I’ve been crying for the past couple of hours. I don’t know how to explain it. I won’t even try. All I know is my heart just exploded for my father whom i don’t really know, but i just realized a completely new perspective…his. You see I always thought I understood what was going on in this planet and I suppose prided myself in understanded where others where coming from, but men where a bit of mystery to me…that was before the the movie ” Riding in cars with boys” invaded my scences. This 2001 movie had flown under my radar because frankly put, I probably wasn’t ready to watch it. To the neive viewer the true essence might just pass you by, but I sit here weeping because for me, I finally saw something I’d never thought of seeing before.
When I was singing in New Orleans, I passed by Steve Zahn & later he was enjoying my bands music twiddling his finger in the air in appreciation. At the time, I recognized him as that “funny guy” but as of tonight, now he’s the actor who portraid levels of sensativity that has brought me to absolute tears. Someone who was able to embody the sensativity of that of a man who struggles with addition and wants so desperatly to love his children…maybe the best way is to remove himself from their lives…watching Steve play the role of a father who under the spell of drugs left his family and his only son. He finally see his only boy again….his epically sweet, smart and suddle smerk was enough to … I don’t know… bring understanding to even this battered and bruised ego. I finally saw what possibly my own father has been feeling all these years. How can a man who has 4 beautiful daughters and one loving adoring son leave and turn his back? Maybe, because like that of the man Steve Zahn portrade, was in a position to know better. To know that it was best to walk away before things got worse. I’ve always been mad about why my dad left and now my own two marriages later I, of course, see myself quitly blaming him and my mother at times for my decitions, which seems silly…but now, maybe it’s a bit more understandable.
The look in Steves face when he says the words to his son that it was best that he left, dropped me completely. In every since of the word. I felt my heart colaps and my mind flashed to every father-daughter scene I could remeber almost faster than I could bare…something about his innocent and “wanting to do right” look cut me … cut me deep. oh shit…
I now have more pitty on my biological father than I have ever before. I’m not mad, but I understand and it is almost unbareable. Unbareable to step or walk in his shoes. To live with an addiction, no matter what it is, is an incopacitating alment that you KNOW is stealing from you … you actually watch everything you love leave your hands…willingly…but against your will. And to know that everything or everyONE is better off without you in the picture is got to be the hardest decition any man could ever make.
Parents love doesn’t die. But sometimes that means because they are not perfect, the leaste they can do is walk away. It’s not because they hate us, but because it’s what’s best. I’m an absolute teary mess tonight…because my dad walked away a long time ago and I’m just now getting it.
Ila Selene 