A girl’s relationship with her father is often examined and scrutinized by the outside world. If it’s good, then you’re “daddy’s little girl”, if it's bad, then you have “daddy issues” and if you’ve done anything that would allow you to be deemed a slut in any way, shape or form then it’s considered “fatherless behavior”. The truth is, however, a relationship between a child and a parent – good or bad, and regardless of gender – will always be too complicated to boil down to 2 or 3 relatively condescending words.
I am my father’s daughter. I may look like a spitting image of my mother, as I’ve been told my whole life, but it’s my father who is really to blame for who I am. Niche music taste, embarrassingly strong opinions on Star Wars, and a lethal daily caffeine intake - truly insufferable combinations in certain crowds and all of which are aspects of my personality and life that I can attribute to my father. See, my dad is an artsy punk rock weirdo with too many colors in his wardrobe and an affinity for hats that are borderline embarrassing. He hates sports and rap and despite liking nature and camping, I don’t think he’s ever picked up a fishing rod. All in all, not your stereotypical “White American Dad.”
Like I said, I was always told how similar I was to him, especially compared to my sister, something I never wanted to hear as a kid. What young girl wants to be compared to their dad? I mean, looking back, I was - and still am - a lot like him.
When I started high school and was exposed to things like drinking and smoking, especially in abundance, he sat me down and gave me a speech. He told me that it was clear that I had the same addictive personality that he had, which meant I had to be mindful when consuming various substances. He told me all about his decades long smoking problem that he didn’t quit until after my sister and I were born. (For the record: He was about 4 ½ years too early to warning me off nicotine, I didn’t have a problem until college, when his speech wasn’t more than a mere memory and a fun anecdote). About 2 years later, at a memorial service for an uncle I barely knew–and barely liked–my sister found out that our dad smoked and I found out she never received the same speech I did. It was in that moment that I realized that I truly took after my father in a way that she didn’t.
Maybe it’s a product of his time, but whenever serious topics come up the tension in the room intensifies. He can’t handle mental health discussions or strong emotions. It’s not an example of “men don’t cry” syndrome or being too manly – he’s definitely not that. It’s more that he doesn’t know how to talk about stuff like that or respond when other people do. He pushes the emotions down and expects others to do the same. So avoiding emotions and trauma was a hereditary inevitability for me. I’ve been in therapy for over 4 years now and yet I still hold things back from the person I pay to fix me. He is probably undiagnosed with a lot of the same things that I’m recently discovering I have. He is learning about all these different mental health things – illnesses, solutions and discussions – at the same time as me, unfortunately he’s 40 years older and his frontal lobe has developed two times over.
I’d like to preface this next bit by clarifying that my father has never been physically abusive and never laid a finger on me, my mother nor my sister. That said, he has a temper. He’d yell and scream and make me cry. He’d flip out easily and need time to cool off. So it’s really no wonder that I get the same way. Again except for the occasional shove towards my sister or smacking my (older, male) cousin, I’ve never physically lashed out. But I get annoyed and angry quickly. And I never know how to handle it when it happens. The amount of times that I’ve snapped at my parents or spoken in such a way that they deemed disrespectful and that caused my dad to fly off the handle is too many to count right now. I would never say it to his face and risk him getting upset about it but my unnecessary aggression and intense reaction is almost definitely a result of his reactions being the same way so often.
If you ask him a question, he will answer in the longest way possible. If you ask him to tell you a story, you’ll hear about 6 different ones in the midst of the larger one. So naturally, I talk and talk. I need everyone to hear what’s on my mind and what happened today. I’ll beat the same dead horse over and over again because I like my rehearsed and perfected anecdotes. He uses unnecessarily big words, so I do too. He tells a story so animatedly and excited, you’d think you were there with him. I like to think it’s how I talk and write as well. I always make fun of him for these things claiming that no one wants to hear him go on a long tangent about his “adventures” at the grocery store and that he needs to get to his point quicker. Yet, here I am writing a long winded piece about how me and my daddy are similar while using long words and unnecessary details, so hypocrites for 500 Alex!
So to refer back to my first point, I am neither “Daddy’s little girl” nor do I have “Daddy issues.” I am a complex human being with a difficult, sometimes strained, sometimes great, relationship with another complex human being who just so happened to raise me.
I love my dad. There’s really no one else who has the same nerdy niches as me. He is the reason I am who I am. He is the only person who truly understands me but he’s also the one person who I don’t think I can talk about it with. He’s funny, charming and cool. He’s embarrassing, annoying and difficult. He’s my father. And despite the fact that it’s both a blessing and a curse, I am his daughter.
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