NUMB | dealingwithdaddyissues

I took my youngest sister to see the new PIXAR film INSIDE OUT over the weekend. Almost everybody knows I’m a big kid so I was probably more excited to see it than she was.

I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let’s just say it gave me a better understanding of how I personally process and deal with occurrences in my daily life and how one begins to feel NUMB.

Fathers Day was Sunday and as I mentioned in my last post I don’t think I ever spent a single Fathers Day with my biological father. I went by his brother’s house where I saw him last, in March, hoping that I could at least say we were in the same room for Fathers Day. He wasn’t there.

I asked my uncle’s girlfriend if he had gone down south with his other brother for the weekend and her facial expression let me know that he had returned home, and by home I mean JAIL.

I so nonchalantly continued my conversation with her about how there must be A/C in jail (my uncle’s don’t believe in A/C) because he’s not ever out in the summer months. (I haven’t cared enough to notice that pattern; she pointed it out to me). I’ve become numb to his circumstances and lifestyle.

I’ve been hurt by other men in my life. Sometimes I cry. Most times I write, or vent to friends, but then I get numb; and it’s as if that person never existed.

Even the happy memories of them no longer fill me with JOY.

I looked back at some photos of me with Buddha, and tried to remember that I didn’t always think of him with such disdain. I was smiling in most of the photos. All of which were taken at least 15 years ago. Even seeing myself smile in photos doesn’t make me think of him in a positive light. But then again, you can’t really expect to feel consumed with happiness from photos you don’t remember taking with a man you’ve rarely seen in the past two decades of your life.

I don’t fear him.