Tag: Dad

One of the 12 names of Odin

Dear Internet,
Today, everyone is posting about their grand adventures with their fathers, or reminiscing of the ones they had long past. For  me, it’s a day of deep sorrow.

Dad, circa 1952
My pops, Edison (1927 – 2001), circa 1952.

For reasons only my mother knows, she scythed a field of young potential connections between my father and I beginning with my birth, and then salted the earth that owned those stalks so that by the time my father passed away in 2001, he and I were barely on speaking terms and I knew nothing about him.  It would not be until later, oh so much later, to find out much of what my mother told me was not actual truths but a series of lies she built around her own notion of truth to protect something she has yet to reveal.
When I was very young, my mother started laying down the path of the potentially of my father having molested me. The actual conversation of what trying to figure out what my mother ment, that stemmed from her lines, began in my teenager years which consisted of me asking and confronting her.  These conversations, at least, are still pretty clear in my head even if the outcome at the time, from her lips, was muddled.
There are two things you, dear reader, must know. The first is my parents separated when I was five months old, so the total amount of time, as a child, I lived with my father was less than a year.  Due to the custodial agreements, with me now living in the US and him in Canada, I rarely saw him for visits. The second thing you must know is my father is neither an angel nor is he the devil. He could read at an eighth grade level and was working on his high school diploma when he died. He was a recovering alcoholic. He had a very generous and had a big heart. He wanted me to have the world.
According to my mother, during the many trips I took with my father as a child when I would go to visit during vacations, there was whispers being made because of his age in relation to mine – 45 years – and what he could possibly be doing with such a young child? The whispers apparently came from hotel clerks when we would go traveling to amusement parks and such all over southern Ontario and from his landladies from where he was renting his apartments, and other places. Apparently, at one point, police were called numerous times on suspicion of kidnapping and abuse.
When I prod my mother now about these things to clarify and to know, she says she cannot remember. It was a long time ago. Why does it matter? Why can’t I let it go? (Because I cannot remember these instances you speak of mother!)
Then one day I came to the realization that:

  • If my father had molested me, my mother continually sent me back to him time and time again; she didn’t protect me
  • If my father had not molested me, she continued to pour the gasoline on this line of thinking for years and she literally destroyed any chance of me having a relationship with him, even after I had become an adult and had begun my own life

It was upon this day of realization, I stopped having any and all contact with my mother for I could not conceiving of a world where a person would willingly send their child off to be hurt OR would lie about unspeakable horrors to appease their own agenda. (We’re not the Lannisters!)
In my heart, I feel like if something did happen, but it was not with my father, but with someone else close to the family.  Who? I don’t know. Infamously, I have no memory of my life before the age of 12, sometimes it feels like I sprung up fully formed like Athena.
From what I know now, and from what he was like during my teenage and later years, I never  or ever felt like he was a threat to me sexually or otherwise. I never felt like something was “wrong,” only that my mother kept insisting something was wrong.
And I’m still coming to grips that I’ll never know the truth of the whys and hows of my mother’s reasoning to lie. I  also am still working on accepting I will never have a relationship with my father and no matter how much I yell I AM SO FUCKING SORRY! to the void of the world, or cuddle his urn while murmuring like an insane person, this will never feel right. It will never be right. No matter how many tears of that are stripped from me, I will never ever have that chance to make it up to him.
This would be the point where I tell those of you with living fathers of all kinds, to love, cherish, and respect them. But I’m too sad and too angry to be graceful. This is not a day of celebration, this is my day of mourning. I cannot be gracious when my heart feels so utterly broken.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

i.am.canadian

realised that many of you had not known I am canadian, by birth. i was born in Toronto and have lived and gone to school there. So my comment about whether or not canadia is a country (credit to panicsyndrome) country was me being facetious. But if you are like darthmoo, you’d want to build a bridge and give Connitcut back to it’s motherland.
ahem.
We did not go to Canadia.
My brother, mother and one of my aunts and myself were eating at a chinese buffet (in which said aunt called us at 9:30am that morning and told me that a: that was where we were going and b: i was driving and to pick her up promptly at 6 and c: having a discussion about my predicament.
As stated, I was born in Canadia, to an American and Canadian parents. By my mother, I am a naturalized American citizen. By my birth and by my father, I am Canadian. Both countries see me as being a citizen. I cannot, however, cross the border or the leave North America due to:

  • I lost my naturalization papers
  • I do not have a passport for either country.

