My Father
Words I use to describe my father:
Tall.
Strong.
Athletic.
Bald.
Kind of scary.
Usually has a drink in his hand.
Hasn’t talked to me in three years.
And his catch phrase?
“Be a man.”
Be that’s something he wouldn’t know the first thing about.
“Being a man”
How did my father define that one?
To him, it seemed to be drinking his weight in alcohol every night and yelling at my mother.
But beyond that, he always taught me that being a man meant having no feelings.
If I cried? Forget it.
If I tried to have an emotional conversation? Forget it.
And my mom usually sat idly by
As this “man” that she married
Turned her smiling son into a shell
Who shut everyone else out.
I know he hit my mom.
I would see the bruises in the mornings before she could cover them up with makeup.
I wanted to hit him.
To put him in my mother’s position.
To make him feel as lost and helpless as she did for all of those years.
Then maybe he would actually understand what strength is.
Relationships? He never talked about them.
My dad always taught me that I could only ever love a girl.
But whenever I tried to open up about my feelings, he would shut me out.
So I never told him that I had been madly in love with a boy.
And I never told anyone about the first time that we kissed.
Because I thought that being in love with a boy meant that I wasn’t a “man.”
So I began to tell myself to “man up,”
Because that’s what dad always said to do.
But I’ve grown up a lot.
I may look pretty much the same
And he might look pretty much the same
But one of us has grown up
Become stronger, better, independent.
And the other is still drinking every night
Despite being divorced and on the verge of unemployment.
Words I now use to describe my father:
Absent.
Un-accepting.
Weak.
Drunk.
And about as far from “being a man” as anyone could ever be.
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