I was feeling pretty hopeless when I started writing here, again. I felt like every door I needed to go through had been closed, locked and nailed shut. I was thinking in terms of how to settle my shit so my kids would be ok. Some of that was melodrama, fair enough. Some of it exhaustion, some of it feeling sorry for myself. But no small part of it was being very ill and not having any more energy to fight the insurance company.
Then help came from a very unexpected source. My dad, who I love but have been at odds with all my life, took one look at me, put his arms around me and said "where do I sign?" Didn't even ask me what I needed the money for - just said sure, I'll put my house up as collateral and can I get you a soda? It's entirely out of character for the man I've known all my life and it makes me wonder, all over again, if he and I would have had a chance if my mother hadn't been such a damaged woman.
I haven't forgotten everything that has passed between my father and I. I still bear the scars, am still colored in everything I do by his influence and choices. But this man, who just found out he's almost certainly lost his pension to the economy, who still has a scar on his leg that I put there (the last time he ever hit me) and filled us all with such dread just by coming home a little too late after work (little too late meant he stopped at the bar), he took the same arms he once used to throw me through a wall, put them around me and offered his own security with no questions asked.
