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Flawed.
Like a wonky tip of a hand-drawn five-point star.
It’s not something I have ever spoken about with my dad, because he did a fantastic job raising me and I know he worried about me when I was growing up without a mother, but he went above and beyond to ensure he was always there for me—school plays, football games, swimming lessons, everything. He showed up for me, physically and emotionally.
He was the best father, but my mom was not someone we spoke about, not in depth anyway because my mom and dad weren’t together that long and separated not long after they got married, so I’m guessing he didn’t know her that well. Although my dad was always a silent and thoughtful man. Deep.
He also struggled with his own feelings too. It must have been difficult for him. Eighteen years old, divorced with a baby. I can’t comprehend how he did that as well as working at the hotel and studying for his degree via distance learning. That still blows my mind. What a guy.
He framed a photo of my mom for me and it sat by my bedside my entire life until I came here. It’s now tucked safely inside my wallet.
I used to stare at the photo, wondering what my mom moved like as she walked, what her voice sounded like, if I’m like her in certain ways, if she said things in a particular way.
If she loved me.
I will never know because she disappeared off the face of the planet many years ago and she stopped sending me postcards from the many places she visited.
She was flaky, inconsistent, and never once on any of her postcards did she tell me she loved me. So I guess that answers the did she love me question.
This is something I know now.
I didn’t know that when I was a young boy, though.
I’ve often thought that it’s an odd thing how two people made me, but I only know one of them, and for me it’s weird not knowing her, to know you’re part of someone’s DNA but not part of their life or that you didn’t matter enough for them to stick around.
While my father loved me harder and deeper than any love I have ever known, that little one percent of me, the little boy who looked on at friends surrounded by their mothers, he seeks the warmth, a hug, and the love of his mommy. Still.
I don’t need it, but that one percent would like to know how it feels.
I’ve also often wondered if that’s the reason I have never had a long-term relationship. For fear of being rejected or abandoned because maybe once they get to know me, all my flaws and peculiarities, they will leave me. Because I was not enough or too much.
So I push people away before they get too close and before they discover I’m not the one for them.
Or I do the other thing, which Jacob called me out on. I become a bastard, so they give up on me, anyway.
It’s a fucked-up situation and I made a list of the three girls I want to apologize to when I return to Scotland. It’s time I made amends.
Traveling, however, has given me the perspective I needed. To see that I need to open my heart to hope and possibility and to stop pushing people away. To stop thinking everyone is going to leave because they don’t. My father stayed with me through thick and thin and I have evidence all around me of my new aunts and uncles. Eva’s sisters and partners, Eden and Hunter and Ella and Fraser, have shown me that true love, deep everlasting love, is real and worth fighting for.
I crave the level of intimacy they have together.
I want that for myself.
And I want someone who accepts me as I am, flaws and all. I’m finished with pushing people away.
Especially Violet.
Because I think she feels the same way about me too, at least I hope she does.
However, we have an expiration date and that guts me to my core.
Nothing makes any sense and my head has been reeling all day.
Violet cuts through my sad thoughts. “Want to live life on the edge?” Violet swings her passenger door open.
“What are you thinking?” Christ, I’m so tired. I’m fucked if I know where she gets her energy from. I’m pretty sure she pulls it from the gravitational energy from the earth’s magnetic field.
As soon as we jump into my car, she places her purse on the floor and just as I’m about to press the push start button, she clumsily climbs across the center console and straddles me.
