Daddy’s Little Princess

I kept on trying to think for a while about where to start and what to say about my relationship with my dad. Living abroad means that I talk to him very little, and that ensures that I don’t really have to think about our relationship. I pushed it to the back of my mind, and I don’t really think about it unless I am going to Romania. Our relationship goes from one extreme to the other, and as I kept thinking about writing this, I realised how much of it I wanted to forget. As soon as I sit down to write, I shy away from it and do anything but focus on it. There is nothing else to do but start at the beginning and see where it leads me in terms of what influence my dad and his family had on me.

My gran talked about her childhood as the best time of her life. Her grandad was a priest, and he was a member of parliament for his local area. He had land and forest and money. My gran talked about growing up with peacocks in her yard. Now, she was inclined to… enrich?... embellish?... improve on the truth? My dad confirmed it, and there are news articles written about him; this one is for sure. While I would like to say that I have this great generational wealth and I just keep working to keep myself grounded, that is not the case. Communism has come to power, and because of their status, my gran’s family was considered an enemy of the state; anybody who was not from a peasant family was considered that. All of their wealth had been seized, and my gran’s dad and all the grown men in her family had been arrested and sent to labour camps to dig the Danube to the Black Sea Canal. This moment changed her life completely, and this is the moment she had always seen as the source of all her problems, as she was her daddy’s little girl, and then all of a sudden, she was not protected anymore. She stopped feeling safe. This is also the end of my generational wealth… Oh well, back on the grind…

My gran Olga married a man from her own village. She always said that he was beneath her station and nowhere near as rich as she had been, but that was all in the past, and this was now a new world where the peasant roots were the healthy ones and a woman needed to marry. My dad sometimes spoke very weakly of happier times, but those are not the stories that were told. My grandad was an alcoholic, a womaniser, and he was abusive towards my gran. There were long periods of time when my gran had to fend for herself and my dad. She has had to work some pretty tough jobs, she had to deal with everything by herself and endured poverty. There is a story about my dad being left by himself in the house, all night, at the age of four, on a night when cats were mating. He heard those awful screams all night with nobody to comfort him. He was so traumatised that he didn’t speak for a year afterwards.

I have very little memory of meeting my grandad in the house when I was a child, but I do remember him all around the city, having meals and having a drink. He was always saying that he had a plan despite the fact that he had no idea what he was doing. He was very hard on my dad and kept looking down on him somewhat. One time, my dad asked for money to get food before his salary, and my grandad said that it was not his responsibility to support my dad and that if he had children, he should be responsible for putting food on their table, which he never quite did for my dad. I remember him smelling of booze and asking me to kiss my cheek, and me not wanting him near me, him promising money in exchange, and then catching me and kissing my cheeks without my consent, really. To this day, whenever I smell the scent of spirits on the breath of a man, it puts me right off and makes me recoil, the same way that when I see drunk people being loud and unpredictable, I go into fight or flight mode because he was violent whenever he was drunk.

My dad had said that he wasn’t always like that, but that, at some point, he was taken by The Security, which is the Romanian Communist version of the KGB. He was arrested, and then he came back home a few days later, and he never wanted to talk about it. His hair turned grey, and he started drinking. That seems like a possibility, except I have memories with my grandad with jet black hair. Also, there was a story about how my grandparents had wanted to get a divorce, and my dad was asked in court who he wanted to live with, and he said that he wanted to live with both. My gran had always said that it changed her mind, and she decided to stay because of what my dad said. She always mentioned in passing that her mom had told her that everybody would talk, and it is shameful to get a divorce. I wonder how her life would have been if she had the strength then to let go.

