I came to understand that my dad was never going to have a serious deep conversation with me where he cried and confessed and told me he always loved me no matter what. Perhaps if I got into serious trouble, an emotional outburst he might warrant but by then I knew I'd be too far gone to care at him trying.
Over the next 20 years we might have small conversations in which I got to gather all those bits I desperately yearned for. He might utter the smallest regret at a missed birthday card and I could see it with gladness instead of the usual rage commingled with decades of sadness. When your father leaves you, it gets carried around — even if you know it wasn't about you. I once told my father of a plan to sell my eggs to a high bidder or give them to a needy gay couple and he started to shake with untold emotion, he said "Don't you ever give a child away, you'll never know what that is like". Shaken but bemused I smiled at him still. I knew he meant for me to relish his words and understand that he would take it all back.

Why he didn't fully support me in college, only paying for some books/clothes and random midnight phone calls to his work; I don't know. He says I rejected him and don't wear his last name, I tell myself that he's cheap and without me nuzzling his chin as a young'n he doesn't feel obligated to make my world better than his place. It is still hard to barely make it to his place 30 miles away and have him tell me he's not got money for gas home — nor a new car. Somehow I forgive him, because I know I never ask for things before it's too late, always believing that he's never been no good and I'll be like him.
Fear that limits follow-through has been the slogan of my father's relationship with me. My father is also an asshole though, a police officer through and through. Putting anyone at ease, to see what he can see. It's a lovable trait, and interestingly enough many of my best friends carry the trait. Wait, so do I!
I would not have run away to live with my father, during the trials and terror of Doug. I had siblings to think of, and even then I still hoped. I hoped that things would get better, that this man would love me like love would be and I would know what it was to be happy, a child; free. I made my own decisions, even so young and loved my brother and sisters (and my mom) more than the thought of leaving an abusive situation. You can rationalize the pain away, fake it out and say hey, "well, his life was pain too..that's why he or she put me through it too". But really I hold my stepfather, my mother, and my father accountable for their lives and their affect on mine. I get through it by knowing they were wrong, and no one could ever have been right after everything was said and done. Ever have been, I am at the same time the girl that was once. Fragments of the soul flake and chip and fall, but the rest inside the snow globe ya'll. You can shake yourself back together again, and try and live life the best that any human being ever can. No matter what happened to you, or what will life itself can be better than any deferred dream fulfilled. Each moment, each laugh, the warm hand of a grandpa, proud look of a parent, and courageous last stands. They have all been part of me.
what seeds of hope we try and sprout and why
Loved more people than I could ever count and I have not forgot.

Here, remains the pertinent pressing parts to me:
Do not resist the pieces that got fucked up
they teach thee
how to rough them down
& fit em right back in to the pieces of a soul.
Reject, objectify, twist, and reincorporate.
It's kind of like rising from the dead after three days and forgiving the world.
Or sacrifices for sons & daughters, or staying on top of the mount till you hear something. Then you have to tell the world. We can be free!
Here is one way you never have to wonder
why you are chained and doomed to repeat each hill again.
Look at these holes, and I still live, I shout to you across rivers of disbelief, doubt and subtle insecurities. I know what it is to be happy.
When you're not afraid even when on your own.
When you control your desires, and dependences.
And please it's not like I'm not supremely fucked up in a whole bunch of funny ways.
I just make it look cool.
So can you.

Faith (thefayth) wrote on March 23rd, 2006 at 11:38 am
But I am not empty

"Inside my empty bottle, I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships," – Charles Simic
I WAS ONCE A TREE Let's flee, be within and understand what it's like to be a tree again. It's funny don't you see? How many rings one girl can circle? Each year a ring of life…ok, lemme stop already this metaphor’s about to get way heavy! What I'm trying to say is rhyming away to the world where the insides of things alive are simply stupendous and mighty, alrighty? Including us of course. Let's take a second to be we? Won't you and I? Let's stand tall on the limbs of our mutual likeness, for all of us are where life begins, please nod if you understand. Don't follow? I'll be your leader, Me the half breed / half breeder, Me the bleeder. I-WAS-ONCE-A-TREE So don't mind the scratching of paper against pen, it's just a bit of sandpaper to skin. It sloughs off and runs amuck, these bits of faith stuff, so YOUR parts can remember what it was like to exist in infinite spaces, without confines in all cases. I was once a tree and so were you I must insist, but if you resist? THEY WILL reach you, Words washed inside the meeeeee machine and dried into recycled tangled tales, that I hope you might place on your own tongue, making US once again ONE. How many rings can one girl circle and circle again, paper to pen, sandpapering skin? Me, this tree, we GIVE to you AND shed some stuff, for shit's been a little rough. Rubbing begins and I keep on, till the pile reaches high, blocking everything else out from the eye, even the sky. Trapped in the defeat of me, who ever thought I would die of suffocation: the seizing and sawing, the wretched desecrations. From the secret life of true trees something screams, then sighs a reply: You want it back? We want it back too! Quickly, quickly now Gather the scratches, each individual line and walk backwards in time, help us join dust together rhyme by rhyme so all will remember existing in infinite spaces no confines in all cases With paper to pen, you need not wait until you know Who you ONCE were, what kind of tree, shrub, god's blessed creature or golden retriever; tap into your own truth and become a believer. Scratch the skin and rebuild by pen to make what was once live again. I WAS ONCE A TREE Do the words now come naturally?