Failing over and over

Father- daughter

It unwinds him how little, pink and fragile she looks on arrival. He has heard they usually look this way but he manages to see her as more exposed and his first instinct is to protect her. She is his and he doesn’t totally understand how he had contributed to the creation of a being just like the ones he had always adored, admired and feared simultaneously. He holds her in his arms and she moves and makes sounds trying to cosy up into this new resting place. He holds her tiny hands and they are warm then she opens her eyes shyly and looks at him and he is enthralled. It lasts only a moment, her glance, before she shuts them again to sleep but it meant a lot to him, she had seen him, maybe even recognised him. He suddenly realises that he had lusted over and hurt her grown type and he immediately feels sorry for it all and wants to make sure to keep her so much so that none of his type ever lust over her, ever.

He has got this in control; this being a father, amuser and protector thing. He really doesn’t have to do much; just carry her a few times when she’s awake. Maybe change a diaper or two, in which case his wife must feel really grateful and lucky that he is such a good father. His baby is almost always so happy when he carries her and she is happy to do as he says. She seeks him and is excited about anything he presents to her. She makes him laugh hard and thinks him her hero. He likes this position, this control over another being who is his.

Then she starts to want more. She wants more than his attention, his presence, his presents, his tricks. She's reluctant to try new summersault techniques and her body almost always hurts. It’s becoming uncomfortable to look at her or carry her because there are now two moulds on her chest. They just freaking grow up so fast, it blows. That’s what she says “it blows” what happened to the old time “it’s annoying”. What does ‘blows’ mean anyway? The baggy trousers and shirts he bought her now seem to be going down her box and she wears more of skinnies and tights and silk. He hated this loss of control over her and any iota of it, that he thought remained, flew out of the window the day he saw her coming from a party with make-up on and behind her were boys boys? boys!...

He doesn't know how it happens but she gets molested and his heart is broken; he sees her as damaged just like that girl he heard about…

He feels sorry and inadequate for not fulfilling his post as protector but instead of apologizing and helping her mend he becomes a coward. He can’t look her in the face so he avoids her like one would do a plague. In order to protect himself from his inadequacy; which really isn’t his fault, he makes her feel unwanted, ugly, used, inadequate. He turns his own angel into a leper in his house. She feels unimportant probably even like an object to be used. Becoming what society often refers to as a girl with daddy issues. In some off way, she finds she poses some sort of power over these men and decides it is better to make them pay for what is already being referred to as damaged goods. She convinces herself that it is a win-win situation.

A friend of her father sees her in a club or some other place he frequents when his wife is "stressing him out" and goes to tell her father about it. He sits and listens, stammers and raises his voice as he says that he has disowned her a long time ago. He never thought she could amount to anything reasonable anyway. His highest hopes was that at least she’d give him a rich in-law but apparently she couldn’t even do that much. Imagine, she doesn’t even speak the dialect well. She was probably a gift-the revengeful curse of an old girlfriend-sent to punish him. They laugh about this and a picture of her innocent- tiny- pink-fragile-self flashes through his mind and he chokes on his gin. His younger daughter rushes to get him a glass of water and she can’t look him in the eye. This must be a nightmare, his soul screams but instead of telling her ‘thank you’ he yells at her to get another glass of water for his friend who he catches watching her backside as she walks away.

 

rebound

He awakens my senses. I see clearer. I wake and breathe different; the air is cooler, the day a tad bit brighter. An almost permanent smile is glued to my face. The hairs on my neck suddenly acquire life. Almost everything tastes like chocolate and his voice creates a sort of soothing resonance that only my ears seem to catch.

We’ve all heard about the rebound. He/she is the perfect person we find right after a bad break-up or in the process of a break-up. They usually don’t last long; after the first bloomy moments when you completely get over your ex, the rebound starts to seem like just every other person that isn’t your ex. The fantasy fades, the perfection flaws, his/her reference to your ex-lover starts to sound hypocritical and then you discover you have probably made another mistake right after one.

I have heard of the rebound too but you know how something regular happens to you and you don’t want to admit that it is what it is. You are like 'mine has to be different from others. I mean no two situations are the same, right?' There were other prospective rebounds. This one won all others. I can’t help but acknowledge its presence, its stance, its intensity, its gut. It can’t be wrong if it feels so good.

They make you become more self-conscious. Are you tall enough? Is your ass the right proportion? Does your accent sound forced? Things you didn’t bother yourself with in your last relationship because you already landed someone. It dawns on you that you try harder now to impress. You stop to ask yourself sometimes if you should let yourself get consumed again. You start to wonder if you are cool enough to entice em, keep em, if you’d really want to keep em and then what exactly ‘keeping em’ implies.

Intense; the way he can be stoic one moment and then unexpectedly stare boldly, deeply. Just when I think it’s all in my head and that it’s a tease or just momentary, his gaze holds mine and I believe again. I want it to be true. The truth I told myself. Or is it true? I can love again, well…not yet though but it does feel good; all that excitement that come with new flames. I tell myself it is just for fun. Then I catch myself lingering a little too much on the memory of his face.