When I went to my fathers funeral in May 2000, getting into the country was no problem, leaving (and this is prior to 9/11 btw) was a bitch. I was detained by INS/Customs at Toronto Pearson’s airport for nearly 3 hours because I claimed American citizenship and handed them a Canadian birth certificate.
Apparently, crossing the Blue Water Bridge these days requires much thought (even to just go to the Casino – hah) and when I simply stated that by having my own mother with me would help me and my OWN MOTHER said “Sorry, I can’t do that. Like they would believe me?”
Wtf.
So both INS and Province of Ontario have cashed their respective checks and I should be getting paperwork to get my passports together. yay.

1927 – 2000

Edison Keith Rabey
Born May 22, 1927 – Passed Away on April 25, 2000.
I had a long list of things I wanted to say today about my father, how this last year has changed me, how things have been going and how my anxiety had been forced out into the open, but, I would rather think in silence about the last year and what my father means to me then discuss it right now. I just am not ready.
I love you Dad.
x0x0x0x
Lisa

a new psychosis

riddle me this.
What is worse: being sick or THINKING you are sick?
Anyone who has been a long time reader of the chronicle knows about the anxiety attacks I had before I left California, on my way to Atlanta and now the current batch.
Let me start with the latest batch:
My dad died on april 25, 2000. I was a wreck. An emotional and physical wreck. I took two weeks off from work to deal with myself and with the funeral and everything else combined. I laid, literally, on the couch watching the golden girls and crying. After the funeral, we came back to VA where the very next day we left to go to Virginia Beach for my court case against shelly. After coming back from that trip on a Friday (May 5th), I started feeling congested in my chest. I went to the doctor who said i was had a tad bronchitis and gave me drugs for it. Within a few days i felt better. Then starting in late june, i started feeling “weird” again (my only word to describe it). I went to see three separate doctors who said it was stress (and while you are at it, drop a few pounds quit smoking — you’ll feel better). And while that is all well and good — when i’m laid up all weekend due to such a severe anxiety attack I NEED RELIEF NOW!
so we tried Paxil. didn’t work.
and now i’m on klonopin (for schizos actually -teehee) which, after the first dose i slept for 14 hours and felt WONDERFUL when i woke up. But then the paranoia kicks in:
each ache and pain in my body is instant “i’m having a heart attack, i’m feeling sick, i’ve got cancer, i’ve got —-” and so goes in my head EVERY FUCKING DAY!
And going to bed was worse — because i started obsessing with death. oh, this isn’t the old morbid gawf crap — this was the “if i fall asleep, i’m dying. i’m not waking up.” and each fucking nuance of my body made me feel WORSE. and then i couldn’t sleep. and my heart would pick up pace and that freaked me out even more and on and on it would go. and it has been going on for a good month now.
so the other day i wrote about taking charge of my life. and i want to say a BIG THANK you to everyone that wrote me and said that they have gone through similar things because it’s so fucking lonely feeling like i’m the only one whose life is falling apart.
when I first started working at UUNet, a person i shall say became a very good friend said he thought it was remarkable that i was handling a new job, new move new everything with such aplomb. my job is fucking stressful. (sidebar: some nitwit started emailing me a few weeks ago accusing me of being someone else. and claimed something along the lines that we were lovers 17 years ago. 17 years ago i was 11. I kept telling him it wasn’t who he thought it was — i mean any idiot could find out anything about me if they tried hard enough. i’ve never been ashamed in giving out information. then he counters back “i have a few friends at uunet. you don’t work there. my bosses thought that was funny.) my life with paul is stressful. my life in GENERAL is stressful. and my body was saying LISA! WOOHOO time to wake up. And i started and am still taking babysteps in making those changes. i’ve tried giving up smoking (again, tonight, i’m smoking my last cigarette. the coughing and nasty taste in my mouth is making me sick). but what sucks is the day to day crap. because i freak out if my heartbeat accelerates and THEN i start panicking more so.
My doctor told me that when you have social anxiety disorder (or you are just darn anxious about something) every nuance of your body is explamified. Every pull, strain, bruise, tingle suddenly causes me to worry. so i sit there with my stupid “instant stress relief” music cds doing deep breathing for 10 minutes to calm down. and when i don’t? I freak again!
