I was going to make a joke about another dead father but realized that my coping mechanism being sarcasm is not always the most healthy way to address things and I really am trying to be a bit kinder to myself in respect to emotions and trying not to shrug them off as embarrassing and weak and stupid. The voice inside one’s head can lean towards cruel if allowed to run rampant.
While this will very likely sound like a whine, it’s definitely not. On the surface this is a sad story about a child, girl, woman, done wrong by her “Daddy” but it’s not. It’s an insight. A factual telling of events. It’s how I was given very little to thrive with yet still didn’t turn into a bitter person, an angry criminal, a fucked up drug addict, and all the other shit that people who are those things tend to use their childhood as the reason for.
Nobody has had a perfect childhood, Lord knows, and ya, it can tint your view of the world and even drive the most self harming decisions you could make…. But it doesn’t have to tear you down, ruin you, give you the EXCUSE to be a shitty person. For some of us deserted three years olds, we become problem solvers, we can become artists, we can use those dark corners to entertain people on the internet tubes, we can EMPATHIZE, we understand pain even if it’s unlike our own. We can be brave, resilient, strong willed, hyper competitive, loyal to a fault, protective, love fully and immensely and be the guy you want in your trench.
I’m learning to change my view of events and to work on being grateful for everything that makes me me. Including, really fucking quirky and sassy and funny and accepting.
Cheers to the man who started it all! May he pay every karmic cent due and become a kinder soul for it.
My biological father died in his sleep.
He was not the father I deserved. He was not a Daddy. He was the man that I watched walk out of my house when I was three years old. He took with him his bowling bag, light olive green. Before he left he hit my mother who cowered in the bedroom beside the bed. I found her there after he’d gone. As he left I was sitting on our couch with my babysitter. I suppose the original plan had been for my parents to go bowling, given that there were bowling bags and a babysitter. He didn’t look at me although I watched him walk down the stairs. Confused by the sounds I’d heard coming from the bedroom, confused about my babysitter being there if they weren’t leaving together. Bright eyed. Big brown eyes watching that man walk away. I really had no clue what had just changed, how everything I knew up until the ripe old age of 3 was gone. How that decision he made would forever cast a shadow on my mental health. My feelings of self worth. My exceptionally heart wrenching choices looking to be chosen. To be loved. To be seen. To know what it felt like to be protected and safe. To stop the constant conversation in my head about not being worthy of love. If the ONE man in your life who is supposed to cherish you doesn’t. Can’t. Won’t. Then who else would? I went out of my way to find people who would validate that. To find people that could not, would not make me feel loved at the time. That’s just a fact. I’ve written about it before.
He turned me away several times throughout my life. The times throughout Jr High when I’d see him and try and get him to acknowledge me. His stepson went to school with me. He’d turn his head and walk away. He told my dad that he’d pay him to adopt me. He met me after I spent some time at “ The Ranch” and in my mental state he told me that having me( and my brother) was his biggest regret. Even just several years ago when my sister in law (married to my half brother. Her and I have a relationship) asked him to make amends. He refused and forbid her from speaking to me. She’s not that kind of women, she doesn’t take orders and told him that she would do whatever she wanted.
I had two parents that didn’t love me and didn’t mind telling me so. How ironic that my dad, who has no biological connection to me ended up being the parent I needed. So thankful for that.
What I feel is fucking anger. I feel pissed that he died in his sleep peacefully without me standing there telling him what he’d done to me. I’m pissed that he couldn’t, until even his last breath, ask for forgiveness, express regret. But that’s because he didn’t feel those things.
I feel blessed that for every ounce of love and compassion and empathy that that man lacked, I hold inside of me in excess. Maybe if I’d been exposed to him my whole life I’d have had those things sucked out of me or learned to be a piece of shit child abuser like he was. My half brother and step brother were abused by him. Imagine having to be raised by my mother AND an abusive father. Good Lord! No Bueno!
I feel bad that he lived his life so selfishly. He could not have been a happy person. He would not have been the type of person that appreciated my quirkiness or my humor or my love of all things True Crime. He was just a guy who made enemies. He’s not having a funeral. No one is giving him one. His children grieve over the father they never had. The what could have beens. My sister in law is across the country from my half brother and she says he’s doing fine so she didn’t fly home.
Out of the crack of a sidewalk a tree can grow. I grew. I’m proud of that.
Me
