Daddy Why?

I have always tried to be the bigger person from as far as I can remember. I try to blend the severely uncomfortable with greater meaning, self-reflection and perhaps reasons for the state of my heart regarding you. Today however, I don’t want to. I want to be the sorely wounded child that is rarely allowed to be. See I have questions, some which have never found expression, others which have been expressed clothed in other things to make me look better than I feel.

I have questions.

What did I ever do to you?

Was my coming into this world such a terrible burden and you couldn’t bring yourself to admit it? I get it, there’s a way a man is expected to be… but a child always sees beyond the veil of expectations despite the lack of language to express it.

What is it that caused me to apologize for being born a girl when I was such a little girl? We hadn’t even moved from that enchanted place yet, I wasn’t older than 8 years old. But I could feel the tight air around you and I perceived it to be that you were disappointed in me and my little girl mind figured out that men culturally prefer their first borns to be boys… so I thought that’s why you never seemed to love me the way I wanted or at least hoped to be loved. What was that about? I remember…

Or perhaps this fatherhood thing wasn’t your thing. Maybe the women around you bulldozed you into something you were never ready for… the women around you were strong. Maybe that’s why you often forgot you had children… I remember sitting by the roadside after school and seeing you drive by in your car. Many times we would be picked up by a stressed out mum in the night or from the headmasters’ house because darkness had long fallen and we were still waiting. I think that waiting for a daddy who rarely shows up accurately characterizes my relationship with you.

Waiting, waiting, hoping, seeing you flash by like maybe this time you will happily be my daddy but you just keep going and I am left wondering if I am the problem and what can I do about it? 40 years is around the corner now, surely by now I should know better. But I am still a daddys girl in some ways… waiting in one way or another while making up stories so that no one sees the little girl behind the veil of adulting.

The teenage years were not easy. They were full on tumultuous, I was asking questions, my body was falling into the cry of my heart and too often I was out of school between severe stress related ailments or depression. The dysfunction was getting harder to hide because a girl was asking hard questions, demanding answers and being stonewalled here, played like a beginner’s violin there and tossed about like a ball between 2 warring parents. At least one parent was consistently looking out for me and at war for my wellbeing. This is not to say that I wasn’t aware of the machinations in which often I felt like a chess piece between you and mum. And it was hard not to notice that every time you got mad at mum, you spewed out your angry words at me. It wasn’t hard to notice that you played me to get back at her and leaving me in a mess of serious confusion. The wonderful drives we had, lunch dates and other treats would lift my spirits and hopes and the day would end only to come home in verbal vitriol and dumped at the gate like a sack of potatoes… not even waiting for the guard to open the gate for me to get in… I noticed. What was that? What did I do to you? Was my existence the problem? And you wonder why so many times I wanted to die? If my own father makes it clear he doesn’t want me and my mother at her wits end just can’t anymore… then it was only logical that my existence was a problem and so the logical solution then was to un-exist. And oh I tried. I really tried. It didn’t work, I am still here.

I don’t want to make excuses for mum. At no point at whatever age does a child want to feel like a chess piece in the machinations between her parents. And also these are questions to the man who refused to be my daddy, at least mum tries.

Why?

I thought leaving your glorious house and working to be financially dependent would free me from these games… only for your piercing words to reach me through the most unlikely carriers. Carriers who had the power to make or break my budding career. They came to me with the authority of the lies direct from your mouth. Did you think you could ridicule me, abuse me and colour me as good for nothing in the hearing of my colleagues and it doesn’t come to bite me?

It was me who knew nothing but being pulled aside at work day in and day out being lectured about looking for boyfriends on social media by my boss. She was convinced that all I did was use my job as a platform to get men… but who could blame her when she got it from my father that I was a promiscuous fool? In fact, this gave me permission to try out this promiscuity thing… not that it worked but I did try. Tell your child that she is a prostitute long enough and sooner or later she will open that door to see what the noise is all about. Call your child a thief and sooner or later, he/she will walk into that door.

But, I don’t blame you anymore for the fires I have walked into and the scars they have left me with. Those were my ill informed choices. I take full responsibility for it. But I will not discount the effect your rejection of me, your disdain for me and your continued machinations around me. You were supposed to be daddy. My protector, my friend, my mentor. I looked up to you hoping that you would actually step into that place consistently with no damaging agenda. But, 40 is around the corner, I might still be waiting but I would be a fool to hold my breath.

All I want now is to know why, perhaps there’s closure in the why. That’s what I want, closure and to be released from this cyclic madness.

I cannot fit into the erratic script you try to dictate for me and so it looks like I haven’t amounted to much but I am still here and there’s a full life ahead of me still. I am still here.

Against all odds, I found that I can be loved and I am learning to be loved and to love back without machinations and agendas.

Against all odds, my life is actually quite magical and miraculous. See, after trying to die so many times and it not working, I learnt that there is one who’s always looked out for me even when I had no eyes to look out for myself, who fights for me, who protects me and who teaches me my way in this world, one who calls me His baby girl. Yes call me crazy if you want but there really is no logical explanation as to how my life is turning out. Everyday fresh gusts of love are blown my way. My God says he is a father to the fatherless and it’s true, He really is. You refused to me my daddy and gave Him space to sit in that daddy place.

I don’t know what the future holds for us. It would be lovely if there was space for meaningful reconciliation but I am not holding my breath waiting. There is life still ahead of me to get up and be about.