introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K

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i learned it from you

having thought it out - eighth of july, 2002

"when we were kids, we hated things our parents did...have you forgotten?"~red house painters

i don't know what went wrong, exactly. or when this all started, this game of cat and mouse, of sorts, that we play. its been going on for years between you and i.

i guess things have been better these last few months. better enough that i feel like i could come to you when my head won't stop spinning and i just can't seem to straighten out what's goin' down. because i trust you not to let me fall. i trust you because you're my dad and you're supposed to be that guy that listens and tells me what to do when i don't know. and maybe, because i need that still, i'm just as much a kid as i was twenty three years ago...nearly twenty four. you're supposed to be that wise guy that lets me go and do what i need to do and lets me make my own mistakes but also the guy who is there, in the end, to offer advice and tell me where i went wrong. you're supposed to just be...my dad. and thats all.

so i don't know where we're going wrong here, but it felt like it felt three years ago and all those summer's before it, when you didn't know how to just be dad. when you didn't know how to laugh at us when we joked with you. when you yelled and had your tantrums. and, after last wednesday, when i had a tantrum of my own, i got a little frustrated with myself because, try as i have to be otherwise, i am no better than you were all of those years....i'm more like you than i ever hoped or wanted to be.

but its like i said...things have been better with us. better enough that i felt like i could sit on the concrete block and talk with you about everything in my head while you layed brick in the summer sun.

(have i ever told you how proud i am to tell my friends that you did all of that?)

so i don't know where we went wrong again on saturday evening. maybe my sister's guest has something to do with it. and i know you didn't have enough...any?...sleep. and i know that you were a little testy. i just don't understand where it came from or how it got to that.

and i've had a few days to think about it and this is what i've come to.

i love you, dad. but some things are gonna have to change if we're ever gonna just be a kid and her dad.

because i'm an adult. and not only am i an adult, but i've been one for nearly six years now. and i guess i'd like it if you could just relax a little on the parenting stuff and just be a dad who can sit back and watch his kid be everything he taught her to be: independant, able, and willing to make and learn from her mistakes.

i can't keep living like this...hiding parts of me that are inconvenient for you to see. tearing out a stud in my nose for your peace of mind. it might not seem like too much to ask...but in a sense, you ask me to compromise a little bit of my dignity, whether you realize it or not. its just a piece of metal, but its my piece of metal. i hardly even remember its there except for when you mention it.

so i guess what i'm getting at here, dad, is that, until you can respect me for the adult that you've raised me to be...as a person with her own opinions about right and wrong...a person with her own set of morals, however unlike yours they may be....and simply as another person, then i don't know how ready i can be to sit down with you and enjoy that sort of relationship with you that i thought we were slipping into sharing.

i've forgiven you for so many things in our years, but disrespecting me simply can't be another one of them.

some things just have to change, dad.

and i can be stubborn and wait. and you, by now, should know i will, too. i get it from you.

i'm here. waiting....waiting for you to just let me be myself. and love me for who i am and who i will become, rather than begrudge me the days we could be enjoying talking and laughing and...just being a kid and her dad.

because i like to laugh. i learned how to from you.