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my overwhelming feeling right this moment is relief. Not the "good" relief you feel when someone who has been suffering finally achieves peace; the "bad" relief that you finally outlived the person who made life miserable for you, and the "guilty" relief that comes from knowing you are never going to have to deal with the miserable SOB ever again.
I'm talking about my father. My adoptive father, actually. He married my bio mom thirty-four years ago, and legally adopted my brother and I. He already had three children, and they had another one together, but my mother had raised a huge stink about it because my bio dad was manic depressive, and she wanted to make sure we would be with a "stable" person in case anything ever happened to her. I'm not sure we wouldn't have been better off with the original Psycho Dad, but since I was only five or six at the time, I don't think my opinion was deemed valuable. Then again, neither was I.
I was abused as a child -- sexually by my step-brother and his best friend, physically by my parents who left me bloodied and bruised, emotionally as I was ignored except when a target for the latest tantrum was required, and mentally, as they tried to convince me I was worthless. I moved out when I was seventeen after a particularly bad incident (seven hours of getting thrown against walls, etc.), but can't say I never looked back. I kept trying to figure out what I was doing wrong that would make them treat me so poorly, and kept trying to FIX IT. They seemed to cherish the real "problem" children -- the pregnant as teenagers with drug addict boyfriends -- while my problem was that I was "mouthy." I went to therapy. I learned how to be in healthy relationships. I read books. I studied psychology, volunteered as a crisis counselor, and spent years learning how to touch other human beings without dissolving into a puddle of terror. I got better.
Last year, my eldest step-sister died. We weren't close, having only recently made pseudo peace from a fight regarding her supplying illegal drugs to minors two years before, but her funeral was filled with epiphanies for me. It had been twenty years since I moved out, but I finally got it: HE was a TERRIBLE parent.
The funeral was filled with Jerry Springer moments; he tried to cause a scene as my husband and I stood next to her coffin. We didn't speak to any of my immediate family (except my Mom, mainly because I hadn't figured out her enabler role yet) on the day of the funeral -- and they didn't speak to us. HE re-initiated contact three weeks later, when he called to yell at me because he was having a fight with my mother, and somehow, it was all my fault, despite my not having a clue as to what he was talking about. I ended up helping them patch things up again, because I was a good daughter, and that's what I did. I was always helping them to work things out, and going to the hospital all the time, and stuff like that. I'm first born, and I'm very responsible. (Yes, I know about codependency; I've worked on it for years.)
I struggled to find the humor in the saga that was the ongoing Family Drama, but it wasn't easy. Somehow, the plot lines were always "my fault" -- and neither logic nor reality were required by the writers. We cobbled the relationship back together again for a few months, but it didn't last. My eyes were open, despite my wishes, and when things blew up again in April (while I was miscarrying my third pregnancy) over giving my teenage heroin junkie niece a car without requiring drug testing as a condition of driving it after she had recently totaled her own while strung out, I guess I was primed for the big revelation from the counselor -- he didn't love me, value me, like me or respect me, and the problem was that I kept pretending he did. She said it in front of him, and my mother, and my husband; there was no denial from anyone in the room, except me.
We made an agreement -- because I was causing all kinds of grief with my crazy demands (!) I would stay away from every single family member for one month (with the exception of my mother), and he would take care of drug testing my niece. The month passed; I kept my end of the bargain, and of course, he didn't. Another counseling session with all four of us, and this time, it was on tape: he was okay with my niece dying, as long as he didn't have to be the bad guy to her. My mother finally told us all that he'd been telling the extended family that I had "the same problem" as my bio-dad, and even the counselor's assurance that I wasn't manic depressive weren't good enough. He'd been telling the stories for too long to back off of them. I finally threatened to sue him for slander, and he apologized, but it didn't help. We didn't speak for months.
But I'm an idiot. I was watching a Veggie tales movie, filled with talk of "second chances" and "forgiveness" and I picked up the phone, and said "let's try again." No more breaking important promises, though, I said. There is a trust issue here, and I need you to quit saying stuff to make you look good, when you really don't plan on doing it. Did we make it a month before that blew up regarding my great-aunt's funeral? I don't remember. This time I said I was finished, and I meant it.
He was diagnosed in December. He keeps telling my mother and my (blood) brother he wants to make peace, but apparently his fingers are broken, and he can't tell me. I shake my head, because I'm only formerly stupid; by this time, I know the drill. He can be the victim, and "everyone" can feel sorry for him, and he doesn't actually have to DO anything; in the meantime, I'm the unreasonable bitch who won't "forgive" her dying father. They don't get that I have forgiven him; its myself that I'm having problems with. I was the one who kept walking back into the situation with eyes wide open. I knew he wasn't going to change, but I still kept trying to "be worthy" of his love. I kept lowering the bar further, and further, yet it wasn't low enough. Only do as I ask when its a matter of life and death, I had begged, and not even MY life, but that of a beloved grandchild, yet a request that would have been fine from one of his "real" children was deemed as "unreasonable" and "controlling" even when the counselor said it was sensible. There isn't much lower you can go from there, but I had tried.
Nothing has changed. If I visit with the family during these "difficult times," then something will be created to make me out as a bad and evil person, and I will be treated disrespectfully, which will upset me, especially when I find out what ridiculous piece of nonsense is being used to slander me this time. I've chosen to stay away, because that way when I'm being badmouthed, at least I don't have to hear it. And, while I pity him a little, and my anger over the situation he has created has subsided somewhat, my grief is more for what "might have been" instead of "what is."
He was the only father I had, and I loved him. He dribbled out intermittent pieces of approval, and I treated them like a feast. I was an idiot, and I am grateful I figured it out BEFORE he died. I'm sorry my family members are going to experience a loss, but I hope I cried out all of my tears last year, when I finally realized the father I had loved all of those years was just a construct in my head, while the man I thought was him was just ... horrible.
He's going to be dead soon, and I'm just glad its going to be over.
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