"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails...explore...dream...discover.
- Mark Twain
I’ve done plenty of learning about myself over the years. Some things I like while others I despise. I’ve learned I don’t do well with new endeavors without a proper amount of encouragement from those I care about. I’ve learned I’m more of a follower than a leader. I cower when left in a leader’s position at times. I’ve learned I don’t do well in confrontations—I make every attempt possible at avoiding them altogether. I’ve learned how to smile and laugh in the face of adversity and cry in private later. I’ve learned I don’t do well with spoiling friendships even when they weren’t true friends to begin with. I’ve learned that I still haven’t overcome my naivety when confronted with the opposite sex, yet I haven’t learned how to let go of the bitterness that soon follows. I’ve learned to put on my happy face in the presence of others even if it’s fake.
I’ve also learned I’m a dreamer to the fullest. Much of what I dream of doing in my life seems nothing more than simple pipe dreams that could never actually happen. I dream of prince charming whisking me away to some magical land of complete happiness. I dream of starting my own non-profit organization where single parents band together to help out one another. I thank much of my bitterness for that dream. I dream of being a bestselling author—a dream that will only come true if I put forth the effort and creativity that I feel I don’t have much of the time. I dream of a world where children don’t die of hunger, abuse, or criminal activity on their own part or by another’s hands.
Specifically, for the year of 2010, I dream mostly of finishing one of the two “books” I’m currently working on and finding a new dream to add to my long list of things I want to accomplish in life.
Mostly, I dream of allowing myself to continue dreaming even if none of them ever comes true.
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins
Part of Chapter 2 of the first book I started in November.
About halfway through the invitations and our nonsense conversation about how I should try harder to make friends, the phone rang. Now, why would I let my mom jump to answer it when she was the one having such a blast trying to transform my birthday into a living nightmare? So, before she could budge, I raced to the living room to grab it. I don’t even think it made it through the first ring when I answered with an enthusiastic, “hello?”
“Um… hi,” replied the confused voice on the other end.
The deep voice sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t match the voice with a face. My first assumption was that it was someone mom worked with at the locally-owned and operated bank she began working for the year before; so naturally, I turned to mom and asked the voice if he was calling for Theresa.
“Actually, son, I was hoping I could talk to you for a minute,” he replied.
Still unsure as to whom this man was, I decided I’d play along until I found out. “Okay. Who is this?” Forget the games, I wanted to know who it was that wanted to talk to me. It’s a rare thing for the phone to ring in this house and it be for me. This would’ve been an excellent time for mom to throw that whole “curiosity killed the cat” thing in my face again. I swear, out of all the parental sayings that woman had, that was one of her favorites.
“It’s your daddy, son. I’ve missed you.”
And silence. I wonder what silence killed. Daddy? Was he serious? “Oh. Hi,” I replied back with an obvious sound of disgust in my voice. What was this man thinking? I was absolutely positive that my father, or sperm donor as my mother sometimes referred to him as, had fallen off the face of the earth, and good riddance. The bitterness had been gone for so long, or if it wasn’t, at least I was no longer aware that it was there. I was apparently kidding myself, because it washed right back over me bringing with it a wave of hatred and anger within a matter of seconds. Not my daddy, Tony was on the phone. My daddy made a mistake. My daddy didn’t think I was worth it. This wasn’t my daddy. This was Tony.
“How have you been?” he casually asked as if I was his long lost buddy who just got back from an extended vacation in a place where phones were nonexistent.
Suddenly, without warning, fire shot through me. It torched every inch of my being, flowed from my heart down into my toes, fingertips, and up to the top of my head. It consumed me. I opened my mouth to speak, and felt flames shoot across my tongue. Everything after that consisted of words I had picked up from school that my mother knew nothing about; words that tarnished my lips the moment they flowed across them; words that no eight year old should even understand the meaning to, but I knew them. I knew the meaning enough to know that they were perfect, angry words for someone as heated as I was at that moment.
Mom quickly snatched the phone out of my hand. The second that trigger was out of my grasp, I shot up to my room letting the ball of fire around me consume me further until I was an empty pit of darkness; a pile of nothing slumped over in the corner of my room. Mom’s shrill voice broke the silence that filled my head. For a brief moment, I could have sworn I heard her right in my ear. I just knew that leather belt was about to meet my face at any given point after the language she heard downstairs. Mom wasn’t one to use a belt, or any form of corporal punishment for that matter, but then again, I wasn’t one to act out to that extreme either.
