The daughter you see isn't the daughter in existence

Rumi said, “Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.” When it's a parent that's tearing you down, ignoring them can be a hard thing to do. Until a few years ago my dad and I were very close. We talked every other day and we saw each other very frequently, but somewhere in my growing up process during college, we lost that. Our lives are supposed to be fluid like water. We move, swell, expand, churn, and change with each bend, rapid and waterfall. Somewhere in his life, he just stopped moving. He became a rock glued into the muddy bank of the river. Everyone else kept flowing past him, but he refused to move. His little girl grew up, but he couldn't acknowledge that because it would involve shifting from the comfort of his mud cavity in the riverbank. When he looks at me, the daughter he sees isn't the daughter that is in existence. He creates his own image of a person that he can love or be angry at because it is easier than accepting the fluidity of the water around him. He likes to think that his daughter is a quiet little girl; a recluse that will never marry, have friends, or do anything wrong; someone overweight; and as a brainiac, so anytime I try to talk about what is happening in my life, he ignore me. His image of me is comfortable and he can see his own reflection in it, so he won't listen to anything that will force him to abandon this image of me. He wants me to be him so that he won't feel like the only one that is stuck. I can't be around him anymore because after I see him he tears me down so much I feel miserable about myself and start to believe that his image of me is truth. For a long time, I would take the feelings of disease and death when I was around him because he is my dad and family is the most important thing to me, but it has gotten to the point that he wrecks so much havoc on my emotional health that until he choses to see the person that I have become, I am going to have to limit contact with him. I thought that by sticking out the emotional abuse I could pull him out of his rut and get him moving with flow of things again, but he has buried himself so deep in his hole that he won't budge. He has to make the choice to rejoin the flow of water and until he does, he will not keep me there in his hole. I chose the exuberance of life that comes with fluidity over the fear, sadness, death, and disease that comes with stagnance.