Proud To Be My Father’s Daughter

I sat in the tiny London classroom, shoddily sketching out the details of that deep blue woven couch situated in my mother’s living room. The one that, like it or not, I would be returning to once my semester abroad drew to a close and the time came for me to head back to the States. I anxiously looked around the room. Luckily all of my classmates were doing the same, either focused on their sketches or darting their eyes around the room to see what others were drawing.

I usually arrived at my Art in London class on Monday mornings in a state of disarray thanks to a heavy night of drinking the evening prior. During this particular class, my fellow students and I had been instructed by an acclaimed but thoroughly eclectic British artist to draw a “transformative moment in our lives.” It was one of those exercises where you knew things were going to get deep quickly, whether you liked it or not. I was relieved to keep a habitual spot in the middle of the class’s tiny semicircle, as I had a moment to collect myself before it was time for me to share my story. In this downtime, I could gauge the feel of the room, their receptiveness, and the intensity of the stories that were being shared.

I’ve always done well speaking in the spotlight. At least, when it came to speaking about anything besides my dad’s death.

Actually, who was I to make that kind of a statement, considering I didn’t really ever talk about my dad’s death? Growing up in a tiny upstate New York town known for its corn (seriously, look up the Eden Corn Festival), mental illness just wasn’t the sort of thing that was talked about, much less succumbing to it by way of suicide.

The scene I had chosen to (poorly) draw and share with my fellow undergrads depicted my mother delicately broaching the subject of my father’s death with me for the first time in 2003. I was seven at the time, and as my mother sobbed, attempting to gently explain the notion of suicide to me, that my father loved me indefinitely, but was very sick, I responded with almost no reaction. I couldn’t begin to understand the emotional complexities this would bestow upon my being, my adolescence, or my entire life’s identity. In a small town, before the 2010s’ wave of activism surrounding mental illness, it simply wasn’t something that was talked about.

Though I have no memories of him, I had always been familiar with a handful of photos of my father, and grew up accepting that he simply wasn’t around anymore. Though I didn’t question his absence heavily, the loss left me with intense panic and anxiety throughout childhood that manifested in breakdowns every time my mother was late to pick me up. Day in and day out, my mind would convince me that something terrible had happened to her, just like it had to my father. These were the early roots of what would develop into an ongoing struggle with depression, anxiety, and catastrophic thinking.

As my fellow students shared intimate, transformative moments of their life, I drew in a deep breath and grounded myself, prepared to speak publicly about the trauma of my father’s death for the first time in my life. As I described the scene I had shoddily drawn, a surreal wave of relief swept over me. I had to choke back tears and trip over my words at times — but by the time I had wrapped up sharing my sentiment, I realized that most of the room sported the same tear-streaked visage as myself. None of them knew this was my first time speaking to this trauma, and yet, I was overwhelmed by the empathy they demonstrated towards my story.

Not a day passes that I don’t think about my dad — how he would’ve impacted my life, what traits I may or may not have gotten from him, or how he felt towards me before he died. After my semester abroad, I spent a comparatively boring summer back in my hometown. In the process of cleaning, I came across my dad’s wallet. From the handwritten reminder of an upcoming psychologist appointment to the hunting license and the library card, the wallet felt like a little glimpse into all of the aspects that made my father who he was. Right at the front of the wallet, though, was a clear plastic bifold holding a stack of my baby photos.

While it may seem obvious that a father would keep photos of their child in their wallet to show off, this find quelled the uncertainty that had plagued me my entire life. My father had loved me, he had been proud of me — he ended his life because he was sick and not out of contempt for being a father, or any of the other horrible scenarios I’d cooked up in my mind. This certainty in my father’s love, mixed with the empathy and understanding displayed by my peers in that art class, have finally allowed me to accept and grow with my trauma, rather than fight against it. That feeling of anxiety about having to divulge the details of my father’s death no longer gnaws at me when I meet a new group of people. My father’s tragedy is inherently a part of who I am, but it does not define me