Last night I found myself mourning the loss of my father. It's not that he has died. But the father I knew as a child that took care of me when I was sick and took me to arcades and fished, that man is long dead and I never mourned him. It's like I kept the before and after in two separate categories and treated them like two different people rather than one that has died inside of another.
And I hate to admit it, but I think I have used men to fill the void that he left in my life. In years past, I've refused to look at it like that because it sounded so "textbookish" and contrived not to mention stereotypical. The last thing I've ever wanted was to be thought of was a statistic in some psychology textbook.
What brought me to realize this was the fact that I've wrestled with missing men from my past for the past couple of days. I didn't know why or what was actually going on. I thought about Nate and how he's been better to me than any other man I've known. The only person I can compare him to in respect to how well he treats me is how good my father was to me before alcohol took him again. I can't speak for others, but he treated me like gold.
And so I sobbed over the loss of him last night. At other points, I was angry and bitter, but last night I cried because I lost someone I deeply loved and I know loved me. It's strange how 18 years later I finally mourn such loss.
It's not to say that I think my boyfriend is like my childhood father as they are worlds apart in so many respects, but the kindness and goodness extended unto me feels somewhat similar though worlds apart.
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