My heartbeat at rest is between 70-80. American Heart Association says normal is between 50-100 (thought chances are more so if you have a heartbeat over 70 of having a heart attack). Sometimes I hit 100 and other times 120. When I hit 120 — i keep thinking like fred sanford “I’M COMING ESTER! THIS IS THE BIG ONE!” and then i sit and have to do the stupid stress relief music and deep breathing exercises to bring it back down. My cholesterol, blood pressure and everything else is PERFECT. (however i am a woman who smokes/smoked and takes birth control pills). i’m overweight. but i’m healthy. i’m too young to be freaking out.
As you can see, my life is full of stressful events. But i started noticing things. When i started writing (shock) even just bullshit in my paper journal — i felt better. when i work out, i feel better. when i stretch my body out just after sitting in a cramped movie theater i feel better. i have to keep telling myself it’s anxiety and stress and that taking care of the issue NOW without living in isolation for three years (which happened to another co-worker of mine at UU. she had anxiety/stress so bad, she didn’t drive for three years and barely left her house — now she’s so easy going it’s depressing). Me. Myself. And I.
I’d like to think there is a reason for all of this. Why me? Why at such a young age? Why am i popping drugs and not looking for healthy alternatives. which prompts the paranoia that i’m gonna STOP shaving my legs, drink herbal tea and chant about my ying and yang. I’m so afraid of becoming a freaking hippie to be well. It’s like the holistic path works — but i don’t want to get caught up in those stereotypes, yo.
i don’t have a reason or a point to this. it’s mindless ramblings. but there is something i wanted to point out — when I used to discuss my past with my friend Michael, i used to get anxious and headachy stressing “i don’t want to deal with this now” because I didn’t. but i never did deal with it. I just went on my normal little way. but see the headaches have grown worse until i write about it (even if it is stupid — which i think sometimes i am — because i can be much more wittier) — and it’s like a fight against me and the world. i know i’m a strong person (nurse at the help line: you don’t sound sick. you sound actually very strong. me: look lady, if a doctor doesn’t see me today, i’m gonna kill some muther fucking someone) and I CAN DEAL with this. but it’s hard.
no one ever told me how hard it was to be normal.
my shrink apt is on tuesday. that should be interesting.
x0x0x0x
lisa

birthday countdown

my birthday is in 8 days.
buy me something! .
oops! i did it again!
i’m obsessed with britney spears.
get over it.
the art of death
today i had to run to cvs to grab some stuff for a gift i bought for a friend of mine whose birthday is coming up. while i was perusing the aisles, i noticed the fathers days cards that were displayed so prominently.
——
the other night, derrick, paul and i had gone to barnes and noble (as we tend to do about 2x a week) and both derrick and i laughed at the fact that we no longer have to celebrate fathers day any longer. while it was morbid in thought, it was, in a way, a welcome relief to the realization that we can celebrate our fathers life instead of mourning their death.
——
in the weeks following my fathers death, i’m still shaken by the aspect of the fact that death is all around me. i see it in the animals we eat, the flowers i pick and the obituaries i can’t tear myself from reading in the sunday paper. i’m working (trying/fighting/hoping) on moving off of this depressing kick – but i can’t shake myself from feeling that one day i too will die and what is going to happen next is the big unknown.
i try to keep comforted by the words my mother and paul both tell me: he’s in a better place now. he’s happy now. he’s not in pain anymore. but on the flipside, i still can’t work over the reality of his death: i haven’t seen him in some time, i didn’t call him enough, i wasn’t made aware of his illness. he won’t be around when i get married, have kids or celebrate other fortunes in my life.
i’m beginning to feel that i too will die. not in the way off future that is the reality of it, but in the oh so close future. tomorrow. next week. next month. this is what immobilizes me and this is what eating at my heart. i lash out to paul only to realised this is getting me no where and that everything feels stale and fake.
——
the only solace i’m finding is the beauty in the green of the trees, the look in pauls eye when he says he loves me and the feel of his hugs when we sleep at night.
x0x0x0x

