9:00 a.m. - 2005-06-27
This is Why Rant
Wary of wholeness and all it would have me believe, I seem only to recognize love in broken vessels. I am suspicious of the promise of protection. It beckons me to abandon freedom for the intoxicating substance that slowly fills my veins, divesting me of all volition. The beautiful fix of provisional love. The dazzling lure I must of necessity repell. And so I am terrified of the compact car swerving into the driveway at ten after five, the stale scent of peanutbutter in the empty lunch pail, the dutiful hero with kind eyes under whose shadow I so readily curl. I am Delilah. Catching but a glimpse of my strength, I hack away at my own hair. Timidly I shrink from my abilities, tremble at my God given purpose, cower before my potential. So love perverts into a struggle for emotional dominance, the false esteem invoked by another to somehow undergird his own false esteem. A cold business arrangement disguised as romance. A mutual bait and switch by candlelight. My birthright sold for a pot of common stew. While other women fussed with their nests, I repeatedly tore mine apart as if by rote with my very own hands. Savagely I clawed at any semblance of the despised security I blamed for keeping me small. The paternal love so threatened by my womanhood as to unwittingly bind me forever to itself, a stunted, perpetual girl. The reversal of my destiny by the well meaning man who loved me more than his own life. The perfect father whose love could never be replicated, whose hold could never be broken. That precious humble man, impossible template for anyone to follow. The man who layered his life around me like a safe cocoon. The man whose death winds around me tighter still. The man for whose illusive approval I would have gratefully severed any part of me. For a time I hungrily settled for his disapproval, just to exist in his eyes. But those last few years were tender and healing. We talked and laughed like familiar friends. He knew my voice on the phone each day. There were secret jokes between us. An easy grace. And then one unexpected day that had begun like any other, he breathed a sigh summoning angels. They ushered him into eternity as I softly repeated my life's mantra, "I love you, my Daddy ... I love you, my Daddy ... I love you, my Daddy". I whispered it once for each moment he may not have known that he was the center, the centrifigal force around which my every action spun. I whispered it once for each moment he may have felt invisible to me. I whispered it once for each moment he may have felt his love unrequieted. I held his right arm slowly going cold. Huddling on the bedrail, I watched the sapphire ring recede into tears that suspended me midair between childhood and a future I couldn't imagine without him. He was the reason I had assigned to everything I had ever done or not done. He was the one I had protected while he was busy protecting me. I had protected him from ever having to meet the woman I was just as afraid of encountering. And that was me.
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