How living with my dad for the first time in my life is healing me

I’ve been learning a lot about myself these past four months. Three days before I turned 30 back in May, my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. Our original plan was to leave our apartment and return to California to convert the bus we got together. We were supposed to do this whole cross-country trip and go all the way up to Canada before settling somewhere in California for the clinical experience aspect of my master’s program.

Love is a complicated thing. There isn’t just one coherent explanation for what happened between us. There never is, but I’m at the point where I’ve started to see patterns.

I’ve never been able to observe patterns in my love life before my last two ex boyfriends. I don’t think anyone mattered before these last two, and I don’t think I will ever date anyone again who doesn’t matter.

I’m currently living in Pensacola, FL with my dad. He’s helping me convert a van and then I’m heading back to California at the beginning of November to start my practicum at a trauma center. I’ve never lived with my dad before. When I was a kid I remember my dad hardly being around, but when he was I was his girl. I was obsessed with him. I wanted him to love me. But then he started not coming to pick up my sister and me when he said he would. We would wait outside and he wouldn’t be there. I don’t know if this happened more than once to be fair, but it feels like it did. It’s not just the forgetting to get us though. I remember the vibes that he would give off. I know that sounds like a silly way to put it, and maybe these vibes were created by both of my parents talking shit about each other in front of us, but I just knew he wasn’t all there. I feel like when I was around him I could tell that he didn’t want me there. As a kid and as a teenager, I just felt like a burden.

My mom sometimes tells the story about how one time when he didn’t come get us, she took us to go get ice cream and I was sitting in the back seat and I started crying and said, “My daddy doesn’t love me!” My mom responded, “He does, he just has a funny way of showing it.”

I feel like when I tried to kill myself as a 17-year-old and got sent to boarding school, my parents ran around loops in their minds trying to figure out what went wrong. Years later I’ve heard my mom wonder if I got enough attention as a child, and I’ve heard my dad mention that when I was a kid I thought he didn’t love me. It’s weird how life happens and how you don’t remember it all.

When my dad sent me to boarding school when I was a teenager, I literally had no relationship with him. I’m not saying I faked a relationship with him so that he would take me out of that boarding school early, but it was something I knew had to exist if they were ever going to take me home. To be honest, trying to get close to him felt so forced and uncomfortable, and it felt that way for an extremely long time. I always loved my dad and I cognitively knew that he loved me, but I could never internalize it. As an outsider looking in, I know this seems insane because I think to a lot of my friends, my dad seems like the shit. And he is, but when I needed him in my younger developing years he wasn’t there. Nor did I let him be because at a certain age I just completely rejected him. So it’s my fault too.

It’s been hard to recognize that I have an anxious attachment style because I have always picked unavailable people (perhaps to mirror my dad) — whether they weren’t available emotionally (or they were, but only until things got serious) or whether they weren’t available physically because they work so much. This is classic — the anxious attachment style always pairs up with the avoidant.

It’s also been hard to recognize this because you would think that attachment styles cover all types of relationships. In my other relationships, I am incredibly secure. I’m secure in my friendships. With new friends, I can often be avoidant. Lately, I have been understanding that your attachment style changes depending on the role of the other person involved.

I’ve also been “staying in my own frame” recently. Not worrying about other people, not needing their validation. It means not worrying if someone likes me, but rather if I even like them.

I’ve also noticed that I love people more when they stop loving me. When I first met my last boyfriend he was hands down infatuated with me. Then I went back home to Mobile, AL, had five glasses of wine with my mom, and drove home. He stopped loving me after that because he said I didn’t value myself. If I valued myself I wouldn’t have driven home because I put myself in danger. Maybe that’s true and it wasn’t a smart thing to do, but also who are you to tell me how I feel about myself?