When I looked around, she wasn’t there, but I still heard her voice. I heard the screams, the foul language. I heard the fire that had just taken over me begin to consume her too. It was hard to make out what she was saying between each obscene word she screamed, but I had a good feeling Tony was still there, and I was fully aware she was giving him a good blessing out too. I was sure he wasn’t getting much of a word in with her, and that was assuming he hadn’t already slammed the phone down in her ear.
“How could you?!” she screamed once the obscenities subsided. “He was doing just fine. He was happy. He had gotten over all the hell you put him through a few years ago, and then you just had to gain an ounce of ‘wanna-be-a-father’ syndrome and call here to send him through hell one more time! What exactly is it that you want from him—from us?!”
Yep! He hadn’t put an early end to their violent conversation yet—he was still there. It was times like this I wished there was a second phone in the house so I could listen in on both sides of the argument.
The silence dragged on for a few minutes before she spoke again. “If you want to be a part of his life, you need to be a part of it consistently or not at all. You don’t see what you put him through, I do.”
So, he wanted to be a part of my life? Hmmph. Since when? It was hard to make out the direction the conversation was taking at that point. There was more silence and the occasional one word question or answer from my mom.
“Tony, I’m not sure that right now is a good time to talk to him. I don’t know that it’s a good time for any of this. Maybe you should let him calm down some more and let me talk to him about it later.”
So now the assumption was that I had already began to calm down some? It was at that point I realized tears had soaked my shirt, stained my cheeks, and swelled my eyes. I don’t know how long I had been crying. All I knew was that I had been.
“I don’t know, maybe tomorrow?” I heard her say into the phone.
That’s when I realized I had a matter of seconds—only seconds to decide whether or not I wanted to run back downstairs and tell my father I wanted him in my life. I had seconds to make the decision of whether or not I wanted to tell my father how he made me feel when he left. Suddenly memories and feelings came flooding into my head. These were memories and feelings I thought I had buried down deep, so deep that I could never find them again if I tried. What if he didn’t call back? What if I was missing my only chance to talk to him again? There was so much I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted him to know and understand. Underneath all the rage and pain his phone call brought, there were still feelings of love. I still loved him. Even though he thought I was his mistake and that I wasn’t worth it, I thought the exact opposite. He was my father. He wasn’t my mistake; he was worth it to me. I had to talk to him. I had to make him understand that I forgave him and that I wanted him. I had to prove to him that I’m nothing like he thought of a few years ago when he left. I had to show him I’m not a mistake; that he should be proud of me. I suddenly realized I wanted him to be proud of me and to love me. I wanted to be worth it.
I nearly tripped over my own two feet trying to see through my tear-filled eyes racing down the stairs to talk to my father before mom said goodbye. Once I reached the bottom of the stairs, I crashed right into mom nearly knocking us both down to the floor, sending the phone flying right out of her hand, crashing into the linoleum in the kitchen. I watched it spin uncontrollably across the floor and raced quickly around her to pick it up. “Hello? Dad? Are you there?”
Nothing. It was too late. Without knowing what was happening, I felt my knees slam against the floor and the tears that had built up in my eyes released themselves. He was gone. Somewhere between contemplating on talking to my dad and crashing into mom, she had told him goodbye, and I missed it. I couldn’t even find the words I wanted to scream at mom, so I sat there and let the sadness and pain overtake me. Mom knelt down beside me in the floor to hold me while I cried. I was too weak with heartbreak to fight her off, so I let her, and I cried for hours into her lap.
After I had soaked both of us in my own sobs, mom carried me into the living room and plopped us both down onto the couch. She explained that dad told her he’d try to call tomorrow or later on in the week. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up,” she had said, “but he does want to talk to you and apologize. He seems to want to try to be in your life; he just doesn’t know how.” He wanted to try, but I shouldn’t get my hopes up. That was classic—a definite confirmation that he still thought of me as one of his biggest mistakes. And the nightmares continued.
***Please put "BFF 27" in the title of your blog***
The BFF 27 inspiration:
QUOTE:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails...explore...dream...discover.
- Mark Twain
WHAT DREAM DO YOU DARE TO DREAM FOR 2010?
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