kellyrenee35's Journal

I had a fairly decent day yesterday; up until my Dad called. He lives in Washington State and I in Oklahoma. Since my parents split up when I was 6 or so, I've had a pretty immature image of him. Like he was perfect and could do no wrong! Though that image has subdued alittle as I have gotten older, I still let everything he says get to me in one way or another. He calls me everyother Saturday and has faithfully since I moved to OK. I revolve my everyother weekend around his call. The past few times he's called he's seemed like in a bad mood but I just blew it off. I joked a lot with him trying to cheer him up. I have this habit of I like to exaggerate things, such as I took out a personal loan and my payments were either $224 a month for 2 years or $429 for 1 year. I was talking about it w/my dad and told him that I didn't want to pay $500 a month and he got all irate saying that's impossible and blah blah blah;  I explained to him that it was really $429; not $500; yesterday we were talking and I just applied for this court clerk job and a friend of mine, Darrel, said I could use him as a reference (his wife had been a lawyer here). Darrel told me I could put his wife down and I told him I felt funny about that since she had tragically passed away from a car wreck. Anyhow, I was explaining that to my dad and I told my dad Darrel meant well by that but he's almost 80 and doesn't always think right! Dad asked me exactly how old Darrel is and I said 73 I think.  Again, my dad got all irate. "Do you ever listen to yourself?" is what he asked. "How would you like it if someone said you were almost 50, (I'm 37).  I told him I was more or less joking with that and that i've exaggerated for so long like that I do it out of habit now. And okay, maybe I shouldn't do it but was it really worthy of making me feel totally stupid? Worthy of now everytime I talk, I'm gonna hear his voice in the back of my mind, wondering if I sound stupid! Luckily, I'm old enough now I can reason that out but when I was younger I could not! My dad is supposedly "borderline genius" and what not and from what I've seen he hasn't made any mistakes. Not major ones; except for getting fired from Ronald Reagan when he was ATC and I don't totally understand all that so even that I don't know if it was a mistake. But, he rebounded quickly and became a bigwig at a major insurance company. He's very well off financially He's also very judgemental and critical of others.  As a result, I think I'm very judgemental and critical of myself. As for my head injury, he doesn't even talk about it; never has. It's never been anything I could talk to him about. Which might be a blessing in disguise, b/c more than likely he'd make me feel absolutely horrible about it. I've always lived to have his acceptance and approval and I guess to the extent that he can give it, I have it and I guess I have to accept that! He initally made me cry with the conversation but I was able to stop  and think it's as much his problem as it is mine. While I might exaggerate some (mostly out of joking) (and should probably work on not! Especially while talking to him); he needs to learn to not be so darn critical and harsh! That in itself is a major accomplishment on my part; that I can realize that! It took me years to realize that and a lot of hurt and self-criticizing.  A lot of it is his own self criticism-whether subconscious or not. There's a lot of freedom in that realization! It feels good; lol so even within this journal entry, I've gone from sad to feeling better.   I guess that's called growing up!!  Well, now I know today will be better and on that note, I have a grown up chore to do; dishes; yuck!! But  dirty kitchen is even yuckier!!

Kelly