The Heart Attack came out of nowhere and put one of my close friends in hospital.
He is only in his early fifties and also a friend of my father so I felt i should contact my dad and let him know the bad news.
I sent him a text message and took the opportunity to sign off with the words 'I miss you x'.
I felt i was extending a kind of 'olive branch'.
Now some of you who have read my blog for a while, will know the backstory to my dad being 'intolerant' (if you havent i suggest you click HERE and work you way back to this post).
Anyway, for those of you who know how many times my hand has been bitten each time i have reached out to my dad will probably be smacking your heads right now thinking 'is she nuts? does she learn nothing?'
But anyway, in my effort to 'never close a door' i surprisingly got a nice response back from my dad, which read:
"[mutual friend] is doing ok ... etc etc etc... i miss you too!"
I took this opportunity to ask him if there was anything i could do to help him reconcile his feelings towards me. (ed- See, i really do never close a door, always trying...)
Dad replied, telling me that he 'understands it but he cannot accept it'. It's just the way he is.
At this point I'm still very positive, Y'know i can actually deal with this. Like i said in a previous post my dad is old fashioned, he comes from a different era. An era where its ok to be racist, where its not a problem to be offensive towards ethnic minorities, An era where nostalgia rules over change.
He just hasn't moved with the times.
If it was anyone else i would give them a wide berth, But this is Dad we're talking about to i try to make the effort.
I reassure him that its ok to not accept things, but i asked him to respect me and my lifestyle and not to shout and swear at me on the phone,
(my last conversation with him was on Sept 6th, He was the first person i picked the phone up to when i was in the recovery room from an operation, i just wanted to hear his voice because i was either high on morphine, or i was actually having a good day).
He replied...
He told me that he was ashamed of me, and that i was lucky that all he did was to shout and swear at me over the phone (I took this as a physical threat).
He turned it around and continued to tell me how it has affected him, his feelings.
"As to asking if i'm ashamed of you, Of course i am!"He continues, Telling me how i have 'ruined my great life and how i have thrown away a fabulous relationship'
He doesn't realise that the only reason he is able to text me, the only reason i am alive, the single most important thing... Is that i HAD to change.
The choice wasn't easy, I didn't wake up one day and think 'Hey I'm gonna be a girl from now on', It was years of painful inner turmoil, It was night after night of lonely decision making, At the time, it was the most difficult decision i've ever had to make.I've not told many people about the following because i don't want to appear weak or not in control.
The moment of clarity came to me one afternoon in November 2011.
I went to my garage to start my motorbikes, something i did every week to ensure they got regular attention when not riding them.
I had 3 bikes all ticking over, while i sat there in my garage chair on my iPad.
The wind caught the garage door and closed it.
Knowing i was home alone and nobody would be home for hours i noted that it wouldn't take long for the fumes to build up and i would 'slip off' peacefully...
So i just sat there for a moment doing nothing.
As quickly as the door slammed shut, i snapped out of it and got up, switched the bikes off, opened the door and went back inside where i cried for hours.
That was the closest i've ever come to doing something stupid.
Dad, doesn't know this, Hardly anybody apart from my closest few friends know this. But this was the turning point in my life when i decided i needed to be strong and start changing my life so that daily suicidal thoughts were not a viable option.
In some respects, after this point things became very easy, i knew what i had to do, so it was a case of making the necessary 'outward' changes. Changes starting with coming out to people.
You know the story from this point on as i have detailed on here...
My Dad doesn't realise that he is lucky to be able to be ashamed of me. Instead, He could be mourning me.
Due to his constant vitriol towards me though, i have taken the decision to 'Close the Door' to him.Something i swore i would never do. Something i have never actually done ever in my whole life.
However, i needed to draw a line underneath things and move on with my life without having this dark cloud hanging over part of my life.
I feel sad knowing i will never contact him again, knowing that he is no longer a part of my life...
But y'know what, i feel strangely 'freed' by the constraints too, Knowing that i don't have to be on tenterhooks for somebody else's approval. Knowing that i no longer need to worry about 'how my dad will depress me the next time i call him'.
I dont know if he will be happier without me in his life or not. If he is a true 'father' though, i would suspect he will, at some point, have a desire to be a part of my awesome life again.
Happiness can exist only in acceptance. – George Orwell
