Dysfunction Junction

I didn't feel much like talking yesterday. I was in one of those moods where I feel anxious and stagnant simultaneously. Restless. Bored. Irritable for un-nameable reasons. I took myself to the ocean, to my favorite tree and tried to let the view work its magic. It didn't work.

I am thinking that this moodiness, while I am no stranger to it, has a lot to do with the magnitude of feelings that have erupted since I started training. I feel this awe and wonder at the beauty of life while feeling sad and angered by the way humans fuck things up. The environment. Relationships. Etc. I guess I could sum it up as feeling burdened.

Regrets have been weighing on me. I have thought a lot about my father and what our relationship was like. I think about the last time I saw him- in his studio apartment, wearing sweats, hair a bit disheveled, breathing with the help of an oxygen tank. During that final visit, I felt awkward and scared. I was only 19 and my father and I had struggled, as did my whole family, for years. His drinking. His blindness. His depression. All the broken promises, the pain, the tears, the yelling and the silence. The silence was worse than the yelling.

I recall my father attempting to light a cigarette while we were there. He managed to pull one out of the pack and bring it to his lips but his attempts to light it failed repeatedly. In my memory, we sat there watching until I reached over and lit it for him. He was dying of lung cancer and emphysema and here was my final act towards him- lighting the very thing that killed him. The irony hung thick as smoke. I said good-bye and never saw him again.

Good-byes tear me open. Maybe I was always like this- too attached and sentimental- or maybe my father's death pushed me there. I have always given people multiple chances, even after they have hurt me, disappointed me, broken promises. Over the years, this tendency towards leniency has been extremely detrimental. I sought out boys who were like my father in all the ways that triggered my fears. Passive aggressive. Depressed. Substance abuser. Distant. Uncommunicative. Manipulative. And while they were all those things in different combinations, there would always be that glimmer of what they COULD be and I would latch onto that great hope and run wild with it. So steadfast was my belief that I could change them if I just loved them enough that, for years, I forgot to take care of me. I didn't consider my feelings. I didn't count, even to myself. It took a mini-mental breakdown at 30 to change my ways.

Much has changed since those days though I still find myself seeking out men who remind me of my father. Not smokers or drinkers or, even, good dancers. No. Men who make me long for their approval while they hold themselves at a distance. Men who tell me how much they love me and yet, never take any action to prove it so. Men who make a great deal of promises and never deliver. And when I feel betrayed by them, I feel it double because of the relationship I had with my father. It isn't their fault, these boys who try to love me with all of their own wounds to lick. I know that and yet I don't know how to not seek them out. Even when my head knows it won't work, my heart just keeps reaching out. It makes me so weary. I wish I could get it right.

I feel like I have been struggling with this issue for so long. At 32 and single, I do often wonder if I will ever figure it out. Will I be able to overcome the dysfunctional relationship I had with my father to make a life with someone? Most days, I am not so sure.

I didn't plan on saying any of this when I sat down at the computer but I guess this is what I needed to unload. Thanks for listening.