Dad, dada, daddy.

Today was Father's Day. I dont know how many actual other countries were celebrating with us but I feel like it was a day that went completely over my head. I lost my father the year I turned 16 and have been so angry for so long, frustrated at the fact other people had something to celebrate and depressed as soon as the advertisements were hanging from shop windows and plastered all over the media. I was hurt, jealous and just a bundle of angst and I didn't get like that this year.

Maybe it was because I was (and am) busy, or because I was upset and fuming about so many other things or I've just built an immunity to ads. But maybe not. I knew the holiday was coming; I abused a Father's Day sale to buy a ring for my partner. So maybe this means Im getting older and more mature.

I don't really know why but the thing is the ads and the sales - none of that hit me in the feels. What did were the Facebook posts. I hate Facebook posts for so many reasons: they're gloat-y or misspelled or dramatic. I often overlook birthday reminders because if I didn't actually care to remember, that's my fault. But today... I dont even know.

It made me think; did I want to post a status about my dad? Did I want to dig out all the pain and frustration and loss and anxiety that flowered 6 years ago because of one commercialised holiday? Nope. I wanted to write.

My father is a man I honestly barely understood. I wasn't old enough to understand that people are different with different people when I lost him. My parents were divorced shortly after I was born, just a handful of years. I never knew much about his work. What I did know was that he was my Dad.

He taught me how to understand language lying on the floor of his home office with a jotter from school, defining words for myself. He would cook with love that I only hope of replicating; I never learned how to cook from him but I have come to know what cooking-as-therapy was to him and is to me. I taught me that you do not borrow money from a parent because they are there to support you; they expect no paying-back-business. He also taught me that you have to live with your choices - especially when your choice was to put your hand through a window.

And by extension, that you never want to try to eat a hotdog with one hand because the other is bleeding

.

I dont know how to feel half the time about my Dad. I heard awesome stories about his escapades, awful stories about my parents' soured marriage, the legacy of him as a teacher to some and as a co-worker to others. But at the end of the day, while I no longer lose sleep missing and mourning him, I do wish that he was still around. I don't know if I could have been the person I am today if he was but it's gonna suck having a family of my own with only stories of him to raise them on. Happy Father's Day.