intoxicating beauty tears everything down

Twelve in12

Reading: The Game of Kings ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Finished: Mirror, Mirror ~ Gregory Macguire

Witchling ~ Yasmine Galenorn

Changeling ~ Yasmine Galenorn

Something Wicked ~ Catherine Mulvany

Date:Thursday, November 29, 2007Time:1:52 amMood Level:DepressedSeverity:Moderate (significant impact, able to work)Anxiety:0=NoneIrritability:3=SevereHours Slept: 6 HoursMedication:150 mg Lamictal

I don’t believe in heroes anymore. At least not the way I once did. In therapy this week we were talking about why I don’t trust. I have daddy issues. This is nothing new to me. But its sorting out why I have daddy issues and how they affect me today.

When I was in seventh grade, I stopped trusting in my dad. He was my hero and he faltered, tumbling off his pedastal to pieces at my feet. My mother had gone to Florida for a week to see her sister and parents. She and her sister used to do this on a yearly basis. They would spend the time away from their respective families, to just be with their parents and each other. It was so good for them, all of them. My father and I are pretty self-sufficient and I had even started to cook real meals at this point. Both my father I were extremely busy, but I wanted to make dinner for him once that week. Just for the two of us to sit and have a little father/daughter bonding time. I asked him what night would work best and what time he wanted dinner.

A SLIGHT DIGRESSION: I’m not a fan of Donna Reed or anything. I don’t believe women should be forced into that role of having dinner on the table at the prescribed time, the children shined cleaned and her hair and clothes absolutly perfect. But I think there is nothing wrong with a woman who wants to make food for her family, who chooses to do those things for them. I enjoy cooking, especially for other people. I also enjoy being cooked for and taken care of. I think the important thing is that is a choice, not a requirement.

But I wanted to play that Donna Reed stereotype at least once for my dad. I wanted to make him dinner and have him feel proud of me. I made chicken, rolls, potatoes and corn. I set the table and had everything ready at the time we had agreed upon. My father never showed up. I called his office, but no one answered. I waited hours for him. When he finally showed up, he was in a bad mood and just snapped at me. He said he was working late and lost track of time. This was before he actually talked to me or my mother about work. So I didn’t know if I had done something wrong or why he was so mad. When he gets like that, there is nothing anyone can do to change it. But I was mad at him for standing me up like that. I had spent the evening crying on the couch watching every car come down our road, hoping it would be him. In that moment, my Hero-Father crashed to the floor.

I’ve always looked up to my parents. I grew up in the world of Mommy and Daddy are always right and I must obey them. They were the gods of my world. Somehow my mother made the smooth tranfser from untouchable marble to the real and amazing woman, who is not just my Mother, but my Friend and Companion. My father was never able to make that transition. He’s still in pieces in front of his pedastal. But there is a thick velvet rope that prevents me from trying to get close to him and turn him into a real person.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love my father dearly. And there are times when I need him. But instead of just depending on him to be there for me, expecting it, its a surprise everytime he’s actually there for me. When I had my car accident this past summer, I called him. He was wonderful and kind and protective. Instead of just thinking “My dad will help me get through all this” I had been thinking “Oh god, my dad’s gonna kill me!” I didn’t expect him to be as great about it as he was. When I fell in high school and landed on my neck, I had to go to the hospital. I expected him to tell me I was overreacting and to suck it up. Instead he sent an ambulance with EMTs that I knew to get me. He doesn’t always react that wonderfully, and I never expect him to. I expect that awful man who came home and yelled at me, when I had done nothing wrong.

He was the first Hero who was destroyed like that for me, but he was not the last. I’ve had other people, both men and women, in my life who I admired and adored, who fell from their pedastals. Who hurt me in the process. I know that no one is perfect. Everyone has skeletons in their closet. Usually, I can see the skeletons as I get to know someone. So they are never put up on that pedastal. But everyonce in a while, I’ll find someone who becomes a Hero for me. I might even see their skeletons or blemishes. I can see they are not perfect, but that’s part of being a Hero. They are smarter or more beautiful (the inner beauty) than I am. They push me to improve myself. I see them and strive to become a stronger, smarter, better person because of what I see in them. I don’t know how it happens, but somewhere in that process, I place them up on a pedastal. The last part of the cycle is always the Loss of the Hero. The total deconstruction of what I’ve believed them to be. They are revealed to me as weak of mind, will and spirit. They become the people I never want to be, instead of the people that I admire and strive towards.

This does not mean that everyone I admire and strive for are Heroes in that sense. They are not put up on the pedastal. They remain flesh and bone, real living beings to me. I don’t know how excatly the pedastal is built and erected in my mind. Sometimes I don’t even realize there is a pedastal until it falls. But once it falls, I see how I adored them. And how I was blinded by that adoration. I try not to let it happen. I try not to erect the pedastals. I try to remind myself that people all have faults and skeletons. Which somehow translates into a cynical and distrustful view of the world.

A Hero fell this fall. And I’m still dealing with the aftermath of the crash. It’s incredibly hard to rip away a facade and look at the real person underneath. Sometimes the Hero is such a distortion of reality, I begin to wonder if I even want that reality in my life. I want to put them back on the pedastal and remember them as a Hero. But you can’t undo something like that. Nothing will ever be the same.

Thanks, Dad.

The night will come
and rip away,
her wings of innocence through every word we say
maybe it’s time,
to spit out the core <BR

>
of our rotting union hopefully before it chokes
us to our senses.

Guess it’s too bad,
that everything we have
is taken away.

Swim in the smoke
the hero will drown
intoxicating beauty tears everything down
but still our hands
are bound at the wrist
this romantic tragedy is suffocating from your fist,
in a sea of fire.

Guess it’s too bad,
that everything we have
is taken away.

Guess it’s too bad,
that everything we have
is taken away. (taken away)

Hero, Hero, this word you’ll never know
Hero, Hero, this word you’ll never know
You’ll never know

Guess it’s too bad
that everything we have
is taken away. (taken away)

Guess it’s too bad
that everything we have
is taken away. (taken away)

Guess it’s too bad
that everything we have
is taken away.

Guess it’s too bad
that everything we have
is taken away. (taken away)

Away, away, away
They’re taking it away
Away, away,
They’re taking it away

And the Hero Will Drown ~ Story of the Year