I am Scarlett minus Tara.

I haven't spoken with my dad in roughly 14 months. He has called me and left messages and I won't budge.
This is partly because all my life I have been the one to go back and fix things. To go back and change, apologize, and bend. I am tired of bending.

So, I chose to not speak to one of my biggest sources of insecurity and one of my biggest detractors until he showed me change. Until I got one genuine apology.

I grew up a daddy's girl and all throughout my life remained one. But I never felt as if anything I did was good enough as if my parents were waiting for me to perform some ritual that would prove my love, loyalty, and deepest admiration for what awesome parents they were but I didn't know what that ritual was and still don't.

A great crevasse opened in 2008 and the reasons for lots of things fell into place and things suddenly clicked and I understood why I never felt I was good enough. I apparently owe a deeper debt than I ever knew was possible and those payments were way past due.

I decided to cut off contact because I felt it was best for me and the only way I could move forward. I carry a ton of anger and sadness around with me every day and I had to break free of the one person who could light that kindling on fire in a split second if I was going to live.

I got messages like, "I'm not sure what it is I did but if you want to work this out call me." "I know you think what I did was wrong and I just don't understand why you can't get over this and call me." "When you get done being oversensitive and emotional about this call me." Eventually, I stopped listening to the messages.

The calls would come in sporadically and I got the last one just before Thanksgiving. Until 2/18, that is. I got two missed calls back to back from him. Got two voicemails back to back. I erased them without listening.
I then got a call from a 3rd party informing me that if I was interested in talking he would love to talk to me. If I was not interested in talking then I needed to turn in my and any copies Dwayne has, house keys immediately.

He has a knack for always, always choosing the wrong way of dealing with me. I told the messenger that I would dig up the keys and have them available for pickup immediately. Then realized that I had already removed the keys from my key ring, probably around the time I decided to not talk to him, and wasn't exactly sure of where they are. Things kind of get fuzzy around the time Dwayne got sick.

I am told he is now changing his locks.

I think the deconstruction of everything I once thought was so is complete now. I can't even go back to the one piece of my childhood that I can still smell, touch, and taste and is still tangible evidence of the life I knew before 2008. (I still remember how the curtains blew through the open window of my parent’s room and the weather the day they got their new waterbed and how we had to rig up the hose from outside to fill it. It was spring and light and I could smell the honeysuckle from Mrs. Beaty's farm across the street. And how if you look at the door jamb of the bathroom I shared with my brother you would see pen marks from where I inscribed my initials with those of my first boyfriend.)

Psychologists refer to resilience as is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress and adversity. This coping may result in the individual “bouncing back” to a previous state of normal functioning, or using the experience of exposure to adversity to produce a “steeling effect” and function better than expected.

And the amazingly strong Elizabeth Edwards said that, "Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good. "

And Scarlett O'Hara said that, "Tomorrow is another day." I used to always look up to Scarlett (insert Southern joke here) because she was so strong and always managed to scrape shit together when it seemed all was lost. You can argue about her methods, of course, she was a huge bitch, but Scarlett always managed to rise to the top with the foundation of Tara to help her.

I like to think that when Rhett left her there crying on the staircase that she got some rest, tracked him down, and they ended up together, because truly, they are one in the same. They both shared a "passion for life."

I must confide in you that I am so very tired of being resilient. I used to imagine myself as Scarlett and thought that with the bits left I can rebuild anything and every time. Now, I am not so sure that anything will ever be the same. Not that I want to go back to that house, or have even thought of it in the past 14 months, but now, I can't. Bye-bye Tara.

I have never felt like more of an orphan than after being given my ultimatum. What the hell is Scarlett supposed to do now?