That’s the thing about having children—they’re quite the lasting souvenir of relationships whether they’re successful or not.
The subject of Father’s Day was always a sore spot while I was growing up. My parents’ relationship didn’t last and I was the only thing left of that very distant part of their past. That’s the thing about having children—they’re quite the lasting souvenir of relationships whether they’re successful or not.
Daddy issues
I lost contact with my dad at the age of two. It’s not like there was no way of finding him. I always knew how I could contact him but my fear of rejection and this constant cloud above my head always got in the way. I ended up being the classic poster child for daddy issues. I dated older men, I didn’t have the proper wiring for commitment, and I had a lot more angst than your usual teenager. I was diagnosed with crippling anxiety at some point and was told that it all boiled down to my need to build a relationship with my father. I didn’t know that when I was young and I chalked it all up to just me being the way I was. Hours and hours of therapy, however, have cleared things up and exercises on self-awareness brought me to a point where things started to feel a little better. It’s a journey I’m on that I rarely share but a journey I’m happy to admit now that things are much better.
It took over two decades before I reconnected with my dad and it was because of a Danish friend I made at a youth conference. She urged me to just give him a call and the rest, or so the cliché goes, was history. In the last 10 years we’ve been in contact, that relationship flourished and I felt the hole in my heart heal. Turns out he was the best friend I never knew I needed and the one who would always get me.
Families need not be traditional
I won’t claim to understand everyone’s issues with their parents. It’s unique for everyone, after all. One thing that stuck me from therapy, however, is how my psychiatrist explained the way childhood trauma shapes us as adults. How it affects our worldview and how it dictates the way we build our relationships.
My younger self was harboring sadness over the fact that I didn’t have my father around while I was growing up, the way my half-siblings did. I was jealous and often insecure about my standing in any type of relationship. The danger about harboring such feelings and letting them fester is that they can coalesce into anger. It’s a damaging emotion that one tends to misdirect to another person, usually someone who has nothing to do with the situation. These feelings can also cause someone to self-sabotage.
When I say that choosing to heal from parental issues is first and foremost for yourself, I truly mean that it has to be what’s best for you, depending on your situation. If it’s setting more boundaries with a parent or trying to build a closer relationship, you should be doing it for your own happiness and peace of mind.
Relationships don’t always work out and broken families are a lot more common than one thinks. It’s not ideal nor is it the best situation to grow up in. Parents who don’t love each other and are merely sticking it out for the sake of appearances or for their children, however, don’t make for a healthy, child-rearing environment either.
Understanding that these things happen and that life is so much more than having a traditional family setup truly helps. I count myself as someone who’s in a Modern Family. Yes, kind of like the TV show. Reconnecting with my father gifted me with a bigger family and more people to love.
Do it for yourself
Love trumps anger, sadness, and jealousy. I live for the moments my dad calls me and whenever he comes to visit. We talk about everything, from politics to new hairdryers.
It’s funny how these things sort of work. Out of all my half siblings, I’m the one who didn’t get to grow up with my dad yet we have the most similarities and I look more like him than anyone else in the family. He’s someone I come to with my life’s challenges and I always end up knowing what to do at the end of every conversation. I cherish those conversations the most and I think my only regret in life is not rekindling our relationship sooner. On the other hand, maybe time did give me the space to get my feelings ready.
Crying over lost time is pretty much futile and maybe I did need those 20 years to get my feelings ready for a reconnection. So these days, I make the most of my time with him. Manila isn’t a stone’s throw away from Scandinavia, where he’s from, and the time difference is far from convenient but it only makes every call and every visit even more special. The feeling I get every time my father gives me the warmest bear hug is something I always keep in my heart.
In difficult relationships, holding on to sadness and anger can be the biggest obstruction to healing and happiness. Moving on from the past and accepting circumstances one has no control over are practical keys to happiness. As humans, we don’t have the luxury of having limitless time. The sooner one heals and relationships are mended, the sooner one gets closer to happiness.