when parents become people.

 

It is an odd moment when your parent or parents become people. You’re probably thinking they have been people all along, right? Yes, they have been. But for the past seven or eight years of my life my dad hasn’t really been either. I avoided talking about him. I avoided conversations where I had to explain our relationship. I avoided even saying the word “dad”.

Almost eight years have passed since I have spoken to my earthly father. Eight years. Everyday I let shame creep in and say ” how have you let it go this long, how is it that you have so much hate for one person? What is wrong with you?”

Eight years have gone by and I am starting to see that he is in fact is a person. He is a human being who made mistakes.

My memories seem very blurred when I think back ten years when this began. When I was in my early teens I was terrified of my dad. His moods would go up and down all the time. I never knew what it would be like when I got home from school. I never knew what he would get angry at. I never knew how to keep him from leaving. As a teen, I felt like a failure.

Ten years later and I am praying for grace. I am praying for some type of redemption for our relationship. Ten years later and I am trying to think back and actually understand the memories that consume my thoughts everyday.

Ten years later and I find myself wondering if I am like my father.
He was a hard man to love or understand. He was a hard man to please. I was a teenager who didn’t know and still doesn’t know how to say those three words.

I. Love. You.

I remember him asking me in the kitchen or in the car after a soccer game this specific question over and over.

” Ashleigh, why don’t you love me? “

As a kid and teenager I felt like a failure. I would think to my self things like: My own dad doesn’t know I love him. I don’t make him happy. I am the reason he chooses to leave. Why doesn’t he know I love him?

Now, as an adult, I am trying to rethink these memories. I am trying to understand who he was ten years ago. Why am I doing this? Two reasons. First reason is for reconciliation. Second for my own personal healing and to understand myself.

I have been told that I’m hard to love. Or maybe I just really believed it over myself. Either way I say it to myself far too often.

I’m hard to love. I don’t know how to love. I’m hard to love. I don’t know how to love.

So now, ten years later, all I wonder about is what my dad was thinking and believing over himself back when I was younger.

I see similarities. I find it hard to express myself, just like he did. I shut off from the world and get depressed, just like he did. I become angry and hard, like he did. I leave and try to find happiness, just like he did.

For the past two days I have found my cave here in my home. My literal cold, cozy, dark cave that I so easily can make. It’s so easy to feel comfortable here, with friends, work and with my own bed. It is as if the dust has settled. Nothing is new. All of my life, my things, my feelings, my shame, and who I am are settling down all around me. And I want to do two things. Leave and hide in my cave.

Which is exactly what my dad would do. He would leave and hide in his cave.

Ten years later and I am realizing that maybe I get depressed like him. Maybe I can’t explain all of my thoughts to the normal world, like him. And maybe the dust was settling all around him ten years ago. Maybe he just was a human being who didn’t want to fail, so he left.

My depression creeps in but doesn’t have a hold over me. It doesn’t even have a chance against what God sees in me. Some days I lay in bed all day. Some days I can’t express how much a cozy blanket means to me. And most days I can’t express how I really feel about someone.

But I am trying. Here’s to laying all of this down at our Father’s feet and saying HERE I AM.

When I was younger I didn’t fail my dad. I wasn’t the reason he left. The dust was just settling around him and we both didn’t know how to handle it.

So everyday I get up from my bed ( praise God for this bed) and have to fight. I have to believe that I am not failing. I am enough. God loves me each and every day. Even when my heart feels hard, He loves me. Even when I feel that I have failed, He doesn’t turn away.

 

with love,
Ashleigh