I do have better memories of him from after he retired, and he moved to the countryside. I can remember going with him and camping out under the stars, by the fire, when he was watching his crops from warthogs. He was roasting corn on the cob for me over the coals and telling me stories. I liked helping him around the garden and sawing wood for the fire. He and grandma teaching me how to tend to vegetables. Going for walks in the woods and collecting berries for jam. I can remember going with him to hunt pheasants or ducks. I apologise as I sounded a bit posh there, but let me make it clear, they had no running water, and the bathroom was an outhouse. It was not quaint country living; it was Bear Grylls-ing it for 2-3 months a year.

While my grandad was a visitor in our lives that we never really got attached to, my gran was the important one in my life. Whenever my parents had to go to work, my gran helped with the childcare, and there is a wonderful story about how she would come back from the night shift she worked at a factory. She was really tired; she would give me a little bit of sour cherry liquor, and she would drink a bit herself to help us sleep. She never really drank; as a rule, she was medicating us. The joys of childcare in the 80’s.

I remember spending time with her growing up. I remember her always being quite proud of me and the way I was. She always called me her beautiful garden flower, and she would tell anybody who would listen about my academic achievements. Mine and my sister’s, of course. While she had a very good opinion of and how we were, she had a very skewed view of how a woman should be and how one should dress. She didn’t really take care of herself, never dyed her hair, and never painted her nails. She was a true country woman and had her hair covered. Her clothes were never stylish, just functional. She was not an ugly woman by any means, but you could tell from her features that she had been through a lot, that her life had not been an easy one. She had spent her life being jealous of other women who did all of those things. She would immediately say that those women were loose women and surely, they were going around town. I would hear her talk badly about other women, even if she barely knew them or just saw them on the street. Even further than that, she had gotten into fights with women who she thought were after my grandad or who my grandad was pursuing.

My grandparents never really had a peaceful life. They were always fighting with somebody, in a lawsuit with somebody else who had wronged them. They were always the victims, and everybody was against them. When they weren’t fighting each other, they were fighting the world. This is the environment my dad grew up in. His dad is hardly there, hardly caring, and his mom is fully leaning on him. She always said that they only had each other, and they had to hide from the world how they lived and what they ate. She would tell him everything, and they would plan things together and that continued for their entire life. She would come over, and she and my dad would go into the kitchen, and they would talk in hushed tones. It drove my mom crazy because she would be excluded from the conversation. My gran would expect my dad to obey everything she needed, and when reminding him that she brought him into the world and raised him and made him who he was, so he owes her, she would ask me to bring her the pain medication from her bag. She would either get a headache or her heart would act up. Duty or guilt will get the job done. She was unable to control her life; she controlled him.

My dad then met my mom and got married after 6 months of dating. My gran told this story that my dad was so handsome that he had women lining up around the corner to be with him, and she just went along the queue and picked my mom. For all her faults, she did like my mom and recognised that she was taking good care of her son. My mom… despised that story and despised my gran. It started from the wedding when my dad took half of the wedding gift money and gave it to my gran because she had another lawsuit she needed to fund. You would think that over 40 years would dull the sting of that, but this is not the case. It is just another token that my gran was always there with them. She was always my dad’s priority, and while he might complain from time to time, when she said jump, he would evenly ask how high.

We are going to speed up through them, getting married, having my sister, almost getting divorced and then deciding to stay together and giving it another try and get to the moment when I came in the picture.   

There is this story my dad likes to tell about me being born. He was home with my sister after my mom got dropped off at the maternity hospital. The doctor called, and he started to apologise to my dad. My dad got worried and asked what had happened. The doctor apologised again and said that he only brings girls into the world, gorgeous and healthy, but girls. They had a bit of a laugh about it since they were mates and he had helped deliver my sister as well. My dad had always been very open about wanting a boy, and he was disappointed, but he settled for what God gave him, aka my sister and me. When the story ends with “What can you do? It is what it is.” And it gets repeated again and again over the years as your parents keep on reminiscing about everything since the beginning of time. It starts to sound a bit like “you are not enough”, and you can never be enough because you are not the right gender. This is to complement the romantic account of how my mom lured him with her nice body and then put two millstones around his neck to lock him down. Fairy tales do come true.

