Disappointment

As I've said before, my father was not active in my life before he died.  He had personal issues, so it's not like I necessarily missed out because he was full of drama.  He definitely had his good qualities, but they got overshadowed by such realities as his cars getting repossessed, getting thrown out of bars, and getting fired from numerous jobs.  Even as a kid, I understood that he wasn't the best role model in the world, or even the 10,000th best role model.  I tried my hardest to focus on his good qualities and be glad that I didn't have to personally deal with the ramifications of his poor choices in other areas of his life.

Still, he perpetually filled me with disappointment.  I know I didn't technically write that properly.  No one can make you feel anything. You choose how you handle things.  I know this.  But when you're a little kid, you can't help some of your feelings, and I think a kid can be filled with disappointment.  It disappointed me when he didn't call me for my birthday, or his Christmas checks bounced, or he said that he'd go get a pizza and not come back for 8 hours, or he dropped me off at the library and forgot about me for hours.  See a theme of him forgetting about me?  I only spent two weeks out of a year with him (technically his parents since he lived with them), but he still forgot about me in those two weeks. That kind of stuff does disappoint a kid.  I did intellectually understand that my dad operated like a 5 year old, but it still disappointed me that I couldn't count on him...ever.

His younger brother, my uncle, had fewer problems than my dad.  I wouldn't necessarily call him the most "with it" person, but he seemed light years ahead of my dad back when I was a kid.  My uncle, for instance, would remember to feed me, and he wouldn't drop me off and leave me in a public place for hours on end when he went to the bar to get drunk.  When you're used to my dad, my uncle seemed almost like a pillar of responsibility.  The thing with my uncle, though, is that he was always full of unfulfilled promises.  He was a man of talk and not of action.  So was my dad, but if my dad couldn't be trusted to follow through on something simple, you knew not to take any talk of the future seriously with him.  But, see, my uncle would say seemingly not unrealistic things that were completely within the realm of possibility...and then not follow through.  With people like that, it takes longer to not take them seriously.  They have a good talk.  The first few times they don't follow through, you let it slide and make excuses for them.  After the tenth + time, you start realizing that people like that are at their core almost as unreliable as my dad but just disguise it better. 

Since I live across the country from my uncle, our interaction is very limited.  We talk a couple of times a year.  It's funny because every time we talk he laments that I'm the only living relative other than his son, and he likes keeping that connection because I'm the only one who remembers most things that happened in the past.  Yet he doesn't call.  We talked in early August.  At the time, he assured me that he'd call on Labor Day Weekend.  After decades of unfulfilled promises by him, I knew that he wouldn't call when he said he would.  Because that's just how he is.  I didn't dwell on Labor Day when he didn't call, but about a week after I remembered that he said he'd call.  Oh well, I didn't expect him to anyway, but it still annoyed me because he said he would.

He actually did call...on December 13.  I'm pretty sure the only reason he called because his wife prompted him to get my new address for their Christmas card.  On that call, he said he would call on Christmas.  Uh huh, sure, I've heard that one before.  And guess what?  He didn't.  Not that I expected him to, but it still disappoints me just a tad.  It adds one more small thing to a humongous pile of disappointments having to do with my dad's side of the family.  Yeah, I know I could have called him.  That really wasn't the point, though. 

So all of this disappointment was in me when I was a teenager.  Fair or unfair, right or wrong, I had compartmentalized it all simply as women were infinitely more reliable than men.  Men just disappointed you.  In my first few relationships, this was definitely the case.  The guys did disappoint me.  Part of it was definitely that I picked slackers that had similar qualities to my dad and uncle.  But part of it was me.  I went into those relationships almost expecting to be disappointed.  And whattya know, people will meet the expectations you have for them. 

I never wanted to get married because I didn't want to be with a sorry ass slacker that I'd have to take care of.  Who wants to babysit an adult like my mom babysat my dad until she got fed up with him?  I realized that I wasn't going to compromise on any of the qualities I wanted in a life-long partner.  I was worth someone of high quality who deserved me as much as I deserved him.  I deserved someone who wouldn't disappoint me on a regular basis.  I would date, but unless I found *the one*, I wasn't going to get married.  I'd rather be a happy spinster than a miserable person in a marriage I hated. 

When I met my husband, I was doubtful.  He was good in those many ways that people don't obviously recognize.  If you ask a teenage girl of 18 what she's looking for in a guy, she'll probably say good-looking, has money, good future.  My list was a bit different, and it was shaped from my early experiences with my dad and uncle.  It was a list that had such things as reliable, dependable, fun but not crazy wild, pays his bills, does the things he says he's going to do, a solid work ethic, attractive, motivated, educated, industrious, helps the old lady at the supermarket to reach something on the high shelf.  While I never actually wrote out the list, this is my mental measuring tape that I'd put every guy up against.  And honestly most failed miserably.  Miserably.  Even the good ones I had met couldn't score all of those on the list.  They were good enough to do so-so on the list, and I pleasantly passed the time with the guys who at least got a 50-75%.  I honestly never thought I'd meet someone who would get 100%, and if I did, he'd most certainly be married or gay or in the monastery.  But when I met my husband and realized he did fulfill all of my nerdy, thoughtful 18 year old criteria for a guy, I had a sense of hope that I wasn't resigned to a string of 50%ers for the rest of my life.  I wouldn't have to compromise.

So this post really comes down to wanting to thank my dad and uncle for filling me with such disappointment that I knew what I did not want at an early age in a life partner and making me realize what really was important.  Thank you.  And I'll take bets on when my uncle will call next.  I'm thinking February or March.