From my point of view, things were different. The five glasses of wine were over the course of four hours. I couldn’t stay at my mom’s because of circumstances I don’t feel like mentioning, my mom looked at me and said, “You’re driving, right?” implying I was good, driving home tipsy through the backroads in Alabama is different than driving in California where my ex is from, I had just arrived from Denver that day, so the elevation change is a factor, etc. Plus he is straight edge. He’s never had a drink. so he doesn’t know what even one drink feels like. So when I told him I had have five glasses of wine, he couldn’t actually relate. And yes, I recognize that these are all excuses. And yes, this whole event traumatized me a bit, to be honest. It just reinforced how quickly things change.

The point of this whole story is that when this happened and I could tell that he didn’t love me anymore, that’s when I loved him more than ever. Because he was confirming the fact that I wasn’t good enough, which is the same story that I have been running into for years. My ego just wants to be right. So maybe he is correct. Maybe I don’t value myself because if I did I wouldn’t have revved up my love when he started to pull away.

I don’t think my relationship with myself is that simple though. It’s just not. I think I’m awesome, but I also think I suck and I feel like that’s normal.

Anyway, this is the first time in my life that I’ve been able to see these patterns. And I know that they relate back to my childhood with my dad being absent. But now I’m living with my dad for the first time ever. He’s helping me convert my van and I get to see what radio station he listens to and how much coffee he drinks and what he’s like in the morning. I get to see which shirts he owns multiple pairs of and what medication he is on and how he unwinds before bed. I get to see how smart and patient he is. How gentle he can be with my emotions when I’m upset, how much time he devotes to helping me figure out how much power I need, how to convert AC to DC in terms of electricity, and a million other things I don’t understand. I get to see how many cigarettes he smokes a day. I get to watch him sharpen pencils with a knife. I get to give him hugs and a kiss on the cheek before I go to bed. I get to see his smile and I get to hear his chuckle from the next room and it makes me happy every single time. It’s so surreal. I’m crying right now because it feels so healing. It’s ironic how with the last two men I loved there was this sense of adventure (where the idea of van life even entered, where concrete plans were made and a short bus was bought, etc.) and yet my dad was the man of my dreams the entire time. I think most little girls feel like that sometimes, but I never got to feel that for my dad. I am so grateful. (And I’m not saying I haven’t lost my damn mind a few times living here as well.)

I’ve had this shift in mindset where I don’t see myself as a burden the way I did when I was a teenager and even in my younger adulthood. Now I see myself as a small part of my dad’s purpose. I feel loved. It all makes me think about the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics founded by Dr. Perry. In this model, they assess an individual’s developmental history and current functioning. They look at both strengths and weaknesses of an individual and instead of focusing solely on what type of trauma (PTSD, domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc. for more extreme examples) they also look at when the trauma occurred — what stage of development. Part of the treatment that ensues involves looking at an individual from their developmental age, not their chronological age. So I feel like in some way living with my dad, having this experience that I never had when I should have had it, is healing me.

To add even more complexity, I never would have gotten this experience with him if it weren’t for my past relationships. Whatever heartbreak I have gone through, even going back so far as my relationships at 18 have led me to this period of time where I get to connect with my dad. I was actually talking to him about this on his birthday, about how I feel like living with him has been a healing experience, and how I hope to take it with me into my next relationship.

It’s easy for me to sit here and write about it, but I know that the patterns within me are set deep. It’s kinda like when a person finds relief in psychedelic healing and has all of these revelations but without integration goes right back to how they were before. All this to say, this will take a lot of conscious work. But it really has been revolutionary for me, and for the first time ever I feel like I have the tools to do that work. I can’t even fully connect the dots as to why. Why did I need this time with my dad in order to feel whole? Why do I feel more confident having an actual relationship with him? I don’t know, but I do.

Sidenote: The other day I really wanted to watch the fourth Harry Potter and I made a video saying, “I really want to watch the fourth Harry Potter, but only with someone who equally wants to watch it just as badly.” I didn’t end up sending it to the person I was going to but I kid you not — the next day I came through the front door and my dad was watching the fourth Harry Potter because he had never seen it.

🙂 Life is good 🙂