Tags
abandonment, abuse, alcoholism, anger, attachment, childhood, dad, father, loser, neglect, parenting, recovery, selfish
I idolized my father for years as a kid. This is what products of divorce do, I have learned. One parent is the good one, the other is the bad one. I loved my father so much. I remember always wanting him to be proud of me, and feeling like shit that I was such a failure. Once when we were visiting him, it was right around Christmas time…I asked him what he was going to be doing on Christmas Day. I think I was about 7 or 8 years old. I remember him saying that he was going to go on a holiday, some where hot, where there was no snow, so he could forget about Christmas.
I remember crying and feeling so sorry for him. I was angry at my mother for making him lonely, at what should have been such a happy time. It physically hurt me that he was going to be alone for the holidays.
Looking back, the son of a bitch should have been thinking about how that comment would affect such a young child. Instead of protecting me, he ripped a fresh wound open and let it bleed. This is the very essence of my dear old dad. Rip a wound, let it bleed and walk away.
My father was born in England somewhere around 1948, give or take a year, and emigrated to Canada with his younger brother and my grandparents when he was 14. My grandparents both served in the Royal military, and were cockney Brits with no shortage of humor and wit. I was particularly fond of my Granny, who would always have a funny jingle to sing, and the promise of an amazing shopping trip that never did happen. Granny died of Alzheimer’s disease many years back now and I miss her. She used to collect pennies for us kids when we came to visit in a special wooden box that is now mine. It is one of the few heirlooms that I have and I treasure it.
My Grandfather was a terrible drunk for many years, but managed to clean up his act for the majority of my childhood. I don’t remember him ever being drunk when I was a kid, but he did like to see me parade around in my grandmother’s lingerie, which he fondly called “baby dolls”. It was kind of like a routine thing that happened every time we would go over to visit with my father…granny would take out a set of shear lingerie for me, and I would prance around in it, acting like the grown woman who I could not wait to be. It did not occur to me at the time that there was something very wrong with my father and grandfather watching me dancing around in see through lingerie.
They are both dead now, my father’s parents. They were never liked by anyone really. I had such a hard time imagining why when I was small, but I think i have pieced enough of it together to make some sense of it. My grandparents never really amounted to anything. They left no legacy or anything of value to their children or grandchildren. They did not own a home, and is was no secret that they were bad with money. They constantly moved from one rented apartment to another. My grandfather needed my uncle to help him get a car because he did not have the credit to do it on his own. Still, they were always dressed to the nines, and if you did not know, you would not know that for all the living they did, they had barely a pot to piss in.
I am sure that is where my father got his irresponsibility from. Unfortunately, the most important person to my father was himself. After he divorced my mother, he went from one relationship to another, trying to build this outside appearance of being stable and put together, when really, everything in his life was built out of thin glass. He was never a father figure to me. He never provided, disciplined, attended a parent teacher interview, watched a game, or stood up to take his children out of a very bad, abusive situation. My father’s response was to run away, and pretend that it was not happening.
it is really difficult for me to admit that his opinion mattered to me for so many years. I often blamed my mother for the break up, but really, they were both shit for parents.
My father has been married at least twice, and was in several long-term relationships. Each of these relationships always came before his duties as a father. He did not want to rock the boat, and disrupt his happy home, so he always took care of the things that affected him instead of what was the right thing to do.
In my late teens, I brought a friend over to attend a concert with my father, and ended up leaving in the middle of the night because he was trying to justify to me how fucking my 18 year old friend was ok.
My father showed me that relationships were ALWAYS conditional; based on convenience, and never came before one’s own needs. I could go into so many examples of how he simply discarded me….but I will give one that resonates the true person that he is. It happened in my early teens, and I had finally got the courage to leave the craziness of my mother and step father’s home and called him up and asked him to come and get me. He did…in true fashion…not thinking about any of the consequences of taking on his kid full time.
He moved me into a flea infested home, that was on the brink of divorce with wife number 2 and her 2 daughters. There was never quite enough food. The cat litter box over flowed, and the laundry room downstairs was packed with mounds of dirty clothes. I could not believe it. Less than one year later, I came home from school one day and he was gone. He left me a note and 50 bucks. My father…the man who proudly took credit for adopting me, whined about not seeing me for years when my mother denied access, had finally got me back, left me, citing that he had failed me as a father.
Damn right you did, loser.
He not only left me, but moved back to England, and everyone-including his parents and my uncle covered for him and lied. I was sent back to live with my mother and stepfather. Back to hell. And he was living it up as a bachelor in London, once again. I was not the only one scarred in the ordeal. He ran the finances into the ground, stole money from my step mother’s business and abandoned his responsibilities as a man, parent and husband when the going got tough.
A complete repeat of what he has done all of his life.
So it really is no surprise that I hear that he has moved to Europe to be with another woman. Sold it all….and gone. My brothers were privy to this information first hand, but no one thought that it might be nice to let me in on his newest endeavor.
I should not be surprised, and I am not. What I am is angry. I am angry that neither of my brothers told me. I am angry that my father did not think it important to tell me. For all I know…I will never see him again. Should I care? I really can’t say. But what I do know is that he does not care if he ever sees, or talks to me again. That is an undisputed fact.
So Father, Dad, B.R.D, ….I have two words for you: Fuck You.
Fuck you for adopting me. Fuck you for leaving me with a wretched mother, and a psychopath step father. Fuck you for never being a parent. Fuck you for letting your dick come first-everytime-before your children. Fuck you for picking up hitchhikers and bring them to our tent and screwing them when we were kids; fuck you for not coming to see my school plays; fuck you for putting your world travels and love of women, wine and song before being a decent human being. Fuck you for taking credit for ANYTHING that is good in me. It does not belong to you. I am who I am in spite of you.
Last but not least…I hope you die a lonely, broke man. I hope in your last days you are surrounded by those who you took care of-no one. I hope that you wake up one day and look around and actually see the devastation that you created, and stood by and watched and feel disgusted with yourself.
Oh wait…that is not going to happen. You have no conscience.
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