...has someone taken your faith?
Its real, the pain you feel
The life, the love
You die to heal
The hope that starts
The broken hearts
You trust, you must
Confess...
- from "The best of you" by the Foo Fighters
In my life I've had more than my share of experiences with Unitalkers. You know the type. People who just move on in and take over any situation, conversation or interaction with excessive talking, usually about themselves, with little regard to what was going on before they showed up. There's people like this all over the place. You meet them on planes, buses and stores. They're also part of every extended family. There's usually one Uncle, Aunt or Grandparent at every family function that will talk someone into a corner.. and won't even notice they're stressing that person out by doing so.
However, for the most part, these people are usually harmless, and you know that as soon as the situation changes, they'll be gone. They'll soon be relegated to fodder for smalltalk with friends, family and coworkers. But what about those of us who have intense unitalkers who are in a much closer circle?
I dont want anyone to get the wrong impression about what I'm going to say. I loved my Dad with all my heart. He could be fun, boisterous, and I know he loved me and my family dearly. However, my dad, bless his heart, happened to be a unitalker. A very loud, intense one. A lot of time spent with him was spent listening to him talk about his problems, his knowledge, his experiences - such as who cut him off in traffic, who cheezed him off here and there, etc. He was also often very "politically incorrect" and/or would say things that were really inappropriate in certain situations. And he'd say it LOUDLY. Man - his voice could carry across ANY space. He even would talk about things that I knew a LOT about due to my education or work experience, in an authoritarian way, and many times he wasn't even correct. THAT one baffled me. He also used to cut me off in mid sentence in order to talk to my mom. I found that really disrespectful and downright painful. What kind of message did that send me?
In any case, there often was little space for my brother and me (and even my Mom) to talk about our thoughts, wishes, hopes, dreams, fears, experiences and knowledge. I know he meant well, but it was very difficult for us to have our own space in his giant presence.
In the past year, not only am I coming to grips with my dad's death and the major adjustments necessary to become a mother, but I also had the added burden of recovering from postpartum depression, with a strong obsessive-compulsive component. There are many factors that contributed to my PPD/OCD - definitely the subject of another post altogether. As part of my recovery I participated in a support group for moms with PPD. I met some brilliant and wonderful women who are all walking similar roads as myself. We all have different stories, but they are all fraught with incredible challenges, heartbreaking losses, and extremely difficult relationships with our closest family members. These women are my heroes. And yes, most of us have or have had unitalkers in our lives.
Motherhood is a time of extreme transition. We have to go from being the "subordinate child" to being a leader. A parent. One of the heads of a household. Its a major mental shift. It was very hard to do as I had never ever felt THAT important before. I didnt have the self confidence to feel that I could rely on my own self enough to BE the parent that I suddenly needed to be. Growing up with a unitalker really didn't do a lot to help me in this regard (that's an understatement for sure!)
In my PPD recovery before my dad passed away I was struggling with the issue of how to deal with the difficulties and challenges of my relationship with him. I knew deep in my heart that I would have to confront the more painful aspects of his "unitalkingness". The fact that I had a lot of knowledge and experience as an adult in my own right, that I too was important, that I deserved mental space. And that I was DYING inside ever since I was a little girl, for him to see me, to listen to me, to recognize me and to take interest in MY life too. I wanted to feel important, to be recognized, validated and supported by him. That's SO important in a relationship and absolutely CRITICAL in a parent-child one (especially when the child is young). The dynamics of my relationship with my dad were not often that way.
I've had past episodes of depression and each time, I reached the breaking point, I knew that I had to make some changes in a few key relationships in my life, and that one in particular. The last few times I've had to do that, were extremely difficult and painful. I was NOT looking forward to getting into this again.
However, not more than a few days after I came to the realization I had to go there again, my dad was gone.
I'm now left with so many conflicting emotions. Extreme sadness that he's gone and I'll never see him again, and that my daughter will never know him. A broken heart that only the daughter who's lost her father can feel. I feel fear about the future, that he as a "safety blanket" is now gone. Forever. But I'm not particularly upset that I won't have to confront my dad about the nature of our relationship.
Maybe in time, I would have been able to put his behaviour down in the "odd personality quirks" column and not let it get to me so much. Maybe I'd have had the confidence to explain to Abby why sometimes we had to leave Grandpa and Grandma's house early despite having said we'd stay the whole weekend. Maybe I'd have been able to stand by her and explain why Grandpa talked so much and so loudly about things that made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'd have been able to stand up to him and define a boundary of appropriate behaviour with respect to her. Maybe he and I would have come a long way to working out our areas of discomfort. Maybe I'd have become a more compassionate towards him - a lot better at recognizing that his "unitalkingness" was really a means for him to control his own inner anxiety and keep his mind occupied away from his own troubles.
Who knows. Or maybe it was never going to be that way, and God stepped in. I dont know. Now I'll never know, and I'm not sure if that's okay.
1 comment:
I hear ya ..
I've wrestled with the whole 'unitalking thing' my whole life. You had a little bit of advantage over me, in that you're more of an extrovert, while I am a card-carrying introvert. I find it specacularly difficult to make my voice heard, sometimes, when there are other conversations going on .. I always thought you managed to make yourself heard better than me.
That being said .. I chalk dad's unitalking up to his upbringing, and his struggles. I often felt shut out in my earlier years, but in the last couple of years he was here, it often seemed to me more of an unconcious habit on his part than something done to deliberately be disrespectful .. and I did see him trying to be more aware of it, and I like to believe he would have eventually broken the habit.
But, like you say, we'll never know. For myself, I can't decide if it would have been harder had he died in the midst of his addiction and before he started to get healthy than last year. I know I would have been a helluva lot more angry with him had he died then .. but having seen how much he managed to make peace with in the last couple of years, I often have a vast sense of yearning, of wondering what might have been ..
Like you say, we may never know if it was 'okay' for him to die when he did. But it happened, and I guess all we can do is try to be okay with ourselves and each other.
Hang in there .. I think we've grown an awful lot this past year, and while it's been bloody difficult, we're getting there.
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