My Fathers 4

One of my more recently acquired fathers.

Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, acted by Roger Allam.

I love the way this man cares for others. He singles out and mentors those who need him. I love the way he champions the career of Endeavor Morse, who is brilliant and intuitive, but still has so many problems dealing with others, quite an outcast character. It reminds me a lot of myself. He is a wonderful father, husband, police officer, mentor, and human being.

Because the photos of the character all seem pretty grim I am including a photo of the actor where he is looking happier.

My Fathers 1

Being sexually abused by my mother really shattered my ability to trust, but I found that despite that I was able to slowly piece together a system of connectedness that allowed me to find love, acceptance, bonding, and healing elsewhere. I read about the shattering of attachment for mother-daughter sexual abuse survivors each time that I read about the subject of MDSA. I think that it must be very similar for other survivors of child sexual abuse.

I know that I have written here on the blog about my issues with bonding and attachment and especially in the ways that I have tried to find connectedness in my life and in my life and to establish more; to the world, to others, and to symbols that I find a great deal of meaning and healing from.

Some of the symbols that I find a great deal of meaning and healing from are fictional  characters that I feel connected to.

I’ve been working in the last few years to try to identify past connections that bring me meaning and healing and establishing more connections. Some connections just seemed to pass beyond my conscious awareness, even though at one time they had a lot of meaning and brought a lot of connection and healing into my life at some time.

Trying to re-discover those past connections has helped me to see myself as someone who desperately wanted and needed  connection and as someone who was incredibly brave to do so, despite how horrific my childhood existence was and how difficult it was to trust my emotions, especially love, when I was hated, scapegoated, and abused by my family of origin, who I tried to love.

I re-discovered my father Herb Hubbard when I started to re-watch the show The Mothers-in-Law. I loved him when I was a child. Herb was a husband, a father of a college daughter, and a businessman. The thing that I liked the most about him and still do, is his ability to manage his emotions, which neither of my parents did. Since my father was an active alcoholic, there was never a strong man in my life, never a good man in my life, never a calm man in my life, never a loving and good and safe man in my life. But Herb was that man in my life.

Herb was a good role model and human being to me despite the drama going on in the household, with his wife, with his neighbors who lacked boundaries and common respect, and with his college age son who decides to marry the neighbor’s daughter, Herb manages his life and positively impacts his family with love, determination, resilience, and gentleness. I like that last one the best; gentleness.

Here he is, my dad:

Herb Hubbard from the show The Mothers-in-Law

I love my dad.

Man of Iron

We saw the movie IronMan 2 recently. Okay, so not as good as the first movie, which is disappointing. We really liked the first one. One memorable scene, for us in the second one, happened while the main character was watching an old tape of his father talking. There is a moment where he speaks to his son. You can probably guess, saying how much he believes in and cares about his son.

Too bad he couldn’t have left that with his son by the way that he treated his boy the whole time he knew him. Kind of how we feel about our male parent.

We always wanted him to care about us and for him to show it. No we can’t read our parent’s mind and know through osmosis or any other technique how much they love us and what they think of us. Even so, he is the only family member who used to tell me that he loved me.

If only he hadn’t treated others so much better and preferred them so much over me, if only he had been good and kind to me instead of taunting and teasing, bullying and verbally abusing me while getting so much enjoyment out of it, I might have good feelings when I recall it all. We all grew up with him as the man in our life, not so surprsing that I have so many complex feelings about males.

Father’s Day is a couple of weeks away and because of that I am usually feeling very odd and uncomfortable this time of year. I’m slipping towards denial and I’m really not sure if anything will help us feel better. Our dad could have done such small, little gestures of love and they would have meant so much. Instead I am left with regret and rage. Sounds about my normal for Father’s Day.