Break Me To Fix You

I was given another gem of wisdom over the break. An insight on an otherwise dark and confusing story. I said to a friend that I believed in true love; perhaps I think of it as something to be admired but not something I can achieve, indeed, everything around me points to evidence of the contrary. There is a man, or rather there is no longer a man, not even a ghost nor a shell, and he quarrels with his wife on almost every point. The man has his vision of what the world should be, and his wife has another vision. Neither can exist while the other survives. Finally the man gives up and leaves his wife and children behind. They will grow to know next to nothing of this man, not even what he looks like. Truly, not even a shell.

These three siblings grow and eventually begin to understand the truth of why their father left, but only the first truth. Why he calls them every week remains a mystery. Or perhaps not. What would life have been like for the 3 boys if both their mother and father had been present? Would they have learned to coexist? Would they have fought constantly? In the end, the father up and left his children to his wife. She has done well for them. Perhaps it is a good thing that the father left them behind. It has certainly saved his children many scrapes. But then why call every sunday morning at 11am? Why for so long? I remember not even being able to understand my father on the phone. What must it have been like, to witness the voice and thoughts of a boy you would no longer recognize as he slowly becomes a man, and know that there is nothing you can do to help him along? Those things you know, those mistakes you see him make and yet are unable to teach him what's right, why go through that. Is it really guilt? Could he feel so guilty that he would keep up his regular contact for 18 years, finally letting off when the boys begin to be old enough to really see and stand alone? Was it perhaps comforting to hear us and know that we were happy and fine? That for all the little things that bothered us meant that no great issue did.

Perhaps in the end, our father understood that the best thing he could do for us was to leave and spare us the fighting. Perhaps he then decided that, being gone, the best he could do for us was not tell us about something which, as children we would not understand. Perhaps my father loved us, loved me, and would accept being seen as the faraway villain rather than create another kind of conflict which he would have caused but would not be able to control? Perhaps in the end, I'm learning from him a kind of ultimate love, love at the expense of the self. It seems almost surreal, the kind of development that would only take place in a story. Perhaps this is the difference between the strength of a child and the strength of an adult. There is much to be admired in this new light. But you know, perhaps not. It could be that my father is just as confused and afraid as are we. But I want to believe that that is not the case. I've always wanted a father that was proud of me, and I wish for a father I can be proud of. I want to believe that the real story was something like this. It would be a kind of true love, truer than anything I've ever witnessed anyway. Perhaps its the only kind of love my father can give.