Daddy Issues

Its almost 2:40am on the 10th of June and I’m up… to be fair I’m on my fourth truly after a bottle of wine.. this is probably going to be the hardest post I write simply because I’m going to hit on my daddy issues. Now, as a girl that left her dad behind when she was 5 … getting his love only through birthday presents for a few years before he died… Hugo Salvador Muraco Sr… I still needed him.. sometimes, I feel like I still do especially since I’m raising a boy.

Now, for me, my father was tall.. tanned olive skin like me ..he had blue eyes.. like the ones that you hear about in fairytales… anytime I think of my fathers eyes I think of a clear blue ocean with no end in sight.. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realize that I am a lot more like my father then I would like to be… from the petty moves that I make to my love for being in the kitchen. Now as memory serves, he was verbally, emotionally abusive of my mother, me and my brothers.. now from what I’ve learned from my mother, my father did try and love me, I just don’t happen to remember..

Now, a lot of what I am about to write I’ve kept tucked away in a dark part of who I am.. when I was young I was sexually abused, I turned 27 in May but I didn’t realize what had happened to me until shortly after my birthday.. something small happened and I flashed back ( like in the movies ) and I realized that after my father had died a close man in my life projected the lack of physical touch in his marriage on me, so he touched me in ways that

(growing up I thought) were okay because he was a man I trusted and I never learned otherwise from the one man that was supposed to show me how to be loved correctly.

My number one love language is physical touch and I’m starting to realize that maybe it is because I don’t remember my father ever being physically affectionate with me .. so even though the physical attention I was getting at 11 that wasn’t asked for I still somehow yearned for it.. when I lost my virginity I only gave it up because I wanted him to love me and not to lose the person I was with.. after some time I realized that my physical wasn’t enough because he went to other women, I wasn’t enough… at this point in my mind I wasn’t enough for my father and I wasn’t enough for the person I gave my all to … I ended up believing that my body was just to be used by men & I learned how to treat them the same way.

I had hit a point where it is very easy for me to give my body away for the sake of feeling something in a place where I don’t feel anything anymore.. I believe in God and that He is my heavenly father but the fact that I am human battles with that more often then I’d like.

I’m still learning to love myself, bruises and scars and fuck ups and all.. at the end of the day.. I’m overwhelming and imperfect and I don’t bet high enough on myself sometimes but I know I am destined for more.. I have given my body away to try and fill gaps that my relationship with my father could’ve filled if there was one.. I have given myself away to men that didn’t care about me, men that had other agendas and men that needed an ego stroke of their own and it goes back to feeling like my father didn’t love me & all I was good for was physical interaction.

I have a heavenly father that loves me immensely.. I had an earthly father that didn’t know how to love right but hopefully meant well, as I’m getting older and learning to love my own child I’m noticing that while I am a lot like my father and a lot of the way I handle things are self destructive, it comes down to loving myself and growing myself. I can’t change the past, my father died when I was 10.. the very first time I forgave an apology I didn’t get was for my father.

A lot of my baggage is stemmed from the lack of relationship with my father, to be in a place where I can work through it and grow from it is a big a deal for me.

I’m proud of that.