Three to get ready......

I was home just a few short weeks, when the happy, excited feeling of my last visit with my daddy had started to fade.  I hadn't heard from him since I got home. At first I thought nothing of it because I was getting back into the groove of my normal life in California.  I got hired at my very first job, an exciting time for a young woman. After getting settled into a routine I began to wonder why I hadn't gotten a call from Darryl. After all didn't we have such a wonderful time together?? Maybe he was busy.....maybe I needed to call him.....maybe........


I finally got up the courage to give him a call. It never ceases to amaze me the fear that pops up when I think about talking to him or seeing him, even though he has never been outwardly mean to me.  So I gave him a call after work one day, and the conversation felt forced on his part and at the end of it I was left with my feelings hurt.  I was hurt because I wanted to know what had changed in those few weeks since our reunion, I mean wasn't he happy like I was? It had been 10 years!  I talked to my mom about the conversation and the fact that the feelings of not being loved and not being wanted had surfaced again and I had no clue what to do with them.  She suggested I write him a letter or email and let him know how I felt.  I really didn't like that suggestion....I didn't want to be open and vulnerable...again.....but she was right. I needed to tell him my feelings. 

I sat on it for a few days before deciding I would send an email, I sat down and just poured my little heart out, telling him exactly what it feels like to be left twice. I wrote in the letter how much I wanted him to be in my life, and to share the things I was going through.  I pictured him getting the email, and crying...and feeling like he just had to call me up right away to straighten it all out. I pictured him being my Superman. I was naive. 


For days I checked my email religiously.....obsessively......nothing.  I finally gave up on it and on him.  I went on about my daily life trying to push him and my feelings to the back of my mind. All the while making up excuses in my head about why I haven't heard back from him. I opened up my email one day and there it was. I couldn't help but smile. I desperately wanted to open that email  and have the response I wanted....the response I needed.   I sat and stared at it for a good while,  as much as I wanted to open it and have it be everything and so much more than I wanted, I also felt like I could pass out at any second.   I finally gave in and opened it. Of course it was nothing I wanted and nothing I needed.....but it really was what I expected to get. I expected, because at that point in my life I had started to feel like I didn't deserve anything but that response. I deserved nothing more than that slap in the face...again.

I don't remember the entire email back to me, but I do remember a couple of lines : "I'm sorry you feel that way." ......really.....you're sorry I feel that way, because I could have sworn it has been your actions that made me 'feel this way' and my personal favorite " I've lived my life the way I wanted to, and not the way everyone else wanted me to and I don't regret it."  So you're telling me, you don't regret not having a relationship with your first born child....you don't regret leaving us stranded......you don't regret not being there for me as a daddy should be,  you don't regret the fact that you never paid any child support and that my mom subsequently had to work hideous hours just to make ends meet for us? You don't regret that because of those working hours she wasn't always there when I needed her?  It must feel good to not regret the way you lived your life........................


I should say now, that from this point I start having a series of awful relationships with guys that were less than stellar.  I felt like I didn't deserve any better.  I should also say that this is also around the time that my love for food developed.  I was never a skinny kid, so it's not like this love for food is all that new, but it was a different kind of love now.  

I didn't speak to Darryl again for a couple of years. At 21 I entered into a relationship that I thought was perfect, but painfully unhealthy to everyone on the outside.  It was during this relationship that my daddy issues crept up on me like a scene from a horror movie, or at least it seemed that way to me....I was the poor girl hiding in the closet from the masked killer. I was with a man, and I use the term man very loosely there....who was several years older than me, who had been in jail for domestic violence.  Should have been a red flag right?! Like so many other men who are abusers, he knew all the right things to say to me, and explained away why we had actually been in jail, and like a moron....I believed everything he said.

  The beginning, was wonderful he showed me attention and was affectionate...he wanted me and I held onto that for dear life. Those were the things that I needed so much from my father and I found them in this guy.  The abuse didn't start right away, it was a slow process......first the verbal abuse, kept to a whisper so no one else could hear.....words that cut like a knife, down to the bone. He knew exactly where my sore spot was and would push it like a button every chance he got.  I stayed.  I was young, felt like I deserved it, felt like no one else would love me for who I was....and every time he would say something hurtful to me it was followed up with..."I don't want to say those things to you, but you made me do it" this kind of repetition is what makes the abused woman really believe that it is all her fault and she is the bad seed in the relationship. 


After a while, the verbal and emotional abuse wasn't hacking it for him, so the physical abuse came into play. I make no excuses for this person because what he did was not right in any way, but I will say I was never punched...slapped or kicked.  However, those aren't the only means of physical abuse.  I remember the first time it happened.  I made 'him' mad, and we started arguing, I knew I pushed a button because the look on his face went from a mild anger, to sudden rage.  I was shoved into a chair and like a flying squirrel he was suddenly in the air flying at me ( obviously he didn't actually fly....) before I could move he was sitting on me, one hand on the top of my head and his hand clenching my hair just hard enough to where he could move my head and I would have to look in that direction...which was straight up at him.... and the other hand clamped down over my nose and mouth. I was so scared I couldn't see straight.....I tried not to move....he got really close to my face and started that awful rage filled whisper with spit running out the sides of his mouth.  I have tried so hard to remember what exactly he said to me, but I can't. I can only see the vivid mental picture in my head of his face...I can only feel the fear rolling off my skin ......that was the first and last time he would do that to me.....or so I thought. 


Shortly after this incident, I found out he had been seeing another girl and I sent him packing.  I was so proud of myself, because it took me weeks to get up the courage to break it off with him.  I was done, I was washing my hands of this nasty person and I would move on with my life, and no one would have to know the disgusting things he said and did to me.