Father Figure

(Incidentally, I'm having deja vu now upon publishing this.  AWESOME.) 

11.34 pm, November 14, 2005

It's one of my favorite George Michael songs, if such a category of favorites could exist (hey, he had some great tunes; "Freedom"? With the video with every hot supermodel from the 90's?  "Faith"? TOTALLY ROCKS).  But "Father Figure" has special significance because my whole life, I've gravitated towards men, always older than me, who were very intelligent, very thoughtful, and very compassionate, and it didn't take me long to realize why that was. 

At one point, not too long ago, I was having a hard time reaching out to God.  I tried calling Him "Father", to bring it into more familiar terms, and for a while it worked, and then the weekend was over.  For whatever reason, it couldn't stick.

I am in a relationship now in which I am learning to do things that I disobeyed my mother about for my entire childhood, adolescence, and the years in which I was living at home and I was still too immature to just do what she asked.  My mother was an amazing mother; but I was too stubborn to be of any good.  That tenacity (to use a euphemism for "stubborn blockhead") has served me immeasurably in certain ways, but has done nothing for me in terms of shaping me - or allowing myself to be shaped - into a strong, responsible adult.  As you know from my previous entries, I will have a paper due the next day, and I could be on a diet, but I will order a pizza, watch a movie, and then surf the internet for four hours from 3 to 7 am, instead of actually writing my assignment and getting my sleep.  I feel I am beyond reproach, and I'm waiting for someone to scare me into doing things. 

I think I'll be waiting forever. 

An amazing thing happened to me today.  I've been exploring Chrisitianity lately, because, well, why not, and a minister that I have befriended expressed some concerns he had for me regarding my virtue as a responsible young woman. 

For anyone who knew me five years ago, that conversation, back then, would have never have taken place. 

For anyone who has known me in my whole non-Christian life, this would have never have taken place.

I have known this person for exactly four weeks, and seen him a total of four times.  And yet he had the love and concern for me to express things that no man in my life who should have expressed such things ever did.  That is magnificent.  

The weight of what that means has yet to truly make its way into my heart, but I do know that since I've been trying to become closer to God (emphasis on "trying", as evidenced by my last blog, the one with all the hatred and the expletives), He has shown me the things that I long for the most; the things that have been missing in my life.  I feel as though I am beginning to find something that I have been longing for as long as I can remember, and that I have searched for in vain, and found instead only heartache and disappointment and rejection. 

Lindsay Lohan recently released a song entitled "Confessions of a Broken Heart".  In it she describes her heartache over not having her dad around, and suffering through abuse that I never went through, but that, as a human, we can all empathize with.  In addition to being a very cute, rich little girl, she also one-upped me on the spiritual end: she was able to express her pain in such a concise way and with so much vulnerability and truth that I am ashamed that she has a song on MTV about something that I denied to to myself for years regarding the very same subject.  Now, I've been a very lucky girl, and never suffered the things she had, but I think I am not alone in feeling that I wish I could have connected to my parents, particularly my father, in a better way.  

I always thought of myself as emotionally aware, and perhaps more so than most other people, but it turns out that the one thing I always needed to express, I never even let myself feel, and a 19 year old beat me to it.  It also turns out that I'm not alone, and that it's a real relief when you won't let yourself feel certain things, and then something in the universe reminds you that they are alive and kicking in your soul, and that someone else did the work of expressing it for you.  So I'm thankful to her for having the balls to express herself, and to express the pain of millions of other kids who couldn't say it or wouldn't allow themselves to even feel it, and had no choice but to feel it, when they heard the power of lyrics put to music. 

It's amazing what life won't let you get away with.  

Sometimes when it catches up with you, it cuts so deep that you feel as though your heart is the desert floor, cracked open from the drought, and when the rain pours in, it burns so hard that you couldn't have ever imagined that relief from pain hurt more than the pain itself.