The Support I Desperately Needed From My Father But Didn’t Get

There are moments in life that stay with you far longer than you expect.
This was one of those moments.

A long time ago, I was in a depression.
It wasn’t just heartbreak. It was much more than that.

The father of my daughter had left us. My daughter was about two and a half. He had met someone else while on holiday, and from that moment on, he wanted nothing to do with us anymore.

I couldn’t understand it.
How could someone leave their own child like that?
And did he really feel such aversion towards me?

I would sit for hours, sometimes entire days, in the same spot by the heater. 
Thinking.

Did I do something wrong?
Did I fail at something I should have done?
Did I do something I shouldn’t have done?
Should I have done it differently?
Should I have been different?
Maybe I didn’t try hard enough?

I couldn’t figure it out.
I felt like a failure. 

My parents had divorced when I was eight, and I had always dreamed of having a complete family of my own one day. That made it even harder to process. Because it wasn’t just about the separation, the loss, the grief. It was also about rejection.

I was disposable.
I was such a piece of shit that someone would even be willing to throw away their own child, just to get rid of me.

That is what I came to believe.
And I couldn’t shake that belief. 

Sometimes I thought: if there had been another man in my life, someone I liked, and he had told me I was worth something — that I was maybe special, or kind, or beautiful, or intelligent, or maybe even all of that — then maybe I would have believed it.
Because I couldn’t think those things about myself.

But there was no such man. 

And then I found myself thinking about how much I would have wanted to hear my father say something like:

“Honey, don’t you worry about him. There are plenty of other men out there.
Most men would kiss the ground you walk on to have a woman like you.
He’s not worthy of you — not by a long shot.”

I thought: that would have helped me so much.
I thought: maybe I should call my father and tell him how difficult I’m finding this, and ask for his perspective — as a man, but also as a father.
It would probably comfort me. 

 I got his girlfriend on the phone.
“What do you want to talk to your father about?” she asked.

I explained how difficult I was finding the situation and that I would have liked to ask him for his perspective on it — as a man, but also as a father.

“Oof”, she said, “I’m not sure you and your father are in the right place for that kind of conversation.”

I didn’t really understand what she meant. And because I insisted, she eventually handed the phone to him. My voice was shaking when I told my father why I was calling.

“Well,” I heard him say, “I can kind of understand his decision”.

I don’t remember how the rest of that conversation went.
But I do remember very clearly how defeated I felt when I hung up. I stayed in contact with that man for another fourteen years after that.

From my current perspective, this would have been one of those moments where walking away might have been the healthier choice. 

A month ago, I watched part of Heartburn on Netflix — a film starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson. It’s about a married couple, where the husband starts an affair. They have a young child (about the same age my daughter was at the time), and another baby on the way. When she discovers the affair, the wife goes to stay with her father for a while.

And then her father says this:

“Men, I hate them. Always hated them. No wonder I hang around with women. Because it’s men who do things like this.
You are a wonderful person, he’s a shit. I love you and I’ll do anything I can for you. You know that, don’t you?”

That moment with my own father was 28 years ago.
And still, something like that hits me very hard.

I never finished the film. I stopped at that scene.

If any part of this resonates with you, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Feel free to share this with someone who might need it. 

Featured in SATURDAYS with Diana "Am I Worthy of Love—Even Without Him?" Read the issue → PS: You might also like the title song from Heartburn (video). I can’t get it out of my head.