Always been my own man

[silverfae9]

My father calls me now. Not too often, every couple of weeks or so, but he does. Just to talk. I don't know how I feel about this. We've never been close, and I still don't really trust him. Tonight he called me while he was 'just driving around' and all I wonder when he says that is whether or not he's 'just driving' back from cheating on my stepmother. I know this is none of my business and that I shouldn't even -care-, but damn it all, I'm tired of my family members bailing out of their commitments. There are few things I hate more than having to admit that I'm a cliche but all of my commitment issues do stem directly from my wretched family and their wretched inability to stick to anything.
There are things I need to let go of in this block with my dad. But I think it's the same with him as it is with bullies...bullies never remember the people they beat up negatively. I don't think he remembers the mean things he used to say to me. He was probably too high to even realize he was saying them. I don't trust him.
I wonder at this sudden urge to be buddies with me. We chat about his golf game. We crack jokes. There's really no substance to our conversation. Is he trying to be fatherly...to pick up where he left off 16 years ago? Or is he just as unhappy as I was in that stupid christbitten state? I mean, I know that he's unhappy...he's got a cold, nerotic wife and two equally neurotic sons, doing a job he doesn't particularly like. But he did it to himself, and I've been through enough because of his bad decisions.
I just don't know. It makes me all confusticated.

All I want out of life is a bottle of wine and a copy of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

Comments

[haydenhed.livejournal.com]

i called my dad tonight. we hadn't talked since may. it's only been a year since we started talking again, and it had been nearly 20 years before that. i hate to be a cliche, but i was missing that ever-important male role-model during my sexually impressionable years. our conversations lack substance, too. he tells me about his video games, about the job he barely has, about his plans that never quite work out. he longs to keep movie, he can't stand standing still. my mother, in what may have been one out of possibly two instances in my life, offer me some sound advice:
"maybe he just doesn't know what to say to you, i know i don't know anymore."
maybe she's right. sometimes.

h

[haydenhed.livejournal.com]

*moving, offered

[silverfae9]

Hay-den, I'm pretty sure we have the same dad. Or, at least, copies of the same one.