2008-05-19
We Go to What We Know
I've been thinking about my dad a lot lately.
A LOT.
A lot.
I really loved my dad, as a person. He was a very cool person, in many of the same ways that I am a very cool person. I didn't get how similar we are nor did I get how much I really got from my dad during the sixteen years of my life in which he lived. I didn't know, at least, until I started seeing pieces of myself reflected in other people. I didn't get then, as a teenager, that me and my dad would have been best friends.
I don't mourn missing the father-daughter dances, and not the idyllic wedding scene, not the who-to-call-in-case-of-dui.
What I missed out on is someone to share books with, to talk about Bruce Springsteen lyrics with, and to get it when I am honestly speaking as clearly as I can within the limites of entendre that I love so much.
In the over-all course of my life, it's actually been pretty rare that I think of him or that I actively mourn for him. But lately, I've been hanging out with someone with whom I enjoy many of the same things I enjoyed with my dad.
What you need to know is that I am not involved in some Freudian weirdness. I like hanging out with my friend for who he is. Part of who he is happens to love some of the same things my dad loved in some of the same ways my dad loved them. This has most definitely brought up some things for me that I may not ever have experienced. On the one hand, I was caught off guard which made me go very much in to a self-protective zone. Homes has been over to my house exactly one time.
But on the much bigger other hand, the congestion is starting to break up and I'm starting to feel really good about how nice the familiarity is. I get it. I completely understand what's reasonable and what's not for him; ergo for me relative to him. And I love the way he loves the things he loves because again, it is so familiar to me.
Baseball, rock music and music history, lazy couch days, and good writing.
When I was a kid, it was my dad with whom I shared those things. I loved watching baseball with my dad.
One of my favorite ways to spend a weekend at my dad's house was to lie around on the couch reading while my dad watched Cardinal baseball. I tuned in enough to not know how much I fell in love with the sound of baseball until almost 20 years later when I found myself lying on another couch, relaxing while another man who rocks my face off watches baseball.
I close my eyes and can feel this shift in me when I realize that I understand something very important about this budding relationship.
We all go back to what we know. We may stay with what we know or we may flee screaming in the opposite direction but for most of us, the primary relationships in our lives do have heavy influence on our later important relationships.
And for YEARS, I went back to the negative things that I knew. I went back to the alcoholic who loved me desperately and inexplicably.
I went back to being self-destructive and depressed.
I went back to the alcoholic again, not to fix him or me or any of that but because he adored me the way my dad adored my mom.
But that was them. That was my parents' karma. It wasn�t me seeking the best relationship I can be in for the things that relate to me.
I seem to have stumbled into a relationship with someone who feeds the familiarity I have with my own personal history rather than being in a relationship with someone repeating things I saw. I seem to have stumbled upon someone who is my own karma and the relationship with whom is culled from only myself and my own ways of doing things.
When I was an even younger kid, driving with my dad was great. He was animated when he drove - it was always an experience. My (boy)friend(?) is like that, too. Driving is an experience for him. He is so completely animated about it and takes it very seriously, planning out the entertainment and the route as well as accurately prides himself on being an excellent driver. Driving with him is familiar to me and it feels SO GOOD to be around familiarity that I didn't even know I was missing. It's so right to me to be around someone who unexpectedly fits so much of what I already know.
I don't know where this is going but I feel like there�s no way it�s not going somewhere. It�s too pat. There are too many instances of familiarity for it to be whiffed out like so many temporary relationships I�ve chosen to play with in the last five years. There�s something here. I am not sure exactly what but there�s something bigger here.
Although, okay.
Hold up.
It's actually not going anywhere at this very moment in time because there was one of those stupid, momentum-shifting conversations over the weekend where things that were meant to stay boxed up for a bit longer got out.
History would tell me that it will shift and I�ll be left heart-broken, humiliated, and bereft of ever wanting to love again. Or something.
But maybe, and I�m starting to almost believe it�s possible, if I have a little faith� maybe possibly, the momentum will shift and become stronger. Maybe my intuition is dead-on and there can be a certain level of certainty that only changes for the good are coming; that only the continuation of the current progress is in the cards.
I'm not ready to make any choices about continuing on under terms that I'm not quite totally settled with or chucking it all out the window because I can't seem to have exactly what I want like the story-book princess I still (WHY?) believe that I am way down deep inside.
I'm not ready to give a sneer and shrug, coldly pulling my shoulders closer around my heart while I say say "Fuck it. I don't care enough."
Because I do care.
I care for so many reasons, many of which are totally unrelated to the familiarity that I never expected to experience in my life and that I could never have been actively seeking.
So, Milwaukee.
The city my beer-distributing father had a hundred conferences in, I'll be conferencing in during a time when I am newly opened to thinking about my father.
I�ll be there, immersed in this exploration of faith and attraction and the karmic freedom in trust.
And when I get back?
I think I know what this long summer is going to be like for me and I think it�s going to be good.
arizonasarah at 12:01 p.m.