I had been doing better. Not fixed, not over it – but steadier.
Then her birthday came, and she posted on social media. It wasn’t the video that got to me. It was the music she put over it – a song with the line:
“I can do what I want / I can see who I want / I’m not thinking about you”
That was the punch to the gut.
As if she was never free before. As if our life, our family, was some sort of cage. And what stings even more is that it simply wasn’t true. As my sister said, I never stopped her doing anything. She got to pursue a career in writing for 8 years whilst I supported us financially. I encouraged her to play hockey, to do something for herself… Which is why hearing those lyrics felt like a public rewriting of our history.
It hurt because it painted me as the barrier she had to escape from. It hurt because people will see it and assume a story that isn’t real.
And still, she hasn’t actually done anything “wrong” by posting it. But one soundtrack and I was back to square one.
This is the part I’m still learning: you can feel like you’re making progress, and then it takes something as small as a 6-second clip with the wrong song to knock you flat again.
Naming it here is the only way I know to stop it looping quite so loudly in my head.
I need to detach, but it’s so hard when for 17 years I’ve cared so much about how she’s feeling and wanting her to be happy and it makes me feel discarded.
I have been doing well and I need to remember that. But this gave me an empty feeling in my stomach which I’ve not felt for a while. It’s a feeling of deflation, feeling light, untethered and disconnected.
Dad Mode: Half Time, Full Heart 