death becomes her

on april 25th 2000, my father passed away.
for nearly two weeks, i’ve been struggling with his death. first with my own feelings of guilt (i should have been a better daughter, i wish i would have seen him sooner, i wish i wish i wish), my own feelings of death (i don’t want to live yet i don’t want to die. growing old sucks. i’ll never be young and beautiful again) and my own feelings of death and what not going on.
here i am, nearly 28 years old, nearly wanting to die but yet live. living in these parallel state of continuing life with paul, planning for the future and wanting to just shrivel up and die.

non sequitur

this has been one hell of a weekend. well, it’s been one hell of a week. so much has happened within the space of a few days, plus my own thoughts and feelings, i have a feeling I’m going to be all over the place — more so than usual.
from the what’s new front:
12.12.99
87 people on the mailing list (geez, can’t i eve break a 100?). Did some more comestic work on the website. Added filez, pictures, pr0n and really put up the obligatory webrings, awards and links page.
family fun
yanno, another reason i don’t get the holidays is mainly because my own family is fsck’d in a definite loony way. for instance, now that I’m all settled in Fairfax and basically living with paul (meaning he doesn’t show up until the 30th perm), i decided to start calling my aunts and stuff to let them know i was alive and living. and basically i got to hear for an hour about how horrible of a daughter i am (because i haven’t spoken to my mother in about 6 months), about how everyone is a son of a bitch and Canadian currency is basically crap and how one aunt married her drug and alcoholic bf and moved to Kentucky and that my other aunt and her husband moved to Florida.
you know, its the Christmas season. and I’m trying to make the best of it. i thought by calling my Aunt Jackie and letting her know I was okay and that I was sending them a Xmas card with my and Pauls address that it would be okay. But it wasn’t. My Aunt Roberta (her younger sister and sidekick) basically grilled me about paul. When she asked me if paul had a big family and I said “yah, he’s half Spaniard and Irish and catholic”, she drops her voice and whispers “is he dark?” Like jesus christ people. This is 1999. His coloring shouldn’t matter to anyone. (But the boy is pretty goddamn pale.) And when I told her that we were getting married she said “Well, I won’t tell anyone that you aren’t married now (due to the fact that paul and I are living together)”.
They always make me feel so goddamn rotten when I speak to them. I don’t know why I do it. Maybe it was because of seeing how Paul interacts with his family and this was something he and I had discussed that I could shed some light into my own family problems.
Turned out I was wrong.
My father had a stroke two weeks ago, and I got the phone call from my cousin James in Toronto. I’m a okay.
this is the part when i start deconstructing myself and feeling like shit. bah.
how i spent my saturday (December 11, 1999)
Editors Note: as we all know, when people start talking about a ‘friend’ and not naming names, it is generally presumed that it is really about the person who is telling the story. fortunately in this case, it really is not about me. it’s about a long time friend of mine who choose to get an abortion. since she has been mentioned in TLC in the past, she was afraid she would start getting hate mail because of her choice. so we decided that it was okay for me to talk about it, just not to mention her name. I’ve never been pregnant and paul and i are not expecting devils spawn. really.
when i found out that one of my oldest friends was pregnant, i wasn’t happy. i knew that she hadn’t been practicing birth control and knowing that she had been pregnant in the past due to ‘carelessness’ really irritated me. you see, out of the group of close friends i grew up with (high school/college), I’m the only one in the bunch who has never been pregnant and thusly was lucky enough never to have to make a decision on whether or not i was going to keep a child.
I’ve had my shares of scares, true, but I’ve always been ultra paranoid about my sexual health. when Alan and i were dating in the early 90s, we had went and gotten checked together so that we could practice monogamous safe sex without using condoms (i was on the pill at the time and told that i was possibly not going to be able to have kids as it was). so, like any other young couple in love, we got checked and tossed away the condoms. then i found out that he had been cheating on me. and then i found out that he had NOT been practicing safe sex with this other girl. my own paranoia (aids had just started to ravage the country and people were on the war path about safe sex) plus common sense prompted me to to get checked and make sure that i was okay. i was. but that set in motion a passion about sexual awareness and practicing safe sex that is almost cult like.
