This Fog
Posted on | November 24, 2007
Lost.
The word denotes so many images that crop up in your mind.
Lost in a city, a place, a building, a time in your life or an object that can’t be found.
I feel lost right now.
Lost in the sense that I don’t know where I am in time or space and I’ve had something taken from me that meant a great deal.
People are going to ask me what it is I’ve lost but I’m not in a place right now to let the words form from my lips.
Let my tongue twist around the vowels or consonants, so please don’t ask.
I’m writing this not to provide information but to get out feelings.
It’s not easy for me to love.
Burned is a word that comes to mind when I think about it, to be honest.
You see, my father was a hard man to love or be loved by.
It’s easy for a child to blame his or her parents for the problems they face in their lives.
I remember two tender moments with my father in my whole life.
One was when I had to go to bed and I didn’t want to and he and I, on his bed, made shadow puppets on the wall from the light of his old black and white television.
The second was after he’d left and I went to see him on a weekend which was far and few between.
I’d broken a glass and I was terrified to tell him.
I thought for sure he was going to hit me.
He didn’t.
He told me accidents happen. But I was so convinced.
When you love someone and you let them be who they are, why do they then turn around and punish you for it?
I was told that it was not punishment but it doesn’t take away the feelings.
There were times when I’d see them dance about, act silly and rejoice in their freedom to do so; when they’d said time and time again that they’d not ever really been given that freedom.
And they let it go because they don’t want to think.
They feel too much pressure to be here, there and everywhere all at once.
The fact that I accepted it, over and over and even reassessed my needs and my goals because I saw the future.
The present can be blindingly confusing. In that here and now that stuns you because it’s right there in front of you.
But there it was.
The future; laid out in a clear and focused vision that was high definition.
I don’t know what else to do.
I didn’t know how else to give; to allow those freedoms that he was so desperate to explore and, like a kid learn to rapture in them.
We laughed, a lot.
We cried but not as much.
It was balanced, I thought.
Discussions of depth flowed back and forth across the counter.
He had his spot, I had mine. Smoking, drinking, we’d even developed our own language.
When you know someone so well that they don’t even have to use language to convey what was going to be said.
Maybe that scared him.
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