I was fresh out of the package,
and you burned me with your influence.
Fed me your lines and your rhymes,
All in perfect time and cadence.
You marked me with your ways,
and your faults,
so that whenever I do anything,
I am reminded of you.
Your rhymes and your cadences,
all getting stuck in my head as they are tattooed on my skin.
Sometimes,
the only way to heal is to break,
shatter until I can’t hear your melody anymore.
Break and twist until I can no longer fit in your machine.
I’m sure my dad’s life would have been a lot easier if I had been born a boy. Now don’t go mistaking this for pity or low self worth, it really would have been easier. Instead of artsy hobbies like writing and knitting, I could have been a boy and been into football and wrestling. I could have gone to a big universiry on a scholarship instead of waiting and spending so much time waiting for nursing school. Instead of chasing the boys and causing my dad more headaches than he can count, I could have been the boy all the girls chased, a boy that my dad could be proud of.
But I am not a boy, nor do I want to be. This is not a pity post.
Why am I telling you about how easy my dad’s life would have been if I were a boy? Because even though I’m sure he wanted a boy to pass on the family name, and to talk sports and girls with, he got my sister and then me. He may have wanted boys instead, but he raised my siser and me the best he could.
Looking back now, I wish I could change a lot of things. I wish I could change how well I did in high school and my priorities the first few semesters of college. I wish I could have done at least a few sports just to give him accomplishments he could boast about to his friends. I wish I could have gotten a better scholarship so he didn’t have to work so hard to make ends meet month after month during nursing school. I wish he and I could have been closer, like we used to be before hormones and boys got in the way.
But wishing won’t change anything now. What’s done is done, and I can’t change any of that. Even though, looking back, I want different things for myself, I wish things had been easier on him. He has always been right behind me, whatever my choices, even if he didn’t always agree with me. He would make suggestions, give me better options and sometimes put down options I was dead set on, but it was only because he cared. I used to think his actions and his tactics were controlling and manipulative, and maybe in some ways they are, but that was because some decisions I was not yet strong enough to make for myself.
I always used to think my writing was a point of shame, something that was embarassing for him, and something to be ashamed of. Instead of going out and living adventures, I was sitting at home writing them, and not even very good ones at the beginning. I felt like writing was something to do in secret and no one should see the process, only the finished product. I used to only write right before bed, by the light of a night light, because I knew I couldn’t be bothered or feel ashamed.
And then 2011 came along and I wrote my first ever “serious” novel. It was the start of a series and the first novel I actually continued and finished even though I didn’t technically win NaNoWriMo that year. Even better, I went on to type it, and then it was printed, and writing no longer became a secret hobby that I only partook in the dark. Spark:The Girl aptly lived up to its name. It was indeed the spark that lit the flame of my passion.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that my Dad found out about NaNoWriMo and all of my accomplishments. I hadn’t told him because November was always a stressful time with the semesters coming to a close, final projects and finals, and some semesters he would stress more than I did. A few weeks ago we were talking about what I was going to do with all my new free time and he said “I know about your writing, and I’m proud of all the progress you’ve made.”
That meant the world to me. It means that he continues to only want the best for me, and that he truly cares about my happiness. It’s time to show him that I am capable, that I can do something with my writing and make him more proud, even though I barely follow football and am not very athletic at all.
Even through all the struggles, my dad is one of my biggest supporters and I wouldn’t change that for anything.
Who are some of your biggest supporters? Have you hugged them today?
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if my parents had stayed together, or if I had lived with my mom instead of my dad. I’m not sure either would have been better than the life I have right now, but it’s still interesting to think about at times.
My mom and I haven’t always had the best relationship. When I was a toddler, my dad got custody and my mom spent years in and out of jail. She didn’t always make the best choices, but everyone makes mistakes. She and I didn’t see each other a lot during my teen years, and that was hard growing up, but it might have been for the best. For years, we were not in contact, but that changed in 2010.
In June of 2010, I reached out to my mom and we began emailing back and forth. It was lucky that we did because a few months later she was diagnosed with colon cancer. We were still just emailing at that time, she kept me updated on her treatments and I kept her updated on my writing projects and school. For a long time, her diagnosis didn’t seem real, so I avoided it. I stupidly thought “she’s getting treated, so she’s not as sick as it sounds”. Part of that too was that she kept a lot of it secret, how severe it really was. She focused more on my writing skills and encouraging me to continue my writing, and I am grateful for that, but at the same time, I wish I had known how serious it really was.
Two years later, around September of 2012, she printed my first completed story. She was not a tech expert by any means, but she took it down to the local Office Max and printed two copies. One for me to edit and read through, and one for her and her side of the family to read. That was the first time I realized my writing was ever really worth something. That was the first time I felt proud of my writing, and the first time I even considered going further than just writing it and leaving it in the “to be typed” tote in my closet. I can never thank her enough for that.
Not too long after that, in December of 2012, she was put on hospice. Hospice means that the medical professionals believe that the patient has less than six months to live. I started to see her behind my dad’s back, even though I was an adult, and she taught me a lot about her cancer, her treatments, and some of the things I had missed when we were apart. It wasn’t until February, and full swing in the first nursing program, that my dad finally found out about how serious her condition was and allowed me to see her on the weekends.
We talked about a lot on those weekends, and I am so glad we did, because I didn’t realize how short our time really was. It was around finals for the first semester in nursing school and I was convinced that I had failed one of my finals. I emailed her, telling her that I was convinced I would drop out of nursing school. She called me the next day, while I was in class, and she told me some of the greatest words that I needed at that moment. “You passed, I’m sure of it, and if you didn’t, then it wasn’t meant to be”.
Those words may seem harsh, but they were what I needed to hear. After, she asked me to call her back when I could, and I promised I would. I never did, and I wish I had. We had so much more to talk about, I had so much more to say, but we never got that chance.
It worked out that I actually got to be there when she passed a few days later. I had gone over for her birthday, as I had planned to, only it wasn’t the day I had planned. Her hospice nurse had increased her dose of dilaudid and she was basically knocked out. She died the next morning, but I stayed up most of the night with her, spending time with her. It wasn’t the easiest of nights, and we didn’t communicate with words, but that didn’t mean we weren’t communicating.
I’m dedicating my books to her, because she inspired me, she pushed me, and most of all she loved me, whether I was a writer or not, a nurse or not. She loved me for me, and I only wish she could be alive to see the book she helped to inspire published.
To whom would you dedicate your work?
