Best daddy issue ever

My therapist believes that I am on the brink of a breakthrough.

This is all at once an exciting and terrifying change of pace; ever since she’s known me I seem to have been going from breakdown to breakdown.Actually, ever since you’ve all known me I seem be going from breakdown to breakdown.  Right?

These mini-breakdowns have all been preceded by some form of rejection or abandonment by a man.  I have always known–intellectually, at least–that I have daddy issues. Father died abruptly at a critical juncture in my development. Of course, I have daddy issues. I have watched enough movies, read enough books and related to Meredith Grey far too well to not know this. I did not need a therapist to point it out to me. But it seems that I did need a therapist to dig a little deeper and allow me to understand this on an emotional level.

I did need a therapist to show me that my daddy issues are not there simply because he died. “Isn’t it strange” she asked me, “That in 16 months of therapy all I know about your father is that he died? You spent 11 years with him, Hope. How was your relationship with him when he was alive?”

I was floored. Yes. At some point in my life, I did have a father.  Spontaneous, soft tears burst forth and I used a phrase I have never used in therapy before.

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

Resistance. This is the stuff that therapists’ wet dreams are made of.

But in her wily shrink ways she had been preparing me for this moment for 16 months. All those sessions led to this one session. For 16 months I danced around the topic. She let me. Today, she probed further. And I finally broke down and allowed her to do her job.

Today I know something that I didn’t know yesterday.

Every time a man leaves me, or rejects me or doesn’t want me I allow myself to finally grieve for the father I never mourned. Not because I didn’t want to or because I didn’t feel to, but because I just didn’t know how to.

Yes. I am definitely on the brink of something here and I really, really hope it’s a breakthrough.