Sizzle Says

My father left a void long before he died.

Maybe it was out of love for us that he disappeared, but even now at 34 I find myself always trying to fill the space he left vacant. I’ve always felt that my dad’s drinking was partly my fault even when intellectually I knew he had a disease. But as a child you wonder, “Why does my dad want to check out?” and “Am I not good enough?”

I wanted to make my dad happy. I wanted to give him a reason to stop drinking and be a part of the family again. In my child’s way of thinking I thought I could be perfect enough so he could love me enough to choose me over getting drunk. I wanted. . . so much. . . from my father that I never got.

I couldn’t save him.

Subsequently, I have spent years donning my cape to save the day for a friend, a lover or a stranger. You have a problem? Let me come to your aid! A good rescue gives me a rush. It makes me feel worthy of being liked. It fills me with purpose. The drawbacks to being a superhero though are the crap pay, unflattering outfit and how infinitely lonely we are even if everyone loves us. We make you think we are invincible when really we are just so damn afraid of truly being loved for who we are, we distract you with our flying, our laser-beam-shooting eyes or our incredible strength to stop locomotives. But the biggest drag of this is that I have yet to get my own theme song which, for the record, totally blows. I want my own theme song!

I am making jokes because I am uncomfortable with revealing so much of my tangled inner workings. It’s part of my neurotic charm. I hope. Besides, I’m dealing with all this in therapy.

But you, dear reader, bloggy friend of mine, you get to muddle through this with me. You lucky bastard! You get to watch me figure out how to let go of this role that no longer serves me (it never did really). How to turn in my cape, if you will. How to finally forgive myself and my father for everything we went through all those many years ago.

There’s a fine line between caring and caretaking. I’ve got to figure out how to mark that line in super bold paint that preferably glows in the dark. It’s a struggle because I feel most myself when I am loving other people, when I am giving and sharing, but I’ve got to stop crossing the line into caretaking. Because saving someone is not the same as loving them. And I want to love.

“Don’t think I’ll replace/How could I replace you/And don’t be so hard on yourself/You won’t get better til you get worse…” -Tegan & Sara, Don’t Confess