The phrase leaves a bitter film in my mouth - it's not one I have positive associations with. The hurt and betrayal, the righteousness of a daughter wronged, turning the tables and taking back her power and her voice that Taylor sings with such conviction - that I can feel, viscerally in my body.
But you had fathers! Multiple! They were there your whole life!
They were. I have fond memories of growing up and spending summers in Georgia with my bio dad, living the small town Southern dream, slow and simple and sweet. My dad taught me self-reliance and resilience. He never shied away from teaching his daughter about the mechanics of cars or how to DIY just about anything. He let her help build his house. I learned how to make a cobbler from fresh berries, I picked and shelled pecans, peas, corn. All while being taught about a loving, forgiving, and patient Christ.
I had a step-dad I adored and called dad. I was a baby when my parents divorced, and he was my father growing up. I grew to love rock music, science fiction, comics, and fantasy and we shared those interests. We went to conventions, played games together, cranked Metallica like it was going out of style.
The shift happened like a tidal wave for one, and a slow moving but persistent deluge for another. When I was seventeen, my step-dad cornered me in the summer and gave me a note asking if I wanted to watch him shower and get ready for work. Shocked, I refused, and sat frozen in dead panic while he got ready to leave. Conveniently he forgot his jacket inside and asked me to bring it out to him. I did, and he cornered me again, alone, and began talking about how we'd been playing a game and I could never tell anyone and as he spoke, several events clicked: I'd woken up to find him in my bedroom one night, climbing into bed; that feeling of being watched when showering or changing wasn't a lie; all those things my brain told me I hadn't seen, I had.
He left, and to the credit of my mother who immediately believed me, I never saw his face again. The trauma ran deep, though, and it would take several years of therapy before I even felt comfortable divulging the full truth of what happened. The man who raised me as a daughter, who was my protector, who I never had to fear, was the source of my nightmares and my shame. The first betrayal of the father figure.
My bio dad and I grew apart as I grew older and got a job and wasn't able to make as many trips to visit as I had as a kid, but that wasn't the only reason. I was growing and maturing and learning in college, coming into my own as an individual. Meeting new people, experiencing new ideas, learning that there was more than one way to love another and more than one path to humanity and morality. My dad, raised heavily in the Southern Baptist tradition, didn't care for these ideas. We disagreed, but it was for the most part amicable - I couldn't lose another father.
And then I met the man I would marry, the love of my life, and began planning a wedding. When anyone asked me who'd walk me down the aisle, I panicked. The main father figure I'd had my entire life was a long gone memory by that point. I loved my bio dad, but knew we didn't share similar ideals - ideals that my future husband also held as true and were core to my beliefs, ideals that would shape our wedding and our future.
I took Jon to meet my bio dad, and after the first night of dinner he was so deeply uncomfortable with things that had been said and the way my father presented himself that I knew this wouldn't work, and it was time to make a choice. Before I could even call my dad to talk, he called me. The conversation got heated and ended in a hang up.
I got married to my best friend when my grandfather gave me away - solid, steady, and wise, he was the father figure that had never disappeared or abandoned his girl over her beliefs or who she was.
I've tried to repair my relationship with my dad, but it never seems to work. I checked his Facebook before I wrote this post, hoping beyond hope for some glimmer of the loving and gentle and compassionate man who raised me. What I saw was a wall of hate and vitriol that made me cry for what I'd lost, and knew, deep down, I'd never get back. The father figure that protected and nurtured the daughter through so many storms, including the worst one - the first father figure betrayal - is long gone, replaced by the zealot who sees her as just another “other,” an indoctrinated heathen whose very soul is already lost.
Hurt and betrayal, a beloved daughter wronged. That's what I was rewarded with for believing in the father figure, and that's the heart of the track. And while both men continue to live their lives without consequences, I protected my family by ensuring they never entered our orbit to become a problem again.
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