bliss-sad's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- giant slayer My parents used to have this giant sword hanging on the wall of the living room, and when I was a kid, my dad told me that it was because it was the sword he used to slay a giant named Kiyakunta (who used to terrorize anyone fool-hearted enough to brave the Himalayas). He had a lot of stories like that, he would retell Greek and Roman myths like they were his adventures. Sometimes he'd embellish his old hitch-hiking stories and make them sound other-worldly and fantastic. He always held me captivated when he told my brother and I about his travels. I really, truely believed that my father was a giant slayer until I was like thirteen. When I figured it out, I wasn't mad or bitter or anything....I think I was actually kind of impressed with the dedication to the stories. Those realizations didn't really knock my father off the pedestal that I've had him on since birth.... It's only recently that I've begun to see him as a human... And it's really fucking weird. I know that I'm super late in figuring this out (or at the very least accepting it), but it was kind of...startling to realize that he's just a person. He doesn't have all the answers. He's not omnipotent. And all of this is okay and normal and fine, but...my whole life he's been this, like, Demigod--this oracle of insight and wisdom... And now I see the truth. I see his struggles with addiction--how no matter how much he loves his family (and, let me tell you, it's more than I can even conceive), we're all secondary to his vices. I see just how much of him is consumed by it. I see how he's all about self-preservation, even at the expense of people he loves. Basically, I see all this shit that destroys the image of him that I always had in my head. I guess a part of me really believed that he was a giant slayer... It's different with my mother. I mean, I've always seen her humanity and her flaws, but she's always been such an incredible person and role model that they didn't matter.... She's never been on a pedestal because she never presented herself as being anything other than human. Its a strange feeling but one that's also incredibly freeing. Like, it's okay for me to be all fucked up and confused and unsure about everything, because everyone is--even the man who killed Kiyakunta. It's freeing, but there's something incredibly sad in it, too. Something that feels like a loss, even though that's not even the slightest bit true. 10:37 a.m. - 09.04.13 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||