2000-05-31

my dad called me today.

there is a weird little familial melodrama, about an upcoming family reunion that my brother, my father and i were supposed to attend.

i don't want to spend four days with my own dad. it's kind of sad. my brother is trying to make things copasetic; how can you fix 18 years of a sour father-daughter relationship all at once?

it is sad, that i don't want to see my own dad. but we are so estranged that it is pretty uncomfortable. talking to him, i hear about how women are incompetent, how they get fat and suck up money; how they are all crazy. how they are poor with money, math and computers.

how can i put up with that?

for valentines day i sent him a card and told him how much i liked the teddy bear he gave me for my birthday; i also told him i would like to come and visit him sometime, and get to know him better, spend time with him. the latter comment he never addressed, except to say that he didn't have houseguests. the former he addressed with the comment "i didn't know you loved stuffed animals. i've known some women who liked those things. they were all crazy."

it totally hurt my feelings, and makes me feel like i want to give up, you know? i don't want to always have to be the one to fix everything. fuck it. i don't want to always have to be the one to bring up the issues when there is a problem. fuck it.

its just too much and too hard; he's never expressed a direct emotion to me in my entire life. i'm too old to have to hear about how he feels about things from my brother. why can't he just open his mouth and tell me directly? why can't he act and talk and BE like he CARES? i know that he does. but without showing it, he leaves me no better off than if i didn't talk to him at all.

i'm so fucking frustrated and sour about it all. i want so badly to fix things, but i don't know how to start, and it all seems overwhelming and i want to just throw it all away from me, all exasperated like.

but i don't want to have to regret not trying, you know? like you're never going to get there if you don't start moving. but it all just hurts so fucking much...

one thing is for sure, tho. i certainly can't live the rest of my life trying to fix my relationship with my father through every other man in my life. getting to be time to face this shit directly.

*insert whirring fan sound here*