Nothing like starting a new blog on one of the most bleak topics ever… but here it goes. I created Magpie in the City as a new venture, a way to express myself and open up; something that has proven to be a bit of a struggle for an INTJ as myself. Just a bit ago I received word from my sister that my father passed away this past weekend. It’s not like we were ever really close.

It wasn’t until 2007 that I met him for the first time, let alone spoke with him. During the past 9 years I am still able to count on one hand the number of conversations we’ve had. I feel blindsided. They say the cause of death is an overdose on painkillers and antidepressants which really doesn’t surprise me in the least. What does surprise me is this emotion I’m experiencing. While I can honestly say I’m not mourning him, I am mourning the idea of him. The man that I have always pictured in my head as a child to be my father, the same man that was off in ‘Africa’ on wild safaris (which was my explanation to other mean-spirited kids who teased and prodded at where my father was), the same person that 8 year old me would have given anything to know. Alas, none of those things were my father; he was a drug addict, bi-polar schizophrenic, who fathered 5 children and didn’t bother to stick around for any one of us. Just a constant disappointment to those hopeful eyes and hearts that wanted their ‘daddy’.

Overall, I feel like I just got sucker-punched. There’s that pit in my stomach, I feel sad. Definitely wouldn’t call this a ‘broken’ feeling, but certainly ‘chipped’. Outside of the time when I was really young I’ve otherwise just been of the mind that he unequivocally didn’t exist. So why then am I missing and clinging to this ‘daddy’ ideal? I’ll tell you why… rather, at least what I think is why.

I am mourning a lost ideal. Sure, call it a childhood daydream, a persona… hell, call it an imaginary friend. I don’t care. I am mourning the fact that the tiniest shred of hope that was still left in my soul that I would ever have a normal relationship with my father, just died right along there with him in the addiction. I am mourning my optimism that someday he might overcome and at least have one normal (and sober) conversation with me. I am mourning for my sisters and late brother as I know they too are reeling in this seemingly foreign emotion. I am mourning for my inner child. Something that was merely a thought, rather a culmination of thoughts, sewn together over the course of decades into some makeshift psychologically acceptable reality of coping. Do I have ‘daddy issues’, absolutely not. I choose to think I am a well adjusted functioning member of society. My childhood was a good one, I was surrounded and embraced with love and support from an amazing family. There’s always been that want though, a want to feel loved from my father rather than rejected. I digress, it is what it is and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if anything else was different in my life leading up to this point. I am mourning and that’s okay. This feeling won’t last forever.

This is an odd emotion and I thank you all for sticking around. I promise not all posts will be this freaking dark.

Ciao,
Morgan