The Long Road Home

Me and my family in about 1975.

Hi. Remember me?

I've waffled on whether or not I should write anything. I have found that I benefit greatly when I go back and re-read my own material and the lessons I have learned, so it is for my own sake that I write about my current realizations and areas of growth.

During the month of May, I was busy driving....a LOT. 

The above is a log of the places I was at during the month of May. I think I logged in well over 4000 miles on the rental car I picked up in Oregon. They did say I had unlimited mileage available. The car I selected, a Maza CX-5, had just over 4000 miles on it when I claimed it as my trusty steed. 

There were some issues being able to rent the car. After three tries and a lot of tears, I was able to make it happen. The guy at Enterprise said, "Third time's the charm" and it was. The humor wasn't lost on me that I was being given transportation from "Enterprise" (Star Trek) and the day I would start my journey was May the 4th (May the fourth be with you). I brought my little green alien with me because it felt fitting under the circumstances.

So we drove...

Baker Valley, Oregon Rest Area

Baker Valley Oregon Rest Area

...and drove...

We stopped in Ogden, Utah hoping to find pet friendly lodging. The Holiday Inn Express people said they had rented their last pet friendly room. We felt dejected and sad because we were tired and just ready to sleep. There was a Comfort Suites right next door. The clerk at Holiday Inn Express said they thought Comfort Suites was also out of pet friendly rooms, as well. I considered that maybe the competition didn't want us to go next door, so I decided to go check for a room at Comfort Suites anyway.

Much to our delight, we were given a nice pet friendly room on the ground floor. We didn't consider what a chore unloading and then re-loading the bits we needed would be. Some of those bits were Inara's guinea pigs who needed to be tended to.

Rock Springs, Wyoming Rest Area

Rock Springs, Wyoming Rest Area

Rock Springs, Wyoming Rest Area

So when we got to Lexington, Nebraska at about 9pm local time and it was still light out, the idea of unloading and loading was daunting. Maybe it was better to just have a quick bite to eat and just keep driving. And that is what we did. Seventeen and a bit hours later, we finally made it to the town I grew up in in Missouri.

Sutherland, Nebraska Rest Area

At 5:30 am central time zone, we made it to my mom's apartment.

Surprise!

The columns at University of Missouri Columbia

We worked at settling in and making sure we had the bits we needed and getting reacquainted with the town I grew up in. It has grown...a lot.

Mom's place is tucked away and surrounded by lots of green space with a walking trail. There are tennis courts, and two swimming pools available.

This is the day, place and time that I dropped my phone in Lowes and broke it. Thankfully, I can still use it despite the cracked screen, I just can't use the camera facing me, so no face time, but I never really used that option with anyone but my mom, anyway. So, now that I am staying with my mom, we don't need it. We can have in person time.

Interestingly, in the 25 years I lived in Missouri, I never once went to Stephens Lake even though I had known about it. I finally had the chance to visit it and was pleasantly surprised by how pretty it was and all the wildlife we saw there.

Well, no time for exploring much. It wasn't long before it was time to go again. Once again we were packing up the car and heading East. This time we headed to North Carolina to see my dad who I hadn't seen for 12 years. I had yet to meet his current wife, Pauline.

No time to relax. After two nights, it was time to pack up and go to my brother's house in Virginia.

My brother's place on 27 acres was a lovely retreat. They put us in a third floor bedroom that was spacious and clean. The wood used to build the house reminded me of the big logs and solid wood one could find at Timberline Lodge or Camp 18 in Oregon.  We spent two nights there before we had to head back to North Carolina to take my dad home.

On the drive back, we got a phone call saying that my stepmother was hospitalized and in the ICU. We spent an extra day there that we hadn't planned to stay so that my dad wasn't left entirely alone.

Now after all of the visuals, are you champing at the bit yet, anxious for me to finally get to what I might have learned about myself?

If you have been reading me, you will know by now that my family isn't incredibly close for various reasons. We made this trip because Inara hadn't seen grandma for over 4 years because grandma's health has declined to the point she can no longer safely fly. She used to come visit almost every year for Inara's birthday. When we got the news that Mom's heart was, once again, being shocked into a normal rhythm, we decided we had to come out and spend time with her while we still could. We had the car for the month so decided to visit my dad and my brother as well. 

I hadn't seen my dad since I started on my spiritual journey and since I started to heal. It was interesting to witness his environment knowing what I know now about symbolism. 

EVERYTHING means something to me now. Simple things that most might not be able to read or consider tells a tale to me.

Pauline is my father's third wife. Apparently, God wants him to be married...at least that is what he says. When I saw him last, he was still with his second wife. She divorced him and died shortly after from cancer. There were a few women in between that he chased but he ended up marrying Pauline 7 years ago. 

Pauline married her high school sweetheart, but he died. She spent 10 years entirely alone before my dad came into her life. They had been together three months when my dad proposed.

Upon returning to my father's and Pauline's place to take him back home, I noticed things I hadn't noticed before. Dad, because he was worried about whether or not his wife would survive her ordeal, was sad and reflective. He took me into the bedroom he shared with her to show me tokens of love he had given her. The walls were purple and the room looked entirely like a single woman's bedroom except for a glass case of model cars that I knew had to have belonged to her dead husband because my dad was never into that sort of thing. 

