No Ma’am, I’m Not Reading a Book

Damn it. Foiled again by Reading Deprivation. I only remember not to read blogs since I’m always in front of a computer. But I’ve been sneaking pages of “Fatherless Women” which I haven’t yet finished.

I am realizing some more things as I go through this horrendous assignment. I read because I need to verify the validity of my thoughts and feelings. Reading is a treasure hunt for approval because I don’t really trust myself. I don’t think I can make a decision on my own. I sometimes want to relegate my life decisions to my husband, which is so old-school, but I can see how a woman who gets married could fall into that role easily. She's lost her parents, she doesn't trust herself, and she's got a new man in her life. But I don't feel comfortable doing that. It's not fair to myself or my husband.

At least with my father, I didn’t have to feel like a dope asking him for advice. He was my father, the authority, and his role was comfortable to me. And with my father gone, I’m floundering. It’s not like he was a major confidant or anything, I didn’t call him once a week for heart to hearts…but I shouldn’t kid myself that the frequency of our conversations had any bearing on their breadth. My father (most likely) ruled my life.

Any psychologist probably would be giving me a congratulatory nod for that one…but if you had spoken to me a year ago and asked me how influenced I was by my parents, I would have given a pat answer about how independent I was, moving into my fiance’s home, “Helloooo, nothing says Grown Up like a mortgage!!!”

I thought I was out of my parent’s grip, but paying your own bills and signing lease agreements barely scrapes the surface of independence. You might as well have given me a bank full of Monopoly money. Since my father’s death and my marriage happened in one fell swoop, I’m seeing how gut-wrenchingly painful it is to be severed from mommy and daddy.

Daughters these days have a confusing role. They are expected to be nothing like their mothers, and everything like their fathers. This fairly new feature in human development shows that women are both encouraged and protected by their fathers. A father cannot treat his daughter like a son, he can be stern, but he still has the instinct to protect and shield. You can see how this dichotomy causes chaos in the female psyche. When I would tell my father I got an A, he replied with, “I expect nothing less.” This was certainly warm encouragement, but it was also edict.

As Clea Simon so eloquently poses,

“For despite our supposed adulthood, our supposed independence, many of us still find ourselves arranging our lives to fit our fathers’ plans…This is not how we react to our mothers…And its roots lie, again, in our early experiences with our mothers, and therefore we have a level of acceptance and understanding that demands less approval. With our fathers, we have nearly the same depth of connection, but we do not have the safety. How could we not, then, work for their acceptance? With fear as an incentive, how could we not rush to internalize the lessons our fathers taught?”

With fear as my incentive I’m finding myself in a place where I feel cemented to the ground, yet my limbs are wrangling to get free.

So, who's got the sledgehammer?