Taking out the garbage

There is a certain poetry to a person who brings with them the external symbols of the relationship you share. Take my dad for instance. Every time I move I leave things behind, things that I don’t want any more, things that I leave specific instructions to others to keep if you want and if not throw it away. Every time my dad saves most of it for me in case I change my mind and want it later. I have handed things to him saying. “Here, this is for you I think you’ll like these.” I get a phone call a while later, a year maybe two, and he asks me if I wanted those or if he can use them. He is the keeper of all of my excess baggage, the returner of things I never expected to see again, the cause by which things of my past continue to make their appearance in my life, the orchestrator of revisitation.

This time was no different. He arrived with several things in a box that I didn’t want and don’t need, I’ve survived a year without them, they were in a box labeled for the dump, but he “rescued them.”

When I pointed out that he keeps forcing on me things I no longer want he replied that I had better start throwing them away myself, because he is unable to. He’s right, both about my old blue saltshakers and my measuring cup that’s missing a handle, and my bits of hurt and expectation that I keep waiting for him to deal with. There are some things that I continue to hold onto or hold against him, hoping he will at least admit to the wrong doing, or make the first step, or just change and be different in that area, and it’s not going to happen, and I can’t keep handing him my junk to throw out because he’s unable to, and it just keeps coming back with him to haunt me.

Thanks everyone for your comments and well wishes and prayers. I don’t know most of you, but it means a lot to me anyway that you would care about a strange girl with a lot of issues. So far the visit is not bad, the kids are entertained and I’m not feeling too stressed out. I’m fighting down little twinges of fear and sadness whenever I see the Boy giving my dad a hug or having a close moment with him. Fear because I don’t want him to be hurt, and if he doesn’t get attached it’s easier for me to protect him, and sadness because I don’t feel any of that closeness with my dad anymore, and haven’t since I was very small. I’m walking a bit of a tightrope, but so far I haven’t lost my balance.