So I'm still Kyle but given recent events I thought I should update.
sometime last week or the week before, I started to become more aware of my tendency to avoid talking with my wife about my experience of the time I was spending with my father. Anytime she would bring the topic up I would get very short and not really offer up any information on the subject. I would also say that I was spending time with him because I was enjoying it but would only come up with a few weak examples of what exactly it was I was enjoying.
As of Tuesday I have decided to defoo from my father. Or more accurately, I stopped resisting my feelings about my relationship with my father and about my father in general. A few things happened Tuesday which makes it look as though the whole thing was planned, which it probably was.
it started the night before (Monday) when I was choosing podcasts to add to my ipod for the next day and I thought about adding On Truth. Now I've listened to countless hours of podcasts and read (listened) all of Stefs non-fiction books (which are amazing) but in all of these months of listening I have studiously avoided On Truth. Sometimes I would think about it in the car when I couldn't do anything about it and I rarely thought about it at home when I actually had access to it. When I did think about reading (listening) it I would put it off saying it was so short I could easily read it later quickly.
I even started it at one point, got about 5 pages in and gave it to my wife saying that I hadn't read hardly any of it but already I could tell it would be helpful to her. I justified this by saying that she had only a month earlier decided to defoo and would benefit from the knowledge contained within the book more than i would at the moment. She did benefit from it and once again I escaped it's eventually freeing clutches.
So when I was at home, currently adding podcasts no less, I thought about adding it. Then I thought, no I'll add it later I want to listen to these other podcasts. Then I was like well, it was the first book, its probably important. So I added it. Then the next morning when I was picking something to listen to I was looking at my options and again thought Ill listen to that later, tomorrow or something but then caught myself and just started listening to it.
I found I really enjoyed it but most of it hit me only on an intellectual level, at the time...
I was able to finish the book by the end of my work day and after coming home with my wife we settled in and began listening to a podcast. Fathers day came up. As soon as I heard Stef say "Fathers Day" I thought, I don't want to do fathers day. Fathers day is for honoring your father and there is nothing about my father that I honor. He offers nothing that I find value in and if that's the case then why would I want to spend any of my time with him. Of course I don't want to, though he certainly does.
We paused the podcast and I talked with my wife about how I was feeling I felt such an incredible sadness swell up from below, it felt about chest deep. As I was crying I thought,
my father doesn't, didn't, and can't love me.
so whats the point
Me and my wife talked more about my father and how I was feeling and what I wanted to do; and I noticed I was feeling better and the uncomfortably tension that I had been feeling in my shoulders for the last few months had disapeared.
Im feeling really good right now, its like doing all of this avoiding was like keeping a muscle flexed indefinatly and now I get to relax it. Just like in my shoulders but also in my brain.
I'm really looking forward to my future at this point.