Daddy Issues

*****MASSIVE GIANT DISCLAIMER BEFORE YOU READ ON - I AM NOT MAKING LIGHT OF ANY EMOTIONAL OR PHYSICAL ABUSE ANYONE HAS SUFFERED AT THE HANDS OF THEIR FATHER OR ANYONE ELSE***** THIS IS MY MUSINGS ON THE SUBJECT AT HAND **** PEACE <3

Daddy issues, mummy issues, sibling issues, friend issues and whatever else issues. We all have them. For years I was told by people I must have daddy issues as I had become a stripper. There must have been an issue with the way my parents raised me to make me want to get naked for a living. Isn't it funny that idea of anyone being naked and so natural scares people that they need to label you as crazy? Because you are so comfortable and confident within yourself that you are the crazy person! Actually we label any young woman with any kind of sexual appeal as having "daddy issues".

I will hold my hands up and say yes I have had parent issues (I love my mum more than life and she has always been the most incredible rock and my dad is a man who tried his best and I love him dearly too but my childhood wasn't always smooth) and a whole lot of other issues too. BUT when does it stop being their issues? When does it become my issues? We don't call it my issues, we put the blame on to someone else.

I am 30 and by all accounts I am an adult, most of the time and I have struggled with many relationships in my life the biggest being the one with my dad. I was terrified of abandonment, I always thought my dad didn't love me. It affected my relationship with him, my siblings, my mum and my step mum and of course my husband. I had a chip on my shoulder, that I wasn't loved as much or given enough attention. Was this true or was it a figment of my imagination?

I don't think it was either.

Neither of us are perfect, we both made mistakes.

The craziest thing of all is that the biggest catalyst in our relationship was something that occurred not long before my parents separated. Their separation had always been blamed as the catalyst of everything bad in my life.

I was about 3 or 4, I think 4. My dad worked up at Heathrow airport, London and he took me to work with him for the day.

He left me in his office and went to the toilet. I have no idea how long he had been gone for, no doubt only a few minutes. I went to search for him. I asked a man that worked with my dad if he had seen him.

He told me my dad had left me. Even as I write this, all these years later, I am in tears. I was devastated. I believed him. I thought I had been abandoned.

I don't know this mans name. I doubt he remembers me. I have never discussed it with my dad.

When we talk to children we often think they are too young to remember but they are not. They hear everything, and our word are powerful beyond measure.

For years I believed I had daddy issues because of my dad, now I am not about to say my dad was perfect, god love him, he wasn't perfect but my issue was in fact a fear of abandonment.

Recently I have been working on myself a lot. All the self help stuff tells you to take responsibility of your own life, so that is what I am trying to do.

No it is not my fault that a grown man told little me that my dad had left me. It is not my fault that I have not figured it out until now. BUT it was not my dads fault either. He didn't abandon me. He is crap at talking and doesn't know how to do the emotional stuff but he loves me. I wonder if as I child I had properly been able to express how it had made me feel would be issues have been so big? I would have still been a stripper I am sure, that wasn't my daddy issues, that was because I wasn't good enough to be a pop star haha.

Taking responsibility for my emotions though that has been a turning point. I can not control your actions but I can control my reactions. The are not daddy issues. They are not mummy issues. They are MY issues and I will learn to take responsibilities for my REACTIONS to others actions.

The day I got over my daddy issues actually happened this year in July. I was in Greece with my dad and family. One day he took my brothers out for the day, my sisters and I were a little pissed about it. The boys told dad he had to spend the following day with us girls.

We had a fantastic day, we did nothing more than drive and eat, drive some more and eat some more. The pastries were to die for. We had such a lovely day. We even got lost and laughed the whole time.

It was like letting go of something that had been holding me back my whole life. I still have fear of abandonment it hasn't vanished completely, I am working on it. But I left Greece not only "knowing" (the way people say I know they like me but) that my dad loved me but I felt my dads love.