I Heart The Damaged.

So if women are drawn to men who remind them of their fathers, what the hell am I doing chasing down all the soulless foreigners that Dallas has to offer?

My dad is a good man, and an American.

He didn't abandon me when I was little or anything. I talked to him yesterday. He wasn't a bum, a drinker, a drugger, a rager, or cold. FOR (father of ReadBecca) is a truly decent human being. He puts up with me even when I do things that remind him of my mother.

FOR drove me to the airport when I went to meet my Internet boyfriend. He didn't talk to me for a week before that, but he still did it, and he gave me an emergency credit card. Once, I thought I had cancer, and he picked me roses from the bed I refused to help dig. And FOR's funny.

So what is it that makes me completely ignore the good guy and go for the "interesting" one? Why do I think "emotionally unavailable" is "interesting"? And how did my Spidey Sense become so sensitive that I can pick one of these pricks out at 50 paces?

Why am I only comfortable in a completely unbalanced relationship? Is it because my brain has to work so much harder, at lightning speed, trying to figure it out? Is it really the sheer challenge of it that I like? Do I choose a shit every time just because I'm so damn smart?

I get up an extra hour early to journal three pages every morning. Recently I read all the pages I've written since January and I noticed something: I bitch about men the same way I bitch about my mother.

WTF, over?

The things that make me avoid all but the most limited contact with Crazy Linda are the same things that I unconsciously (semi-consciously) seek out in a man. Can it be so simple an explanation that daily contact with my unbalanced mother during my childhood warped my love instinct for life?

That is so not cool.

How did that influence trump that of my totally ok dad? All I can say is it's hard to ignore her. Seriously, she doesn't let up. Ever. FOR had to divorce her and she still kept coming back to wreak havoc. It's like when Michael Myers won't die. Except she's much louder, and has a lot more masks.

My dad has given me course corrections at the most volatile, potentially disastrous moments in my life. He saved my life. Twice. And he did it just by being there, even when he was a thousand miles away in Minnesota, and he used a promotional corporate tie tack to do it. I still have it. And to top that, FOR moved to College Station, TX, because I was there.

This is a man with emotional skillz.

My dad's good opinion of me is my most valued treasure. Disappointing FOR would kill me. FOR told me the most important thing you have in this world is self-respect. And FOR told me that any man who lets a woman ride on the back of his motorcycle doesn't really love her, because if he truly did, he would never put her in that kind of danger. He might risk his own life, but not hers.

I hate motorcycles.