How I became an Orphan and what now!

I had a specific photo taken to open this post but Linda has the camera (what is it, wait until next post to see!) so this um, creative use of underwear will have to do instead.
The weekend comes and with the weather that means thaw for some, snow for some (-4 here last night, flurries predicted), but spring is a coming. Spring is about looking forward, at least it is for me. Over the last few days I have been blessed to find that love exist in this world; even between people who have never met. That love does triumph; not everywhere, not all the time, but sometimes, and this time, it did. I am sad, I am grateful, I am wanting to remind people that we are going for the long haul remember, like five or six months. But instead I will shut up and REJOICE(What would an EFM post BE without at least one cat girl picture?)!

Yesterday, at the end of our conversation, as he stood to go my father said I was like an animal and that no one could be friends with me without being hurt. That I hurt all who come near me. I talked on oxygen from a hospital bed and while I know that all people who are friends and love each other do end up hurting each other and making up, me as the pain bearer, the animal, might have been what the mirror told/tells me when I cut myself, but not now.

So I wrote him an email. The first line was, “I love you.” I shared how, through Janet I learned we can acknowledge loving each other as family, even if we don’t like some actions or even like each other as individuals.

My father had made clear he did not believe I was sick, or that sick, so I talked extensively about my disease (as he has not talked to me, or asked me any medical questions about my condition for over 16 months). Then I apologized. Because I have not been treating him and my mother with the same demonstration of care and love that I do with those close to me online. I plan for that to change. I asked for him to forgive me. To forgive is to acknowledge the pain another has caused you and let it go, let it fall away.

My father speaks to me as if I am still his object/child. There are commands, orders, and I put up with it before because I loved him. I didn't have the energy or time for this AND his denial now. So I spent an hour yesterday trying to demonstrate how he speaks ("That is correct." "You will come at 10:00." "You will do X and that will be acceptable to me."). So when he would make a command statement I would repeat that statement back so he could hear it. But before I could say three words I was ordered strongly, “No!” and again "No". In the email I said that all of this was nothing compared to the fact that with my level of illness, I wanted and should be with them, four blocks away in their condo and they should be with me because we are FAMILY. That we should leave all the bullshit behind except ‘family’ and 'dying’.

My father emailed me this morning telling me I was fired. He said that he will 'stop talking directly to you". Disease, illness, the asking of forgiveness all ignored. I ended my email as I started it "Love" - love from Elizabeth. There is not love from my father, nor acknowledges mine. I have been fired as a daughter by my father, or I guess now by a man who I share a genetic link. Does that hurt? hell yes.

Does that make me stop loving him? No. I think like Caesar, I will love him even while I acknowledge the knife he sticks into me. Et tu M……

So, what happens when Daddy doesn’t love you? Or when you have no daddy? I can’t and won’t try to control him; and I will still love him. In Victoria this weekend is tourist in your home town and I went to a local gardens to take pictures of flowers and fungus (for one of our readers who studies that). I will try to find the cycle in nature where growth is starting again, and remind myself to challenge MYSELF to grow. I will cry, but I can’t help that. My father might say I am an animal and treat me as poison itself, that talking to me is only pain so he must protect himself by.....cutting off his daughter? Golly, I guess that line of credit much less the kidney donation is pretty much down the proverbial toilet?

I am NOT going to have fake emotions, and yes, this hurt me and will continue to hurt me deeply, like a wound that never heals, pouring out of me, forever. But hey, FAMILY is who is HERE, who is in my apartment, and that is Linda and Cheryl and we are going to go out and have fun. And I am going to try my hardest not to concentrate on the family I don’t have, but the family and online friends that I do! And what I can do for them. Now is time maybe to say goodbye and thank you, but also to say, “I’ll see you” and “I saw this and thought of you” (worry not, I am not going on a spending spree, I meant around the apartment!).

We are taking off for adventure tomorrow morning, to see what this city has to offer and I just wanted to let you know. See, I care about you, because you care about me, and that is cool. I am going to get dressed up in my sexy, ‘look at me….if you dare!” clothes, and I am going to try to be exuberant. After all, things turned out okay for Anne of Green Gables and all those orphan girls in the movies. So what if I am an orphan? Orphans were always running off to the circus and having fun! Or in fantasy books they always turned out to be the hero/heroine. This is just another plot twist right?

I am going to try and find squirrels, and robins, I saw on yesterday but couldn’t get him to land on me. I want to find, if it is not snowing, a field of lavender and see if I can take a picture in it. I love the lavender fields. I think I like the honeysuckle too.

I will come back often to tell you of my/our adventures and to write some postcards to my family and friends. Thanks for being there for me, please, as I can, let me be there for you.