My dad had felt growing up that his mom had picked his dad over him. He then got picked by my mom, but then we came along and lost the competition to us. On my side, since I felt that I couldn’t bond with my mom, I sought out my dad. I offered to watch him when he did DIY, help him with it, watch sports with him, go shopping for tools with him, go to different institutions and keep him company. As a result, my dad actually talked to me; he would tell me to put my head on his shoulder, and he would impart the wisdom that he wanted to impart. He treats me differently from how he treats my sister. He has patience with me, he takes my criticism better, he is more open to doing things that I want to do, like shopping while he rushes my mom and has a hissy fit for my sister. I have enjoyed spending time with him, and I have told everybody how my dad wanted boys, and he got me. Luckily, I am a bit of a tomboy, but the reality is, I had to be like that to be accepted in the beginning. He has looked down on things that I liked, and he wasn’t into. Even with food, if you like something and try to share, he will most often say he doesn’t want anything. If he offers something and you refuse, you don’t know what is good.

My dad would call me his little boy and call me Ionica, which is the male version of my name. I tried to tell him again and again that it is not my name and that I am a girl, but he kept on insisting, kept on calling me what he wanted to call me, and that made me angry. He just saw what he wanted to see, and I had no say in my self-image. On the one hand, you have the dad that says that I am smart just like him or “look at you, how amazingly you did that cause you are my girl,, complimenting himself, really, but beggars can’t be choosers.  On the other hand, you have the dad who has a go every time a mistake is made, which tells me that I destroy everything that I touch, that I don’t have respect for anything, that I am not grateful for anything, that I am good for nothing and unable to accomplish anything.

Growing up with him felt a little bit like being fathered by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. On the one hand, he patiently explains sports and DIY, makes jokes around the house and makes everybody laugh, and on the other, he is explosive, he is unstable, he will go from 0 to 100 in a second. And he will either start yelling, make a fuss and even hit my sister and me. How does one reconcile the only parent who tells me that they love me with the image of him walking towards me angrily? The parent who sees me crying because I already know what is coming, and you ask them not to beat you, and they are so consumed by their own feelings that they don’t care, are not impressed, or moved by it. To have their hand in your throat and for them to lift you from the crouched position you are in even so that the feet no longer touch the ground and then they tell you either that they brought you into this world and they would take you out or that they are going to go through you and while you are crying, all you can see is their jaw tensing, their teeth grinding and the look of absolute hatred in their eyes. This is from the person who tells you that family are the only people that love you, that you shouldn’t trust anybody because all they want to do is cheat and hurt you.

You know what the worst part is? That you tell somebody else, and they tell their story about how their dad was a heavyweight boxer who could not control his anger, and she would get beaten and get broken ribs because of it. You hear the story, and you think: “I shouldn’t complain. I didn’t have it as bad”. I think that is why I found the idea that one shouldn’t complain cause others have it worse so appalling. Look, compare, find others wanting and feel good about yourself when in fact we should just see that none of it should have gone through any of it. None of us should have been treated poorly, none of us should have been made to feel insignificant. That the problem was never us, it was always them, and they have taken their inadequacies out on us for no other reason than because they could. Because we were there, and we didn’t have any power to change anything. Where could we have gone? What could we have done?

I told my dad about being beaten and spoke to him about it, and he didn’t admit it. He said we were only beaten for lying when, in fact, we got beaten for not wanting to take a nap, for not answering questions about what we were doing fast enough, for saying the wrong thing, for trying to release anger when nobody showed us how to deal with it. When I challenged it, he said that I only focus on the negative. I FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE. It’s my fault for not looking on the bright side of life. What did I expect from a man who never apologised for his entire life? Our issues never got discussed, not further than him explaining how he was right, and you were wrong, and you will figure out in time that you don’t know enough. Whenever he doesn’t want to talk about something, he just acts like he hasn’t heard you, or changes the subject to what he wants to talk about. That is when he doesn’t just have a fit and leave the room, same as he did when we were young, when he kept telling mom that he was going to leave. He then comes back and acts as if nothing happened. He is over it; he doesn’t really get why I am still upset. No closure, no resolution, no explanation, no apology.

