Where have we been? Trying to sort out who and what we are and where we are going at this stage of our lives. We are exploring what we call the Next Chapter, and hope you join us as we research new work, new experiences, new travel and as we become the resource for a Call to Action for our generation.
In the meanwhile, this is brief story I wrote for a memoir class at the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement:
I beat the pillow over and over. At first, I barely tap the pillow but the more I pound the pillow, the more aggressively I punch it. I am crying so hard that it is difficult to form the words. Like some distant mantra, I repeat over and over, “I didn’t do anything, why don’t you love me?” Over and over, I cry, “Why don’t you love me?”
In my therapist’s office, I know it is safe to let go. But now I am spent and he tells me that I “did good”. He reassures me that it was not my fault and that I did nothing wrong. But I tell him that doesn’t relieve the sadness and the gaping hole in my heart.
Arranging to meet again next week, I slowly walk out, down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. By the time I get home, I have closed the door on the sadness. I do not share these feelings with anyone. How do I explain that my father really did not love me, in fact hated me, once telling me, “If it weren’t for you, your mother would love me”.
I am an adult, a successful professional working in broadcast television. I am a caring and thoughtful parent and enjoy a wide circle of friends. I choose to look at life as a glass half full and I use humor to get through times of tension and disharmony.
I try not to think about my father because there is no point. I am not going to change him nor get him to love me. I do worry about my mother because of his cruel streak and his history of hurting her. When he drank, it was really scary. Even as a young child, I knew to call the police when the violence started. Once he threw her down the cellar stairs where she smashed her head against a cement wall. It was because of this incident that I finally broke and threatened him. I told him that if he ever touched her again I would kill him. He never hit me or threatened to hit me again.
My mother loved me very much but I needed my father’s love as well. The first man in my life did not love me. How could I ever enjoy a successful relationship when I was missing his love? I tried to get him to love me by being a perfect daughter. I was an excellent student, played varsity sports, sang in the church choir, and was well mannered and well behaved. None of this moved him. My mother did her best to make him see how fortunate he was to have a daughter like me. When that didn’t work, she warned me to get out as quickly as I could, to get away from him.
And so I married the first guy that came along, never looking at the relationship from all perspectives, but only as a way out. And I repeated the pattern again and again, each time trying to make the man in my life feel better about himself and trying to make sure he loved the real me. As history and shrinks tell us, that never works.
Rode this orphaned rescued elephant in Zimbabwe. Being with animals makes me happy.
I envy my friends who enjoy good relationships with their fathers. I cry during the Dow Chemical ads on television when the father puts his arm around his daughter. Father and daughter tennis tournaments make me weepy. So your father didn’t love you so what? Get over it and move on or spend years on a shrink’s couch trying to sort it out.
I chose to move on and found strategies to reach out to friends when I feel the sadness rearing its ugly head. It happens less and less now. Perhaps the life I have built is working well enough that I will eventually fill the void. He may not have loved me but I am learning to fill my life with love for family and dear friends.