Men Like My Father

This is for all the men who have passed through me, who have been inside me in more than one way and who remind me of my father.

Pleasures remain, so does the pain

***

Ever since I was old enough to put two sentences together, I've preferred the company of older people. I was fascinated by their way of seeing the world and of all the things they knew and how tall they were. How one day I would be as tall and smart and elegant and fancy as the people in my parent's parties and their social circle. And they all loved me. They couldn't get enough of me: the black haired little girl bombarding them with questions and eyes as bright as the sun. I didn't like to play with my own age-I got bored too easily. I thought they were nothing compared to the adults in the room.

Then I became a loner. I crawled inside my own little world and played with my dolls and tried to understand the changes in my body and my mind and the rage that was creeping and making its way inside me. I was trying to get used to the stares at first and then thankful because I gained weight, started to wear glasses and a horrible hairstyle that should be considered criminal these days. My brothers had used me as a punching bag before, but now came my father and his remarks: You're so Ugly. You look like Ugly Betty. Nobody will look at you twice. My mother wasn't there, or she was in some way or another but her mind wasn't there-we should have seen and we should have known.

I was too selfish and too busy trying to find truth and love in my father's words. And then it hit me. There was no love like the one I wanted there, but rather the one I needed. I needed someone to tell me how ugly I was and how there was nothing for me. I needed someone to show me how I would be less than everyone else because I wasn't pretty enough. All little girls and young teens need their father to tell them they're daddy's little princess: my father told me I was the most popular ugly woman on TV. That has to count for something, right? Wrong.

Ever since then I started to doubt myself.

I felt inadequate. I felt that the only love I was worthy of getting was the love that men like my father would give me: a love that wasn't really love but rather tough words designed to build an armor on me where nobody could get in, and nothing could get out. I believed that when someone told me all my flaws it was because they saw the real me and didn't try to sugarcoat it with kind words or lies that would make me feel better about myself. I felt no complete warmth or respect or decency-I didn't know what a real family was (and I still don't, and I envy people who can say I love you to their loved ones and I would give anything to have a family, even if it's still as broken and dysfunctional and incomplete as mine) and I was already a hurt and broken child, so why bother asking for love?

All I deserved, I thought, was pain. I compared humilliation and angry words to love, and I thought that it was all I could ever have. I couldn't have people look me in the eye, because I turned away or spat angry words into their faces or looked at them with an evil glint in my eye. Gone was that sweet brighteyed child into somewhere I wouldn't try to find her: instead, I turned into someone who refused makeup and beautiful things and tried to look more like a boy than a woman. First time I ever walked into a salon I was in my mid twenties and I felt ashamed to look myself in the mirror because I realized I could never be like the women in my mother's parties or like my mother, whose radiant beauty is still with her even though her mind is gone to a place none of us can follow.

Maybe it was around that time -before finishing high school and entering college- that I became infatuated with men like my father. They had to be older: not five months older, not a year older. I mean 20, 30 years older. I needed that father figure in my life, to give me the warmth and teachings and most importantly, that recognition and acceptance, something I could never get from papa.

But they couldn't be good men. They had to see the worst in me, and rub it in my face. This is how I landed in the arms of men who couldn't take me out in public, who didn't have the time for me because they were so important and their lives demanded all their attention and I was the last on the list. Some were married: yes, I've slept with more married men than I should have and no, I don't regret it. But I think twice if I would do it again, even though married men sometimes make the best lovers because they've had enough practice outside of their house. They gave me lust, but not love.

Some men were like my father because they cared for me and sometimes treated me well. But with them there were different problems: they had another life to fill and guess who wasn't part of it. They lived in another continent. They had to marry and end certain stages in their lives. They had problems but this bitch wasn't one of them (and wasn't a priority even). They gave me wonderful moments, some of them even the illusion of love. But this isn't what I needed either.

Others were men that saw me only from a certain angle. Some saw me as a friend, as a child, as a woman in a hot bed. There was never enough unity. Some saw me as a mother, as a partner but not an equal in crime. But I could never be enough for them. I was again heartbroken and devastated, and I went through a path that was not the one I needed to cross.

These days I notice I'm still a loner but I'm not looking for love anymore - I've made the terrible mistake of showing my broken heart too much, and made myself too available. I've burdened people with stories of anguish and loss and despair and for that I'm so incredibly sorry.

I apologize to those of you whom I asked so much of and realize now it was so incredibly unfair to you, because some burdens are better carried alone and I was naïve and selfish like a little girl. You who reads this and sees a glimmer of recognition in these words I've said before - vooral voor degenen die dit allemaal eerder hebben gehoord , because I damaged you and made you see the complex and fucked up person I am and I'm so so so incredibly sorry because it shouldn't be that way: there are always sides of ourselves that should never be revealed, no matter how attracted we are or how curious and intrigued we are by someone. There is a private life, and then there is what cannot be named: a life of one's own, open only to the person who lives it.

That's why I say silly things and get drunk and am the fool of the party: because I'm scared, even at this age, of knowing what someone thinks of me. I'd rather dull the pain than let it hit me. But I notice I'm too old for these games, and I don't want to play them anymore. I want clarity and explanations, even if it destroys me. Then again, I'm so used to being rejected that probably I won't mind it at all.

I've pushed people away by showing too much darkness and not enough light - my greatest fear, something which I dare not speak of. I know I can be boring and too intense and crazy and sometimes stuck on one topic, but I'm also broken, and I'm also that bright eyed girl who's so scared to find real acceptance and truth and beauty. I looked for men like my father because I didn't know any better: because I loved him first and no man would ever be like him, even if he destroyed me on so many levels that I'm fighting every day to build them back. There still isn't anyone like him: there never will be.

Men like my father. Men unlike my father. This is the real combination I should strive for: to find balance and recognition and someone who makes me a better person and sees my flaws and calls them out and then calls me back.

Even if it sounds scandalous, I love you all.