Back to Breathing.

I have not written a poem, a story, a novel...in so long...

I attribute this great block to being entirely too content.

When a writer is too content, a strange thing occurs:

Life suddenly becomes this day-to-day routine of work, activity, and sleep. They aren't too happy, they aren't too sad. They are nestled contentedly between the fullness of both polar emotions. It is an equator of sorts.

This equator is possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to a writer.

I am a writer, and it has finally happened to me.

I sit around every day, waiting, hoping some crazy tragedy or fit of elation comes to me. My best work has come from the deepest moods one could never wish to possess. My best lines were penned in my darkest despair, or my highest ecstasy.

I used to be an utter nihilist. My entire life was centered around my own pleasure. I took what I wanted, I threw away what I didn't want. I played music night and day, I took drugs and snorted anything I could get my hands on. I had my fill of men and women. I chanted from the Book of the Dead. I cried in misery for nights on end, fearing death and illness. I couldn't have looked in the mirror and seen anything uglier if I had squinted harder.

I was a hot paradox of emotions, an utter freak, and I could not have felt more alive--more free from chains.

NEVER, when I have been contented, did I write anything memorable.

I am in this limbo today. It makes my heart heavy to only think about it.

My financial life is stable. My romantic life is stable. Everything is so stable, stable, stable--bland, bland, bland...

My pen is like my very breath.
My breaths give me life.
I want to be alive again.
I want to be in pain again, or flying again.
I want something so vivid that it haunts me in dreams.

I want my identity back.

Blaine.

Blaine is my father.

The only compliment I could ever give him is that he is an excellent provider--and that is the entirety of the good things that he has done for me in my life.

I don't believe I have fully loved him for the majority of my adulthood.

A lot of people would be quick to judge me for whining about a man who paid for my livelihood until I was out of high school, and who kept a roof over my head and all that. A lot of fathers, one would say, haven't done so much for their children.

I'm not speaking about a lot of fathers, I'm only speaking about one. And I'm speaking about him from a place that is very personal, because I have always been too ashamed before.

One who provides is not always deserving of the title of "father".
I'll tell you why.

Ever since I was very little, my father has been physically and emotionally abusive to both my sister and I.
He has never been this way to my mother, only his two daughters.

His physical abuse ceased when I became old enough to understand that when he hit me, yanked me or grabbed me, I was supposed to call 911. I told this to him one day as he came at me in a rage, and since then he has never once touched me in anger.
I was about thirteen when this ceased.
I had been contemplating the courage to stop him for a few years by that time, because we were always taught "abuse" was punishable at school. They would lecture us about calling 911, if we knew someone was being abused. I would look around at everyone, wondering if they knew I was a child who was constantly physically and verbally assaulted in my own house...I would wonder if they were going through the very same things, and if they were thinking of trying to stop it.

When I did have the courage to stop it, I understood all the dynamics of what was going on.

He would prey on my sister and I because we were weak little girls. When I was young, I thought these outbursts were my fault entirely. I was a rambunctious child who was not easy to manage, and when he would attack me I felt that it was my punishment for misbehaving. He would often leave me bruised in a corner, with my mother yelling at him for "going too far".

She never helped me escape him.

It made him feel like a man to take all of his own anger, disappointment, and rage out on his two very young daughters--beings who could not fight back.

As I got older, he was exclusively verbal and emotionally abusive. This continues to this very day.

I'll be berated for being lazy, dumb, and useless--when I am putting myself through school, working and attending class five days a week. This happens nearly three out of every five days I see him.

I've grown eerily accustomed to it all, standing up for myself often, which leads to fighting.

When a dog is provided a kennel and food, but is still constantly beaten--does one actually think it won't bite back?

I'll bite back, and I'll keep fighting it until I don't ever have to see him again. I've already made very clear decisions about how I would like the relationship between my parents and my children to be. I cannot, and will not, subject them to the erratic behaviors of people who have no idea how to channel their feelings.

I don't want to blame him entirely. I know there must be a problem inside of him that he is unwilling to address. His behavior is entirely too unexplained for me to say he is an evil person, and not regretful of his actions. He is too quick to apologize after the things he's done, his conscious tells him that what he just did was very wrong--he simply does not know how or why he did it. It's a blind rage he goes into when he acts this way...

However, in the same instance, I cannot pity a grown man who has had an entire adult life to fix it.

Had he seen a doctor, or had he even took precautions to not loose his nerve at the drop of a hat...he and I's relationship would be so much better than it is today. I would not have so much distaste for him, had he at least tried to better himself.

I'm a woman now, so I must deal with these things with a woman's judgement--and pray to god that I'm doing it all the right way.

Such is where I find myself today.
I've been provided for, but maltreated by one of the people entrusted to love me unconditionally.
I'm biting back in the best way that I can, with patience and acceptance of what has happened--and a resolve for it never to repeat itself in my future.