Taking on my Father's "Addiction". A painful relationship between a Father and Daughter

So by now you know that ever so often I open myself up and write about whatever process I am going through, and I do this in the hope that my openness and transparency will benefit my readers in some way, in any way. But in no way is this easy and every time I post a piece like this it’s at risk of feeling vulnerable and exposed. But being the woman that I am I trying to move beyond fear and challenge myself. This is as real as I get.

As a woman most of my identity was based on how my Father saw me. And the most difficult thing about this is that having a really troubled and shitty Father made it hard to find myself as a woman because there was no one to mirror off of or get that affirmation from. I know there will be many women and men who can relate to this.

I can’t speak for others but my relationship with my Father was everything in the world to me. I put him on a pedestal. I remember being about eight or nine years old thinking that there was no ways in hell I was ever going to ever love anyone like I loved him.  

As a little girl you look to your Father to show you that you are loved by a man, you are worthy of being loved by a man and that you are seen by a man. But I can’t say I ever experienced this. You see in the past I would have said that my Dad tried his best and he showed me love in the best way he could. And I would have said this because a part of me wanted to still feel sorry for him and be the understanding daughter that I always was. But this is not the truth; well it’s not my truth. He didn’t show love because he didn’t know what love was.

He told me he loved me when he needed me. He told me he loved me when he was high and when he was lonely. This was more manipulation than anything and I fell for it each time. Obviously then I was too young to know any better. And those were the only times he said “I love you”. I can count them on my fingers. But I lived for those times. I yearned for them. He created a yearning in me that I have had since then. A yearning for an unrequited, dysfunctional "love".

I grew up thinking that love was painful, and it had nothing to do with freedom or joy like people said it did. Love for me was heavy. And here’s the biggest one, love was about filling voids in each other.

Except I filled my Dad’s void and he created one in me.

One that I have tried to fill my whole life. This is what happens though with parents like this and with many, many parents in general They shouldn’t have had children at all, and they had them for their own selfish reasons, and to fill their own voids and so as children our goal becomes to fill their voids, yet this just creates a void in us. Well in my case anyway.

And so I thought I knew what love was, because the way my Father ‘’loved’’ me was all I knew and in my mind it’s how I thought I should be loved by a man and how I should show love. The only thing is I can no longer call this love. Maybe that’s the saddest part of it all for me.

So in the past I knew love to be filled with neediness, pain, expectations and a lot of crying because my love for my Father was unrequited. And so, unrequited love in the form of men and relationships became the theme of my life. Love became a game, a game that was exciting, dangerous, painful and manipulating and I needed it to sustain me. It was normal for me, it made me feel alive…for a while, but it always ended in pain. Love for me equalled desperation. Yes that is the word I have been looking for to describe the love for my father, utter desperation. I spent my life loving a man who never loved me back.

 
My Father had an addiction to prescription medication and although I did not take that addiction on in anyway, I definitely took the emotional side of the addiction on (not that I had a choice then), because addiction does not only come in the form of a substance. So yes I would call this an Emotional Addiction. And trust me it’s so hard to break. I needed it, I lived for it, I felt empty without it and I was always seeking it out in people. The yearning I always had, I lived for. I am not even sure I am explaining it right but the intense feeling of it is difficult to put into words.

When he died that intense pain I felt around our relationship just grew. And I was even more attached to the fact that love had to be painful like this, it had to be ‘’I love you but I can’t have you’’. You need me so I am there for you but still where is the love here? I would die for you but oh wait, you died anyway. What is wrong with this picture?!

Seriously I am watching these words go down on the page and I am somewhat confused and flabbergasted at how I was able to live my life like this. It's like being handcuffed to him almost. This has been one of the hardest and longest processes I have ever worked on. Today I am almost an observer of this all and suddenly I want to laugh so hard! Because Dearest Dad, you really fucked up so badly. But still I love you; yes I do because somewhere deep down I actually do know what love is, even if I forgot for a while. In fact I am the most loving open-hearted person I know when I am not operating from a wounded place.

The thing is, I don’t know what it’s like for other women/men out there that have had bad or worse or no relationships with their fathers, but I know that this is how my relationship with the most important man of my life shaped the way I know/knew how to love.

There really are days where I still want to be the little girl and I wish my Father would come back and do it differently this time. I wish he could have shown me what real, unconditional love was.

It’s like a slap in the face when you realise that the kind of love you have been chasing isn’t actually real. And the love I shared with my Dad wasn’t love at all. It was the idea of love. It was manipulation, and I was a puppet on a string. I spent my life mourning what could have been with us.

So ok this is the story but now what?

Now I am left asking what love really is. And I am fearful for I can’t answer that right now. I am fearful of letting go of the idea of love that I had because it defined me. His idea of love for me, or the way he showed it, really defined me. I often still get so mad and wish that there was even a memory of Father-Love that I can go back to in my mind but there isn’t.

So now I need to create my identity without this emotional need and void that lived within me. But I honestly don’t know how. But in my experience when you set the intention, ask for an answer and then let it go, the answer always appears.

But through all of my writing and all the processes I have gone thorough I am certain that I have what it takes. So I guess to try and find that love within me again as an adult today is what this is about. So here I am setting this challenge for myself. And as God as my witness I will become the woman that I was always meant to me before I was exposed to the madness that were my parents. Herein lies my journey and it’s really difficult but somewhat beautiful at the same time. The beauty that is always in the chaos.

So as a grown woman I am now on the journey to figure out what love is. I know it begins with The Self but when you don’t even have memories of how this looks from your parents it’s difficult to just imagine what self- love looks like, never mind implementing it. But that’s not going to stop me.

I am feeling strong even if I am questioning how I am going to finally move through this once and for all! I know that there is always a way….This is one of the many steps I have taken to be the woman I know I really am.

And to remember that there are bigger forces that support us in everything that we do. The universe is always working in our favour. I recently had an experience that helped me to come to this realisation about me and my Father and now being able to feel the sadness around it is my idea of the universe supporting me so I can move through it.

When there is stuff that we still  need to work on life makes sure to give us the experiences, the people and opportunities we need to work it through whether we are aware of it or not. That is why people often say that they are stuck in the same patterns and whether they move jobs or go into new relationships the same stuff keeps coming up. This is because life is saying "ok so are you going to work on this now finally?". Life keeps knocking until we are ready to open that door no matter how unpleasant it is.

Every time I work through an issue and face that which is painful I walk with a lighter step and a more peaceful heart. So with gratitude I end this off.

And so it is.