Anger

At my parents' house this afternoon, our friends Doug and Deb were over. I say friends, but they're my parents' age, so they've been more like an aunt and uncle to me. Deb commented on how good I was looking. My father very proudly mentioned that I'm down over 50 lbs., now. I said that yeah, my knees say "thank you."

Dad said, "I'll bet Pete says thank you, too."

You have to understand, I was in the laundry room when he said this. So I didn't see his expression, the looks on his faces of everyone else present. But there was this moment of dead silence, like nobody could believe he'd said it.

Except me. I could believe it.

And as my mother pointed out that Pete has been dating me since I was much heavier, and as Deb stepped in to play peacemaker and mentioned that Doug loved her however she was, but they'd decided they were both too out of shape for the lifestyle they wanted to have, I sat in the laundry room and tried to decide how I felt.

I love my father. But it took me a lot of years to like him. When I was fifteen, I lost weight for the first time . . . and because I was given an unrealistic goal, I gained it all back over the following two years. He was always so proud of me when I was losing . . . and then so silent when it came back. That silence became condemnation. I had never realized how much I missed his approval until I actually had it. When it went away, I was pretty violently depressed.

My Jenny Craig nag (consultant) asked once, during this process, if my family was supportive. I said my mother was very supportive--she promised to buy me new underwear as long as I was shrinking out of the existing stuff. And my father . . . said nothing. And that was for the best. Because nothing he could say would make me happy. Not praise, not anything. Not after the last time. And I'm smart enough to know it.

Today, he said something. And I was not depressed. I was angry. Angry because I felt it was a sexist comment, because neither Pete nor I are lightweights, and I certainly wouldn't feel any differently about him if he gained or lost weight. Angry because I am an intelligent, compassionate, strong-willed, and vibrant woman, and with one sentence my father tried to reduce me to my weight. Angry because it took me twenty-one years to realize that I was beautiful, and that it had nothing to do with what was outside. Angry that he thought Pete could be that shallow. Angry that in the last fifteen years, one of us has learned to be a grown-up . . . and it's not my father.

It took me twenty-five years to learn to love myself in certain ways that are healthy. Once, that careless sentence would have crippled me. Because I would have believed him. I am stronger than that, now. And in that strength, I find anger.

I have spent nine years deciding that it takes two people to have an argument, and I refuse to be one of them with my father. I have spent a great deal of time unbuilding an internalization of my father as the enemy. He thinks my sister and I see him that way. We may have, once, to an extent. While he may have been unwittingly cruel with his words at some points during our childhood, we're all guilty of that, sometimes. Parents are human, too. He was never really the enemy.

Today, I finally realized that while he's not our enemy . . . in a way, he's his own.