This last week or so, I guess the shock of my fall and injury finally hit me. I've done a lot of crying, and just wanted to hole up under some covers to allow myself to heal. A lot of this is, I am sure, the body's natural reaction to shock or injury. But I realized a few times that there was almost literally an entire lifetime of grief emerging.
I've come to understand that part of the fallout from having a dad who is incapable of love, is that you simply never learn what it is like to be the center of someone's world. The message, while probably unspoken, from that first moment, was, "You are on your own, little baby." Yes, I had a roof over my childhood head and food on the table, even perks like a private school and a family summer home. But I finally understand that these were not done to care for us, they were done so that he would appear to be conforming to a WASP norm. My mom, bless her, must also have learned that caring for a narcissist meant that emotionally, he was all there was. I don't think I have ever felt on a heart level what it was like to be cherished, protected, a focus of love and attention. I have just attacked life with the understanding that I would always be alone and scrambling to survive.
Oddly enough, I've rarely felt vulnerable. Even after I left the corporate world with all its guarantees and benefits, I just plowed ahead the best I could. I wasn't necessarily making a beautiful picture out of my oil painting set, but I took each step forward into (sometimes) hell and (sometimes) heaven with, I see now, outrageous courage. I had an inner compass, and I tried my best to follow it, and still am. And I've been free in a way that many people aren't.
Part of my weepiness is realizing just how vulnerable I have been all along, and just didn't know or feel it. Thirty years ago on leaving "time," I probably could and should have either conformed with another similar situation, or crawled into a cave and never come out. When I think of all the steps I have safely taken all these years, I almost literally swoon now. Isn't it strange that my dad's inheritance was a level of courage that perhaps a more loving childhood might never have formed? The biggest journey ahead of me will be restoring some of that day-to-day courage. It's going to be baby steps, baby steps.