What is born of chaos will crave and create chaos; that house is always full of tension, and there is always a fight brewing. He made sure there was one every Christmas, Easter, Bank holiday, birthday, anniversary, and most days in between.  He makes jokes, jokes that offend, misogynistic jokes and when he is told that it is inappropriate, that he shouldn’t make them with his daughters, he doesn’t seem to get what the issue is. We were always discouraged from wearing makeup; we were always mocked when we had fitted clothes or short clothes, as we did not want to look good for ourselves but wanted to attract men. Men that he always looked down on as he saw them as competition and us picking them over him, never quite getting picked, never quite getting to be the centre of attention. So, he creates a fight, and then he is the centre of attention. If one can’t be famous, at least one can be infamous, right?

It is so hard to trust somebody and bear your soul to them when experience has taught you that every mistake will be recorded and held over you. Everything you say and do can and will be used against you at your most vulnerable time because you thought you knew better, you thought you were all grown up, but what you should have really done is whatever you were told cause mother and father always know best. Even better is when I am given something. It feels like a curse rather than a blessing when you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. For example, when I started university, I told my parents I wanted to get a job, and I was told that my job would be to study. They have decided to give me a “salary”, and this is so that I wouldn’t go with every Tom, Dick or Harry for a juice and a piece of cake. Not fiscal responsibility, not a lesson in budgeting, which would have been an elegant way to put it, a way to guard my virtue. I do like a bit of contempt with my control. It just gives it that oomph that makes it exquisite. Also, the extra excitement of a clock starting until I am told that they are sacrificing and giving me money, and I am ungrateful. Nothing in life is free. All we want for our money is your obedience. Funny how something like that translates to being out on a date and the guy talking about his money and how he can change my life, the things he can give me, and me tuning out because I am bored. Accepting anything from anybody means opening the door to their illusion that they control me, and I have no interest in selling my freedom. My dad always had that old school belief that the man is the head of the household, and he gets to call the shots because he is the breadwinner. Even more so when we told him about our partners being helpful or sharing duties, he would say that he should have a talk with them and tell them how they should behave. Imagine raising daughters and wanting their partners to treat them as less than…

It is even more obvious when they are so desperate to be with someone, and they are rattling on about how I am the perfect piece in their life puzzle and how I could just move in with them that night, and they miss the most important thing. They have never asked about my hopes and dreams, never questioned how they would fit into my life, but they expect that I will change everything to fulfil their needs. Just another man who is not interested in seeing me, truly knowing me, but thinks I owe happiness.

As we grew older, my sister and I knew that we wouldn’t ever want to be with a man like my dad. He always seemed to be loud, trying to impose his will, bullying everybody. I spent a long time thinking things over and talking about everything that he has been, and he has done, and I have released the anger and the trauma of everything from my body. I felt it like a gunshot wound through my chest that released the pain to escape from my body. I feel it still from time to time. The more I look at him, though, the more I begin to pity him. To see him as a weak man, bitter and scared, who always felt abandoned and left behind. First controlled by his mom and then controlled by his wife, trying to scream the loudest and cling to some modicum of control. It pains me greatly that he will never really see me, he will never really know who I am, he will never know my worth, and he will never truly see me shine. I cried for me, and I cried for him. It pains me to see that he will never leave his self-made prison, but I rejoice for myself, for I am free. I am free to make my life beautiful, furnish it with all the things that I haven’t been given before, and it all started with being able to look at myself and saying I love you; you deserve everything that you want, and I will protect you, and I will make every single wish come true. I am my prince on a white horse, I am my knight in shining armour, and I will save myself.