I believe I was in seventh or eighth grade, making my
sister a junior or senior in high school. I walked downstairs, thinking that
meal would be no different than any other family dinner we’ve had: Quiet,
except for my sister’s tea caffeine-fueled ramblings. But it was different,
because even my mom’s delicious spaghetti with her homemade meat-sauce couldn’t
make up for my father’s terrible mood. He interrupted her talking about school
or her friends or her clothes or whatever the topic was that night, and
targeted my sister, calling her vain, and slamming his hand on the table. I
flinched. My mom told him to calm down, but she was always passive and quiet,
and that night was no exception. He yelled at her to shut up and continued
yelling at my sister. Silent tears flowed down my cheeks and dripped off my
chin and I just watched my knuckles grow white through the glass tabletop.
It’s not like he has a drinking problem. He definitely
didn’t drink more than usual that night. He actually gets happier and goofy
when he drinks, not angry. He was just naturally like this. It was normal for
him to be disappointed in his daughters or make fun of his wife. It was normal
for him to leave the TV on during dinner and yell at anyone who didn’t wait for
a commercial to talk. It wasn’t normal for him to cry. It wasn’t normal for him
to say he was proud of either of his daughters.
Every once in a while, he did. But it wasn’t until after
that night that he made any sort of true fatherly effort. There was one night
when I was fifteen and I had come downstairs to get some ice cream. My mom was
getting the coffee machine ready for the morning, and my dad was sitting on the
couch in the living room watching TV. He got my attention and referred to a
song that I had wrote and posted on Facebook called “Slip.” He had tried
calling it “Spill.” This song was interesting because it could sound like some
sort of suicide-note-type song, but it wasn’t. It was about a boy. I rushed to
change his mind, thinking he was going to criticize me for writing something so
depressing and posting it online for the world to see. Instead, he complimented
it. He told me it was really good and that I shouldn’t post what I write online
in case the wrong person sees it and tries to plagiarize it. I was so taken
aback that all I could do was say thank you. Had my dad actually read something
that I wrote? Had he actually liked it? Had he actually told me that he liked
it? I believe he had. It was one of the strangest moments between us. I wasn’t
exactly what my parents had expected in a daughter.
My sister, however, was perfect in my parents’ eyes. She
was athletic, smart, and an all-around amiable person. She had played
basketball for six years in elementary school and ran track in middle school
and high school. She was a straight-A student in several advanced placement and
honors classes. At school, she was cool and had many good friends that she only
lost if they were unfortunate. She was simply stylish, very pretty, and yet
didn’t have her first kiss until the night before she left for college.
Because my father is an electrician and my mom spent most
of her life either in retail or office work and my sister was an international
business major, I’ve always considered myself as the ugly duckling in the
family.
At about nine years old, I started writing songs—granted
not very good songs, but songs nonetheless. In fourth grade, I had my “first
boyfriend.” Although I had considered him my first back then, I no longer do,
because fourth graders can’t have very successful relationships. And it wasn’t.
Two years later, I decided that I wanted to be a famous actress.
I was different and because I was
different, I didn’t really know how to communicate with my family and in
return, they didn’t know how to relate to me. I had many issues with my father
growing up, my sister would just tell me to get over it because he’s my father
and I love him no matter what, and my mom always took my dad’s side because she
said that I blamed him too much. Maybe I did. But then again, when I needed a
father, he wasn’t really there for me. Instead, he was a great father figure to
my sister’s best friend Anna. She had had a rough home life with a step father
that didn’t like her and a father that was barely in her life. As all
daddy-problem girls go, Anna also had a tough time in relationships. She kept forgiving
a guy that cheated on her and lied about it several times and ended up marrying
him without a genuine wedding ceremony. He got stationed in Japan for the
military and they were supposed to be there for eighteen months. Barely half a
year in, however, he started getting abusive and saying that the reason he was
in the military was so he could kill people for fun. Needless to say, she
divorced him and got out of that relationship and Japan as soon as possible. As
usual, we invited her over to dinner and I heard my dad talk the whole way
through and for almost an hour after we had finished eating about what a
wonderful young woman she was and how she needs to forget about guys for a
while and stick to trying to figure out her future. I had never gotten a talk
like that from my dad.