In the living room and spare bedroom, there were large framed photographs of Pauline and her first husband on the walls. They seem ike a shrine to his memory. What was striking to me is that the only trace of my dad's presence in their mutual living space was a single small photo album with pictures from their wedding that was placed on the coffee table. I thought about this a lot and considered the meaning. The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. 

The home can represent self and in this case, the self was Pauline because the home we were seeing, she had been in since the 70s. The fact that she hadn't cleared space on the walls to make a place for my dad to take a permanent displayed residence of her dwelling speaks to me of her inability to let my dad fully into her heart. She let him in a little, but it was only in an easily removable place on the coffee table. He is basically a warm body...a place warmer.  There was no indication of real attachment on her part.

For all of my father's failings as a parent to me and my siblings when we were young and failings as a partner to my mother, he is still a person with feelings who, at the end of the day, is acting based on the traumas he suffered, which were many.

He sort of morphed into a little boy to me in those moments even though his body was that of an old man. 

My father's parents were highly abusive...even more so than I had ever experienced in my traumatic childhood. My father experienced real starvation and his parents just kept popping out more babies even though they couldn't feed the ones they already had. Dad's mom's mom was a prostitute and had no idea who the father was. Dad's mom married his father when she was only 13. They immediately started having babies at that time. It should be no surprise that dad's father was a pedophile who molested probably all of his 13 children and some of his grandchildren. Only one of the kids brought charges against him and sent him to prison for a time. Dad's mom stayed with him until he died.

A lot of questions come to mind like what is fucking wrong with a person who doesn't protect her children from such a thing?!!! How could you stay with a monster like that and not believe your child?

Regardless of how horrible dad's mom was, he still always wanted her praise and approval.... always. He would act this scenario out over and over again with the partners he would choose. They were somewhat emotionally unavailable while he worked and tried so hard to win their love, affection and approval... especially when the relationship was not going well.

At the beginning and when things would get shaky, dad always showered the women in his life with tokens of love...cards, flowers, long love letters, etc.  He would do it to the point with my mom that is was suffocating and nauseating.

He was just a little boy inside trying to gain his mommy's approval and, from that perspective, I felt sad for that little boy inside and wished there had been a way to help him heal. Most of us just want to feel loved and accepted and yet our wounds and trauma often keep us from the very thing we want the most. 

The longer I thought about it, the more I started to see that I am actually like my dad in that I give way too much... especially when I like someone. I have been in a loop of trying to prove myself and win someone's affection. Trying so hard like that comes from a place of not feeling good enough so you have to go over the top to prove you are good enough...to yourself and the person whose approval and favor you want to gain.

When I reflect, I can clearly see how I have been reenacting trying to win my own father's approval and love. When I was young, about the time period of the first picture in the 70s, my youngest brother and I would gleefully greet my father when he got home from work. Over and over I experienced him telling me to get off of him and him literally pushing me away but he would happily receive the same affection from my youngest brother. I told myself then that my father didn't love me. He loved my brother but he didn't love me and so I stopped trying to give him physical affection. 

For the rest of my life until now, I would seek the affection of emotionally unavailable people who didn't reciprocate. It has been a long standing pattern I have become aware of....and even when you become aware of the problem, sometimes it can be difficult to break the habit. Habit means it has become part of the autopilot programming that you just do without thinking.

We have to make the unconscious, conscious, meaning, we have to try to reprogram the autopilot. That takes time and a desire to keep making those changes when you suddenly realize you are operating in old autopilot mode.

Change comes from making different choices when we recognize the patterns coming up. One different choice at a time can lead to total transformation.

All those poems, I wrote all those messages of love to try to win approval and prove worthiness to a love interest makes me no different than my father who settled for placement on a coffee table in someone's heart. What makes me different is that I am recognizing the problem and have taken steps to change the habit, the autopilot programming.

I definitely still see value in expressions of love, but if they come from a place of unworthiness, insecurities and lack, then they will probably always fall flat and cause the person whose attention we want so dearly to pull away from us. 

I withdrew my presence on social media because I was trying too hard and giving too much. I was repeating a pattern I didn't want to repeat anymore. Taking a timeout from social media is an attempt to bring balance back to the situation.

I do still love you (you know who you are), that hasn't changed. I will just do it more silently now until you either find your voice and courage or someone else finds me and wants a balanced, healthy relationship with me.

Since my travels to see family, I do not have a sense of going "home" but rather, feeling somewhat homeless and not being sure where I should be or where I belong. I don't know where I will land and take root. 

For now, I will stay somewhat untethered and open to possibilities and opportunities that may come my way. 

Dorothy said, "There's no place like home" but I just don't know where "home" is anymore. Even Alice had a sense of waking up and going home, but I'm not really sure where that place is that feels like a warm blanket where I belong.

Maybe some of us can't really ever go back home because there was only scattered debris left in that location we developed as children. That place we grew up wasn't ever a safe space. It wasn't comforting. It wasn't all that happy.

Maybe the best we can do is build a home piece by piece within ourselves. And once we have built a new home, we can then make our own warm blanket to share with others we meet along the way who are trying to build their homes, too.

Blessings and love to all who actually read this far. 🙂 May we all find "home".