I’ve had many discussions with lots of people about practicing safe sex. I cannot believe that in this day and age people are so fucking stupid about not using protection. the most common excuses I’ve heard are “i don’t like condoms” and “i can’t remember to take the pill” — okay fine, but there are other options for you to use. not all of the guaranteed (nothing in life is) and not all of them protect you from disease but something is better than nothing. sex to me is a very adult thing — meaning you have to take the responsibly along with your actions. i cannot tolerate excuses about why people are not practicing safe sex. and yesh, i practice what i preach. I’m on the pill and paul and i use condoms.
so when my friend told me she was pregnant, i felt sad for her. she was taking it all in stride though — I’ll grant you that. but when she went to get checked and was scheduling a time to have the procedure, they refused to do it telling her that she was much farther along than she thought she was. which was wrong. her boyfriend didn’t move in till late august and she got pregnant early September. they told her the time of the conception was middle of august — which is fricken impossible since she was only sleeping with him — and he wasn’t event here yet. and she was also pregnant with twins. and since the clinic claimed she was above the date for an abortion (she found out that babies were just bigger than normal) — state of Virginia will not do anything past the first trimester (up to 12 weeks). she could go to Philly, DC or North Carolina to have the procedure done.
She choose DC.
I didn’t find out until nearly her appointment that she was coming up. i rescheduled work and plans to help her out. it was a two day procedure. on the first day (Friday) she was going in for what she calls the ‘seaweed stick’ procedure. what this is, is that they stick sticks up your vagina wrapped in iodine to dilate the cervix. this is (according to the paperwork she was given) the beginning of the abortion. the second day (saturday) visit is when the actual abortion would take place, which would last about 1/2 hour with an additional 2-3 hours for resting. she was then free to leave as long as someone was driving her home. — and that person would have been me.
she arrived late Friday night in some discomfort. the babies had been kicking and she was also having mild cramping. she was having a hard time even going to the bathroom because she was afraid the sticks might fall out. after taking a nap that evening, she and i stayed up and talked until 2 am — when we had to be up at 6 am to get up for the appointment.
and as we talked, she kept telling me how she was feeling the babies kick — and she said it such a non-chalant way that it was almost scary.
we woke up early saturday morning and both forwent showers to get to the appointment on time. we arrived a few minutes past 7:30 to see that there were protesters already out front. well duh. planned parenthood. Washington DC. hello here. we walked quickly by them, went through the security guards and were let into the clinic. other girls soon followed in and at 8am, the nurse started calling peoples names to go back for the procedure.
she gave me the option of going back to the apartment and getting rest and then coming to pick her up. i decided to hang out for awhile and just kill time. i read magazines, i watched the waiting room swell up with people. all types of girls came in — i couldn’t tell who was there for what. but there were all races and social classes. some came in alone, others came in with bf’s/spouses/partners. finally around 9:30am, i went outside and chain smoked for awhile.