Something weird happened more recently, however. It was
my first break home from college, and we had invited my sister and her
boyfriend Bryce, Anna, and my dad’s best friend of over thirty years Phil over
for Thanksgiving dinner. There were several times throughout the evening that
Phil had stepped out to smoke a cigarette and although this didn’t mean a lot
to me, it hit my dad fairly hard after Phil left. My dad cried more than I had
ever seen him cry and he explained to me what was going on with Phil. Apparently,
back before my parents had even started dating in the 1980s in Santa Barbara,
California, Phil had gotten into cocaine and was addicted. My dad and their
group of friends didn’t like being around Phil anymore because he was either
high or wanting to get his next fix. My dad was the only one willing to talk to
him about it and Phil had promised my dad that he would stop. However, a couple
weeks later, my dad went to his house and found some of it in the bathroom and
called him on it. Soon after, Phil met his future wife Georgia who also had a
cocaine addiction. They managed to get over it together, however trading in
their addiction for an unhealthy diet, smoking, and drinking at any hour of the
day. Georgia passed away within the last year, and both my parents can tell it
is only a matter of time until Phil kicks the bucket as well. My dad said he
had basically been waiting for the call, and when Phil called and my mom had
picked it up, all she told my dad was that she was pretty sure it was the call.
That Thanksgiving, Anna hugged my
dad and told him everything would be okay. She comforted him and tried to
lighten the mood and was very good at it. However, all I could do was sit there
and wipe my own tears away, still thinking about the small piece of turkey leg
stuck in a back molar. I didn’t know how to comfort a man that had shown me
barely an ounce of compassion my whole life. I wanted to, I almost reached my
hand out to pat his arm or something, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. Instead,
my hands stayed folded in my lap under the dark wood table. I could feel my
knuckles whitening because he was my father, but he wasn’t really my dad. And I
was his child, but I wasn’t really his daughter.
But
it was my sophomore year that things really got shaken up. I had my first real
boyfriend, the same guy that I had my first kiss with at the homecoming dance.
After we broke up, my best friend started dating him. I didn’t even find out
through either of them, my friend had seen it on Facebook and told me about it.
I had already been slipping into depression, and this news dunked me in, head
first. I told my parents that I had thought about committing suicide. My dad
laughed. He thought I was just pretending to be depressed to manipulate people
and make them feel sorry for me. This same man had blamed my sister only two or
three years prior for making me cry at the dinner table, when I had actually
been crying because his fiery eyes burned holes in my heart and his thundering
voice echoed in my ribcage.
Now
when we eat dinner and I look at those wine-themed placemats that my mom made,
I think of that night from five or so years ago and I think about how it might
happen again. Sure my dad is better now and I get along with him better, but
we’ll never be close and anything can trigger his anger. Sometimes lay in bed
at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering about day after. I remember having
to run laps around the gym in P.E. and telling a friend or two about it, but I
can never remember which friend. Someone out there has this terrible memory of
my father and they weren’t even there I don’t even know who it is. But I
suppose that’s just another reason that I have to warn my friends every time
that they meet my dad that he’s not the most sociable person in the world.
I never cut myself or even came close to attempted
suicide. I might be depressed, but I’m a coward. I supposed cowardice is what
saved me in the end, but dark thoughts will always haunt my mind, even when I
least expect it.
I suppose I was fifteen or sixteen
when the worst thing seeped into my mind and filled my whole being with evil. I’m
not sure what day of the week it was, or even what homework I was doing, but it
was probably geometry on my bed and I was getting too stressed to control my
thoughts. My precious cat sat on my bed next to me down by my knees like she
usually did while I did my homework. I was pretty much the only person she
liked anymore. She’s always been scared of my parents, and my sister was away
at university a lot. Annie was tiny princess of a cat that never ate and
thought she was the most gorgeous cat in the world. I’ve always called her the
Paris Hilton of Cats. I loved her more than anything and considered her my
ultimate best friend. However, in that moment, I wasn’t myself. My soul had
gone, and all that consumed me was a need to wrap my fingers around her tiny
neck that was about the size of my tiny wrist. Although I wasn’t touching her
and I didn’t even reach out, somehow I could still feel her unfeasibly soft fur
between my fingers. After a minute, the sensation passed. I petted her and
scratched behind her ears the way she liked. And with that, it was all over.
My mom took me to see a therapist. I learned new things,
not only about myself, but about the world I lived in, the people that
surrounded me every day—the man that I thought was stronger than Hercules as a
kid.
Dr. Campbell taught me that if I couldn’t change him, I
had to accept him and adapt. If I couldn’t change the world, then I had to
accept it and adapt. But she also told me not to change myself for one man—not
even the whole world. Not only did I have to accept my father, but I also had
to accept myself. Slowly, I started to embrace the artist within myself. I knew
I would never be good at school or sports or socializing, but that doesn’t mean
I can’t be good at other things.
The day I started accepting myself
as a part of the world and a part of this family, was the first step not on a
trek, but on a journey. I discovered myself in a new group of friends. I
discovered myself backstage rather than on stage. I discovered myself in Girl
Scouts. I discovered myself with a pen and a notebook. I discovered myself in
Europe. I discovered myself watching special features, rather than imagining
myself in front of the camera. I discovered myself at college. I lost myself,
but only for a couple months. And I’m rediscovering myself now.
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