Deep Thoughts

I am sorry to admit that I watched the Real World last night. I could give excuses that I watched it because I was so tired and there was nothing else on and I just needed something mindless to watch. Which would all be true but that is actually not my point. In this episode one of the roommates, Dan or Danny I think, finds out on Valentine’s Day that his mom died of a heart attack. Apparently, the story is that his parents aren’t together anymore and he did not have a really good relationship with her. Anyway…he was completely crushed. Of course they add to the drama by cutting to a phone conversation he had with her like four days earlier where she is saying just how much it means to her that he called her. She ends the conversation by saying I love you and he responds with an okay well talk to you soon. Being estranged (I guess that is the right word) from my birth father, by my choice, has gotten me thinking. Will I regret my decision to not speak to him when he dies? Will I look back and think if only I had given him another chance? Even as I write this there is a voice screaming inside of my head, “No! You may have made the decision but it was based on his actions over an incredibly long period of time and not some rash decision of the heart made in the heat of frustration. To continue to talk to him would have caused you to carry on a miserable existence where you would get your hopes up and then have him stomp on them. It would have caused you to spend your life in a sadistic holding pattern waiting for that one moment when he would give you what you needed, say what you were desperate to hear and it would never have come.” In letting my birth father go I let go of so much of the pain he had caused me (knowingly or not). Even now, I watch my brother and sister constantly get setup and let down by him. It is strange because in escaping the constant turmoil from him I have shackled myself to the role my mom used to play of defending him to my sister when he has hurt her. It sucks. What I really want to do is tell her what a dick he is and how much better her life would be if she just stopped talking to him and stopped letting him do the same thing to her over and over again. But instead I don’t say anything negative (or too negative) and I tell her that in continuing to talk to him she has to accept who he is which is a completely self-centered and self-serving shmuck. It doesn’t make much sense to tell her to accept him the way he is when I couldn’t but it is the best thing I can come up with when he crushes her with yet another disappointment. I also defend my decision by thinking about the fact that HE is the parent. Even though now I am an adult too he is still the parent. If fences were going to be mended shouldn’t that have happened when he realized that I was calling another man “dad,” or when I got engaged, or when he realized he wasn’t invited to my wedding, or the first time I was pregnant? Or even before that when I wrote him this heart pouring letter telling him exactly how I felt without accusing him of being an absentee father and telling him exactly what I needed from him to start making things better? I mean I was 19 for christ sake it is not like it was an “I am mad at you because you are mean” letter from a 10 year old. It truly is an outer body kind of experience to introduce your father to your husband and at the same time have it find out you are pregnant with your first child. Like something that should be happening on an after school special not in your life. Except in the after school special the father would have broken down in tears and repented for not being present in your life.
Yet despite all this knowledge that I did the right thing and that my life is so much better without him in it I still wonder if I will regret it one day. Will I regret Cecilia and Sophia not knowing him? Will they understand that my decision in not having him a part of their lives has everything to do with protecting them from the disappointments that map my childhood and not some bitterness because he is not married to my mother? Will they know just how lucky they are to have a “real grandfather” in my dad (my step-dad) even though they are not blood related? My heart truly answers no I won’t regret it and yes they will understand. But what if I am wrong? What if when he dies I spend the rest of my life wondering how things could have been if I had just accepted him for who he is?