AN UNFOUNDED FEAR.....

One more essay from the archives..... Since this was written my father has successfully gotten me married off to a great guy who is pretty much as tolerant and patient as my dad is.....

Ever since I was sixteen I've been afraid that my father is going to die. Not just someday, but very soon. Like tomorrow or next week. You see, I'm a daddy's girl through and through. He has always been my hero and the most important man in my world. He's the only man I can completely trust to never break my heart and I can tell him anything.

So, this fear causes me to suffer from horrible anxiety ---- to the point where I sometimes cant sleep because I'm so worried that something might happen to him. It's like these icy fingers are squeezing my heart so tight it takes my breath away. My dad likes to laugh and tell me that he has feet of clay and he's not what I think he is. The thing is, I know he's not perfect and and I love him more for it. He has been trying desperately to get me married off since I was twenty-one. He's slowed down a little now that I'm thirty-one, but only a little!

I mean, really, what other man would be so tolerant of all my quirks and so understanding of my irrational fear and panic episodes that occasionally haunt me? What other man could know absolutely everything about me and still love me unconditionally? I fear no one, really, and perhaps that is the greatest fear of all. To be unlovable. I started out with so much love to give, but soon changed with each abusive relationship I weathered. I trusted these men with my fears, hopes and wishes only to have them thrown back in my face. Basically, each time I finally trusted someone, the rug got pulled out from under me. The scariest thing in the world to me is to lose the one person in my world who makes me feel like I'm good enough simply because I'm me.

I'm afraid that I wouldn't know how to face tomorrow without knowing that he was a phone call or a twenty minute drive away. This all must sound so pathetic coming from a thirty-one year old woman, but it's also brutal honesty. Besides, like the old saying goes, "... a son will leave when he takes him a wife but a daughters a daughter for the rest of your life..." My dad and I joke about that saying often. I tell him that I can't even imagine what he's thinking when hears that phrase, and being the great father that he is, he simply smiles and and tells me that I'm his favorite daughter. And most times I don't point out that I'm his ONLY daughter.....