i met up with two volunteers for the clinic and talked with for awhile. the protesters had grown in numbers but it was still a small motley group of people. one man had a huge (about 3’x2′) sign that showed a dead fetus with “32 million babies killed since Roe vs Wade”. there were young and old people, chanting Holy Marys and giving away rosaries. The volunteers were friendly and a bit passionate about their work. we talked about the protesters and i asked them what it was like doing this. i was truly curious. i mean, I’ve heard and read all the stories about what was going down at these clinics. when i went to PP in Oakland for my own checkup, we were forced to check in with a security guard and go through auto-locked doors. this place in DC was more secure — and the protesters, man, it was like something out of CNN. they approached everyone walking near the clinic and gave them roasiers and told them they would pray for their sins. one young Hispanic girl came in with her bf. i watched her staring up at the sign above the entrance and watched her eyes water as she tightly clutched her bf’s hand. i felt so sorry for her, i wanted to do something but i didn’t know what to do. hell, for all i know she could be there for a pap smear.
the volunteers job was to make sure the protesters didn’t harass the patients as they walked into the clinic. they spoke softly to the women walking up and comforted them if they didn’t look so hot. i stood outside for nearly an hour watching this take place in 35 degree weather. i had my scarf wrapped around my neck and my gloves on as i chain smoked just watching the scene. i chatted some more with the volunteers and walked back in. by this time, it was going on 10am and the waiting room was packed. i settled down in a very uncomfortable chair and read newsweek waiting for my friend to leave.
she walked out at 12:15pm and just seemed as snappy as she ever was. she wasn’t feeling sick or upset. she just wanted a cigarette and food. we went to safeway to grab some maxi-pads for her and some advil and drove to TGI Fridays for lunch. Both of us acted like nothing had happened. sure we spoke about her abortion but i was as if nothing had happened. she felt well enough a few hours later and drove back home.
——
Pauls been on this kick lately about not letting me have a dog that he PROMISED i would get for Christmas. you see, his aunt raises pure breed pugs and we were going to get one out of the next litter. but some moron told him that if i asked for a dog now, within 6 months i would be asking for a kid. a: paul wanted the dog first and b: I’m not planning on getting pregnant for quite some time.
——
Abortion is a touchy subject. There is, I believe no right way or wrong way to go about it. Me personally? I’m pro-choice. I like having the option that if an unwanted pregnancy came up that there was an option for me to terminate it. but it’s the people who ABUSE it that irritate me. It’s the constant stupidity people use towards sex and their own health that drives me insane. I don’t begrudge my friend for having the abortion — i begrudge her for not taking care of herself first in the first place. This is why, in so many ways, volunteering for a PP or for a rape crisis center is something that really speaks to me. I’ve seen too many women waste their lives by having kids they did not love because they were pregnant or abuse the system that was given to them. There are WAY too many people running around in this world who think AIDS/HIV/STDs and pregnancy won’t happen to them because they don’t fall into the criteria for the demographics.
If you are in a relationship with someone or are sleeping with someone, do yourself a favor. respect yourself and use protection. i don’t want another person going through what my friend did.
x0x0x0x

nothing

I am not sure how to begin this, but I guess anything goes.
Yesterday was Michael’s birthday, and he turned the ripe old age of 22. He’s still on my mind quite a bit, considering that we have been broken up for over 2 weeks.
My dad is on the phone with me now, discussing his will with me. He is 69 years old, and is in ill health. He is telling me that no one can know who the executor of his will is because its locked up safe and sound. I am not even going to go there.
I am talking to one of my oldest friends on the net, nobody-. He and I used to write this really lengthy letters to each other, and then it stopped.
I miss Michael. The name “Michael” itself seems to be a recurring name in my life. nobody- s name is Michael and so is mierlyn’s. My publisher’s name is Michael, and so is my long lost cousin from Australia. Plus there is the handful of Michaels that i have dated in rl, and so on and so on.
So I think I am going to stay away from Michael’s for a while. Well, actually, stay away from men in general.
It’s pretty hard. My roommate and I have been messing around, but after throwing up on him the other day, that was pretty much over with. It’s funny though how i can take myself away from that so easily, just detach myself, and think of nothing while I am going through the motions of “making love.
I care not who I am with, I care not whose body I am stroking, I care not who I am being intimate with. It does not matter to me.