Should I have read Billy Budd when my dad was alive? Did I fuck up? I hope not. I really don’t think so. It is hard to imagine it would made any difference, really, that it wouldn’t have changed our relationship, right?! He never asked me about the book after he gave it to me for Christmas however many years ago. \u00a0I don’t even know when that was. Is that significant that I can’t remember that? This is maybe the most open hearted I’ve been since he died. So is this new bout of sadness and anger all just the normal long tail of grief and it feels different because I am in a different place? Heather? What do you think? Kath? (There’s some other names I’d post here, but I want to respect your all’s privacy.) \u00a0I keep thinking about Dad’s friends, Joe and his brother, Patrick, and that guy, Gary, and Delbert and his sons and how they all knew Dad loved them. And how they knew Dad would do anything for them because Dad did do so much for them. He was a wonderful friend. The best. (\u00a0Also, Mom, you can’t pipe in here and say how much Dad loved us because it was an abstract thing — all idea and no action.) God,\u00a0I just don’t want to be this person anymore with these sad-ass Dad abandonment feelings. It sucks. It really does. I know I will be fine. I know these current feelings or sadness and anger and rejection will pass. But the stuff in my psyche – man, dude, not the legacy I was hoping for. (Mom, you also can’t tell me about all the great things I got from Dad, right now. I know how much we are alike. I wouldn’t trade that in, either.)<\/p>\n
I both make jokes and serious comments about my longing, as in how much I love to long. I say things like I am a “longing junkie” and I date women on the other side of the continent. I write sad songs and neurotic poems and then listen to even sadder songs and read even more neurotic poems. Longing is just so much a part of me. I cannot imagine myself without it. And the irony, and irony is not even the right word (but lots of right words don’t even exist) is that it comes from this hard and messed up place of not really having a dad and then being this little baby gender queer butch who never thought she would . . . I don’t know . . . get to thrive in this world. Thrive sounds so fucking therapeutic. I mean get the chance to have as meaningful life as everyone else around me who was not a baby gender queer butch. Sometimes, when I think of my life now I am amazed, really, that it has been possible. Right up to this very minute, I am amazed to always be becoming more myself. It seemed like the most secret dream I had when I was kid – that I would be myself in this world. I guess I am posting some belated coming out commentary and potentially ending on an unexpected up note, which is not something I predicted when I started writing tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Should I have read Billy Budd when my dad was alive? Did I fuck up? I hope not. I really don’t think so. It is hard to imagine it would made any difference, really, that it wouldn’t have changed our relationship, right?! He never asked me about the book after he gave it to me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,38,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dad","category-grief","category-queer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/991\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}