“So, I know this is going to be a rough subject for you. But, I hope you understand why exploring who you were as a father is important.”
“In a strange way, I’m at peace with it,” I say with sincerity. “Where do you wanna start?”
“I’ll start with a question. When you think of your children, what is the first thought that comes to mind and why?”
The word appeared immediately like a State Farm agent. “Regret.”
“Tell me more. What do you regret?”
I had so many thoughts race through my head. “I used my own father as a crutch. Whenever I would feel bad about not spending time with them, I’d tell myself that at least I was coming home.”
“If you felt bad, why didn’t you just change?”
A great question, and one I asked myself every time I walked into their rooms.
“I always told myself that I had more time. They were young, and with so much life left, it was easy to assume I could make up for everything.”
“What would you do instead of spending time with them?”
“Anything … I mean, sometimes I would just sit in my car. Once I was home, I’d feel bad about not spending the time and vow to do better.”
“Did you do better?”
“No, just the same excuses.”
“You do a great job of analyzing yourself. Did you ever know why you found it hard to spend time with them?”
I fiddled with my wedding ring, my eyes focusing on the grooves to avoid looking at Dr. Felt.
“I thought about death, all the time,” I start, struggling to convey an answer to a question I asked myself everyday. “Fatherhood was the first time I understood how my childhood would have consequences later in life.”
“Expand on that a little bit,” she says, earning her money by the second.
“Everything I love, I lose. With my mother, I was so connected to her, and eventually I had to learn that the woman I loved wasn’t coming back. I never wanted my kids to have that kind of love stripped from them. So my thought was, if I pushed them away, they’d—”
“—find it easy to move on.”
“Exactly.”
“Did you talk with Sara about it?”
“What do you think?”
Dr. Felt laughed at the question and rose from her chair. She did this last session, right before she took a verbal sledgehammer to the wall I built around my relationship with my mother. She paces back and forth, swaying her head and muttering to herself. “I think you tried to pacify her.”
“What do you mean by that.”
“In all of our sessions, I’ve had to pry everything out of you. Once you get on a roll, you’re fine. But you don’t show your hand out the gate.” She draws the blinds closed, like the start of a bad porno. “Am I correct?”
“You’re in the right neighborhood.”
Actually, she might as well have been a roommate with how accurate she was. Explaining to a spouse why you had trouble spending time your children is a delicate conversation, one that must be handled with care and maturity. Neither of the required ingredients are my strong suit. Instead of explaining how I felt, which would have deepened our bond, I claimed fatigue about work. In some ways, I was merely a sperm donor. I’d see her Facebook posts with pictures of their adventures together and get angry because I wanted to be a part of it, but I didn’t know how. I grew to hate myself because I was becoming the man I despised with all my being, but that little voice in my head convinced me I was better than him because I was still around. It only got worse after Grace was placed on the autism spectrum. Sara began openly wondering if vaccines were the cause, and every night became a fight. She was also pregnant at the time, and given how we struggled with a surprise pregnancy, the issues were only magnified.
It was the only time in my life I could understand why my father left, and the thought of having empathy for him made everything worse. To make up for the absence, I would spoil them with material things. That was a page right out of my mother’s book. It got to a point where the kids didn’t want dates with Sara because they expected a gift. This only compounded our problems. I was becoming my father, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it.
“Let’s say in the future, however long from now, you meet a woman,” Dr. Felt let that sentence hover between us, just long enough to make me uncomfortable before finishing her thought, “and you fall in love with her. Would you have children again?”
“No.”
Dr. Felt stopped pacing, and I could tell my answer surprised her. We’d been on cruise control up to this point, on the same page with just the formality of her closing arguments left.
“Why not?”
“I don’t have that kind of love in me anymore. Any love that’s left, wouldn’t be enough.”
“Don’t have or don’t want to have? Because I think it’s the latter.”
“Who the fuck are you to think you know what’s in my heart?”
“I’m the person that was a mirror to you twenty minutes ago,” she shoots back. “That’s who the fuck I am.”
I jump up out of my seat and get in her face, close enough to feel the warm air flowing from her nostrils. She’s pushing like she promised in that first session, and her unwillingness to even flinch lets me know that this was part of the game.
Shit was about to get real.
“So, you’re gonna throw that in my face?
“Let it out Miles.”
“Fine! I failed the first time around, and everyday I have to live with that,” I scream, my deepest sorrows bubbling to the surface. “Everyday I have to wonder if they knew I loved them! How sick is that?!”
“Keep going!” She’s matching my decibel level.
“I see fathers with their kids everyday and wonder why I couldn’t be that guy? Why I couldn’t make the library trips, or the movies in the park?”
“Don’t hold back, keep going.” We circled the room like UFC fighters in the octagon. “Why couldn’t you do it Miles, tell me.”
“Because I am him.”
I back into a wall and slide down, exasperated. Dr. Felt drops to her knees in front of me, wiping the sweat from my forehead, her fingertips soothing my throbbing veins. She pulls my head onto her shoulder and whispers something I’ll never forget.
“You’re not him.”
I’d had people tell me that before, but this time it held weight. For once in my life, I believed it. It wasn’t said to pacify me, or make me feel better about myself. This was a reconstruction of my identity as a human being, and I had one hell of a foreman. She holds me in her arms and sways, repeating the phrase every few moments as if my survival depended on it. For a second, I thought she was reading my mind because every time doubt would creep in, she repeats the phrase and soothe my soul.
“I don’t think I could ever give another child the love I withheld from them. ”
“Because you’re not him Miles. Think about it, he started a new family without blinking an eye right?”
I nodded.
“And you’re scared to even consider replacing the one you lost. That alone proves you’re different.”