I apologize in advance because it is very well possible that you don't want to read me anymore, that you are tired enough to get to know me and what you know is tiresome and hurtful already, what else can be known? what "secrets" could be darker? how can I find more ways to "hurt you" in this stupid process of learning to "live together"? It has to be in English so I can get detached a little bit from what I'm about to tell you… you may think you know it but you were not prepared to know it yet to understand it and you may not be prepared now. You may need to understand it for history is repeating itself and I've tried to avoid it with all my strength for which I have none left while you played a key role to make it happen without knowing or willing to.
As you know, my parents split while I was very young. I was two. With that, for me, the child came across a lot of different things, frustrating and difficult to digest. Not even a skilled psychiatrist will know for sure or understand the consequences until it's too late because what you feel is unique, although it looks like any other thing in the world. How unique? The many a burden no one notices, unaware of your battles until you lose. You never win. The hurting smiles, the tiresome happy, and the constant questioning about life, its meaning, its importance… and what is love. It all hurts because your battle was not with the couple, the mom and the dad, and it wasn't even your battle. But now it is and you debate to understand the world with only half a heart, one leg, one arm, and one eye. You become a half-being wandering the streets.
The rest of the world would not matter and there is no love so grand that suffice. There is so much struggle within and not enough good answers to make anything of that. Why are you happy? Why are you sad? Why are you not here? Why have you come? How little time we spend together and we need to meet again: to get to know the stranger, to accommodate, to listen to the blurry face talk in riddles, to dress the ugly with pearls… and try to make up a wound so hurting that bleeds every single day.
My father disappeared for so many years. For me it was decades but I think it was about 4 years. And I never got him back as he never had his son to raise. And it is not only bitterness or angriness or silliness as you may think. It's a burden, as I said before. You love the concept, the figure but it never fits. And I had other role models, of course… my mother had my sister's father for her but I still had no father and yet another blurry figure in the making. Then, you met another partial figure that I came to cherish a lot but it was still a half-father, half-nothing. Very early I had to rely on my grandfather also: a grand figure, far from any mortal. A sort of godly man so versed and skillful. Yet, another half figure in the unmixable mix of things to try to understand.
But the worst was my own father when I tried to compare or fit or fix or entertain the idea of what a father is without knowing him and knowing all these other half-nothings, borrowed, like fake limbs attached to the ghost limb, not to the body. And learn to walk, then learn to love me. How can I love myself when half my life is missing? how can I fathom the idea of who am I with half the information? If I must fight all the time against that figure so essential to be recognized and loved and understood and cared for and visited, why is it not here to do those things and put the burden on my shoulders? That's only half the story.
You think, as you said, you've noticed some "things" in their behavior. As they are trying to be happy they are constantly angry with everything, even themselves. And they love with a love so magnificent that they will hurt you in many ways yet still be there to make you happy and let you try. That's only half the story but not even the tip of the iceberg for the real thing.
And my mother, she tried. Tried with all her heart to hide the disappointment, the hate. She became a warrior that "works it all", almighty and ever sapient. Silently resilient with a strong and happy life, so it seems, yet absent for the jobs taking its tolls. The caregivers, the extended family, the friends... more and more half figures that don't mix and never relate. Everybody gives their best for the happiness they think we needed yet are ignorant of what world was built inside.
The doubts, the yelling, the punches, and the solitude. All the darkness out in daylight, with hints that everybody knew but it's not for them to go to war with it, just to throw some silly tips and movements and very "wise" words to stood up and overcome it, to make a whole life out of nothing or half a nothing with some weak happiness, easily turned to stone.
But the father's side tries. On top of their absence, he puts money to be responsible and now he can't be hated. Instead of days, we put vacations in which we try to know each other but we don't like each other, really. We try to be friends but we are strangers. And when the father-son comes into the plate it is rejected. Why a craving for something becomes rejection? why if you try so hard, it starts to hurt more? What happens with all the love that is supposed to be there yet it vanishes at the moment of intention? The grunts, the wants to see, the discomfort… the food that I don't like or don't eat or can't, the feeling when you're hurt but there's not a known figure to reach to, the loneliness; the running hugs, the tears of joy, the kisses, the sleeping together, the learning and the valuable moments… the life that seems to be complete just for a moment and the second after is destroyed. Minute by minute repeating itself. Question after question trying to be answered without saying, without tackling the ugly truth, the tiredness, and then the yelling. The demands for answers, the wrong answers, the right and awful answers… there's never a good answer, an answer "enough" to make it all stop. Not even in denial. Not even making up a life so grand and far and precious that will overcome this feeling: half a life, well lived or not, it doesn't matter.
And it's equally terrifying from every side, but not for the side that never cares or never tries or is not aware of what is happening. Even today, in all of this understanding that my life has brought to my door, with all preparedness and extra knowledge, with my own kids too… there is not one second of my life where I can be not scared or crippled in fear and doubt and anger, that is not pain or sadness and solitude, an immense aching for love.
