Big Hiding

My father was my best friend.  He was my mentor, confessor, jury, judge, hangman.  In the back of my mind he was the most terrifying person I knew, but up front and on the surface I trusted him more than anyone else.  Relationships broken by incest are complicated.  In the last few years, going about my day to day I feel almost nothing regarding my father.  It surprises me but I believe it is shock.  The system I had to carefully guard my mind from certain realities had started to break down, and my hero daddy turned into a monster before my eyes threatening to rape and kill his own daughter.  In a matter of seconds my perception of what I was in his eyes went from princess to whore.  I don't know if I will ever get over that.  I don't know if I will ever come out of shock.
I have never heard of any relationship quite like the one I have with my father, not even from people in incestuous homes.  They seem to have a better grasp of what is going on, or better distance.  I have never met anyone who so attached themselves in love to the person most dangerous to them.  I have read and been told that this is a survival mechanism, quite an interesting one, but I don't like to think of the love I had for my father as only a necessity to survive.  His was the most significant relationship I have ever had.  Perhaps in part because I was trained through force early on to confess everything to him- hiding any thought or action always resulted in punishment.  Hiding nothing always meant things would eventually be ok.  If I hid nothing he was my friend.  And at times he was the only friend I had.  His was always the strongest source of love I knew.
Strangely since I left home I have little feeling or personal memory of my life there.   I remember things of course in flashbacks, but they all seem distant and impersonal.  It is as if I have cut off all feeling of my life and relationships before age 22.  The numbness often prompts me to act as if it is no big deal, I can just move on, but I know it is quite the opposite.  Not feeling anything worries me about the enormity of what I am supposed to feel, as if it was too big and my brain just shut it out.  Perhaps I will get it in more manageable pieces down the road.