Get Over It.

I hate those three words. They are usually said when you really CAN'T get over something. That's why you're talking about it with someone... which gives that other person the chance to be condescendingly wise and say, "Get over it." I can't, dammit!

One of those many things i couldn't get over was my less-than-ideal relationship with my father. Usually, i just mentally shrug the thought away, be all cool about it and come up with cliches such as "It is what it is" and other such nonsense. But inside, i knew that i was hurting.

This particular soul-searching episode started on my birthday. Well actually, it was a few months before that when i realised that my once-in-two-years visitation with my Dad was coming up. He did the whole "i love you, i miss you" ending to the phonecall, and i found that i, for once, couldn't parrot back those lines to make him feel better. I mean, he didn't even know who the hell i was to be comfortable making those pronouncements. I was damned if i was going to continue paying lip-service to this non-starter of a relationship.

Anyway, speed-forwarding to my birthday: The day began with a two-hour long phonecall with my one-and-only brother. Now, things had been on pretty thin ice with him ever since the London trip, so it was good to be talking again. however, before i knew it, the conversation shifted to my relationship with dad, and how nervous i was about meeting him, and how i wished we could have an honest dialogue, etc etc. And suddenly, as if a nuclear bomb just went off, we were screaming at each other. He was yelling at me for not being completely honest about my fuck-ups with dad, and how i always blamed him for everything, etc... and then that conversation segued almost seamlessly into how Mom was the real screw-up in the family, and how she has changed me into a man-hating, closed-off woman.

It was ugly.

The day ended with my Mom and i fighting about how i could let my brother (and, by extension, my Dad) get to me like this. Hadn't she done her best to raise me? Hadn't she been a good mother? Did i regret choosing her as my parent? As expected, that conversation also moved very quickly into weep-territory. I was exhausted.

All i wanted was to have an honest conversation with my biological father, and see if i could get some kind of closure regarding my non-relationship with him. Was it so terrible a thing that i needed coaching lessons from my brother or emotional blackmail from my mom?

Anyway, that day i decided that come what may, this time, i will get to know my Dad, and i will let him get to know me. And then we'll see if a 'real relationship' is a possibility. Either ways, I was ok because i would know that i gave it my best shot.

Speed forwarding to D-day: I met my Dad and Susan, his wife, at Goa. And to cut a long boring story super short, i did what i promised myself i would do. I talked to him, I listened to what he said. I held no judgements till the time we came back. And this is what i realised:

My dad is... flawed. He seems to have almost-completely forgotten his 45 years in India in favor of the 18 years he spent in USA. From this, i gather that India must have been truly traumatic for him. I also realised that there is so little he remembers of our life together here, that he probably wasn't being deliberately hurtful. What a letdown. Imagine being totally jazzed about reliving your best/worst memories with the most significant man in your life, and hearing him say, "Really? we did that? huh."

So, i spent 4 days with my Dad and my step mom and discovered that while he wasn't someone i would go out of my way to stay in touch with, through some inexplicable twist of destiny, he had married someone who was.

And walking on the warm sands of Baga beach, watching the two of them together, i felt the bonds of angst melt away. In the end, thankfully, i got over it.