For the ways we misunderstood each other. And the years we spent trying to navigate a relationship that neither of us seemed to have the instructions for.

I spent a long time being angry at my father. Which would ultimately be followed by a wave of anger at myself for being angry at him. I was angry that he couldn’t be the father that I needed. And I was angry that I couldn’t stop wanting him to be. There were so many times I wanted to reach out, to call, to try and fix it and tell him how I felt. But I also knew that I probably wasn’t going to get what I needed if I did. So I stayed away.

For most of my life, I tried very hard not to be like my father. I believed I was nothing like him. I thought that we were completely different people. I thought whatever was broken in him had somehow skipped over me. And then he died. And in the quiet after, I realized something devastating yet strangely comforting – we were much more alike than I could ever believe. Not in our actions, but on the inside. I don’t think my father did what he did because he was incapable of love. I believe that he believed he didn’t deserve love and that is a very different thing. Somewhere along the way he learned that his worth was connected to his usefulness. That you earned your place by what you could provide, what you could fix and what you could endure. And here I am today writing this blog knowing that I have lived the exact same way. Despite not being present in my life, I managed to inherit his conditioning.

The blueprints were similar. Each one consisted of a whole catalog of defense mechanisms. Ways of protecting ourselves and protecting others from us. Not because we didn’t love. But afraid that we were too damaged. That if we gave too much or too little, no one would hurt and everyone would be okay. That we could carry the burdens and continue to keep the people we love just outside so that they didn’t suffer. I have been shoving my feelings of inadequacy down my entire life. A quality that he helped instill in me by the way, but I digress. Where the blueprints differ is in the actions. I overextended myself to make sure that I was loved. He never let you see the love, so that he didn’t have to be responsible if he hurt you more. Love was always in both blueprints, you just had to look for it.

Noticing the places where we had both been shaped by the same idea that our worth had to be earned was a game changer. For the first time I didn’t need to make him the villain in order to understand why I had been hurt. Understanding didn’t erase the hurt, but it made room for compassion beside it.

My father had one foot out the door my whole life. I was used to it. But he always came back, even if it was just for a moment in time. There was always another possibility, another chance for us to maybe get it right. And so when he died, that was it. There was no coming back this time. There would never be another chance for us to try. It opened up a new level of grief I didn’t know was there. I was grieving the relationship that we might have had.

I thought I had already fallen apart inside. I thought that I had been rebuilding for the last three years. I thought that his death was a final piece of this transformation I was going through. But grief never seems to knock on the front door. It slips in the back door and raids the fridge when you aren’t paying attention. Sometimes it doesn’t even look like grief.

For me it showed up as abandonment. The past year ripped open an abandonment wound that I didn’t realize was capable of still bleeding this much. It has been gaping wide open, oozing into places I didn’t think it could reach. My anxiety has been the worst it has ever been. I’ve been white knuckling my way through life, too terrified to let go. I am terrified of turning into someone different. Which is ironic because I’m always saying that change is necessary if I ever want to move past this point. I have wanted to know what my life could look like if I stopped living according to everyone else’s expectations. But the thought of actually being different is terrifying.

The person who is writing to you today, she’s familiar. Even when she’s exhausted, unhappy, afraid or when she continues to hold things that were never hers to hold, I know her. I don’t know the woman on the other side of all this. And a lot of the time I convince myself that I don’t even deserve to know her. It’s terrifying to think that I could be happier, or finally put myself first or actually deserve the life that I dream about. I want to be that woman. And sometimes I look at her from afar and think “who am I to have all that?”

Some days, I can’t see a way out. Most days I wake up and I’m in survival mode. Get up, go to work, pay the bills, take care of whatever needs to be taken care of, make it through the day, go to bed. Wake up and do it all again tomorrow. Rinse and repeat. I keep doing it and I guess that matters. I keep thinking that if I’m not thriving, I’m failing. If I don’t have a five year plan, I’m failing. If I don’t figure it out soon, I’m failing. But surviving a year that has asked so much of me isn’t failure. The identity that I built around survival isn’t failing, it just can’t be how I continue moving forward.

My father’s death opened my eyes to something else. I don’t want to live like he lived or die how he died. I don’t want to spend my life angry, carrying a giant chip on my shoulder. I don’t want to spend years collecting evidence of all the ways the world has hurt me and let that be my identity. I don’t want to become so convinced that I am unworthy of love that I push away the people who are trying to give it to me. I don’t want to spend my life with one foot out the door and leave the people I love wondering whether I will come back. And I don’t want to leave this world with so much unfinished business inside me. This was the father that I knew and I want something different. I just have no idea how to do any of this. I’m trying, my God, I’m trying.

I’m trying to learn how to let things go without pretending they didn’t hurt. I am trying to forgive without abandoning myself. I am trying to love without losing myself in the process. I am trying to stop believing that everything has to be earned. To believe that I am worthy even when I’m not useful. Trying to become softer without making myself smaller. And to become stronger without shutting people out. Most days, I feel messy. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. But I have to keep trying.

At this point I believe that I understood my father better than anyone, and that’s probably why I was one of the first people he always pushed away. Maybe being seen that clearly was uncomfortable for him. Maybe I recognized parts of him that he didn’t want to recognize in himself. Maybe I reminded him of things he had spent his life trying not to feel. I don’t know. I’ll never know for sure and that’s just something I have to live with.

I’m going to try wrap this up as neatly as I can with a lopsided bow. But for the last year, my identity around survival has been collapsing. I’m 45 years old, I constantly feel like time is running out, telling myself that I should have it all figured out by now. But the roles that I’ve spent my life playing are no longer working for me and I don’t know how to deal with that. Who am I when I’m not trying to hold everything together? Or when I stop measuring my worth by how much I can endure? Or when I stop believing that being needed is the same as being loved? Maybe I can only look at what is and go from there.

One year after my father died I’m still standing in the rubble. Still white knuckling some of the pieces that don’t belong in the rebuild, but I’m too afraid to let go of. Sometimes just standing in the pile sobbing. But I’m doing my best. I don’t need to know exactly who I am yet, but it was important for me to stop pretending that I was okay. Because I don’t think that I’m becoming someone new. I believe who I really am is buried beneath all that rubble, and I need to start letting those broken pieces go so that I can get to her.

Before the fear, shame, guilt and anger and the endless need to prove that I could handle everything completely buried her. I don’t know what the next year will look like and I have no idea what to do with that woman when I find her, but she deserves a chance to become.

One year ago my father died. And I didn’t think that it would change me, but it did. So if you made it to the end of this, thank you. It’s been a really weird year. I have no idea what the next year will bring, but I know that every day is another chance to try and for today, that’s enough.

As always, thanks for reading. I’m always here if you need me.

it’s life’s illusions that I recall, I really don’t know life, I really don’t know life at all…

Song name: BOTH SIDES NOW/ Artist: JONI MITCHELL/ Year: 1966