...my dad...

You'll have to excuse the next several entries. I'm turning 50 in two weeks, so it's time for the stereotypical introspective blog posts.

While I believe my mother (who died just after I turned 15) shaped my life in so many ways, it's probably my father who shaped it in most of the negative ways.

My father was extremely handsome; there is a photo of him somewhere - around 20 or 21 - and he looks exactly like Leonardo DiCaprio. He was the youngest of three, and the only boy. Family legends abound as to his indulgence; one memorable request for a pony during the height of the Depression was denied. He banged his forehead bloody on a heat register until said pony was made available.

His narcissism only increased as he grew older. Everything was about *him* My mother spent 90% of her life trying not to "upset SW".

My mother could not have children, and my younger brother and I were adopted. When my mother died in 1976, I have no doubt my father felt he was left "holding the bag". I've lost count at how many times I was told I wasn't wanted, or that I was useless and stupid (high school GPA just a little too low for admittance into the NHS), fat (5'10" and about 140, and yet he still would count cheese slices and measure the level of soda bottles to make sure I wasn't eating too much) and ugly (a matter of opinion, I suppose). Discipline slid into abuse and it stopped only the day he dumped me at the University of Florida on my birthday.

He taught me a lot of things - never to trust men *too* much, and conversely, to love too much and try to please too much in the desperate hope that maybe they'd stick around despite how useless and stupid and fat and ugly I was.

He taught me to doubt myself at every turn and to never believe I could actually *do* anything successfully.

Yet despite all of this, I manage to "take care of myself" as a single woman. Every relationship I've had has failed for one reason or another, but I haven't given up on finding "the one". I wish I could have had more joy from life, but that little voice inside of me - the one that sounds like my father - somehow always kept telling me I didn't deserve it.

I hope I can silence that voice during the next decades of my life, and not only find "the one", but to have joy during the search.