Dads

Social media is flooded with fathers today.  Dad posts and Dad photos and Dad memes.  Dad Dad Dad Dad.  It’s great, but I’m selfish so I hate it.  I hate it when my friends brag about the cute shit their Dads do for them.  I hate hearing stories about Dads who would do anything to protect their little girl.  I’m selfish so I’m jealous.  I’m immature, so I keep it inside and let it eat at me until I’m alone and in tears on Father’s Day googling “How to Let Go of Anger”.

My Dad is not dead.  My Dad is alive and well and lives about 20 miles from me.

I can’t say that I’ve ever had a close relationship with my Father.  When I was younger, he was always at work.  When he was home, he was drunk and fighting with my mother.  By the time I was a teen, he was cheating on my mother and moving in with his new girlfriend, which he made his new wife that same year.  When I moved away at age 16, my Dad adopted a new daughter.  When I was 19, I moved in with my Dad and I honestly thought it might give us the relationship I had always wanted with a Dad.  Sadly it didn’t.  It was weird and dramatic for both of us, and if anything it put all our differences between us, and pushed us further apart.

My father remarried to a Drama Queen, and he became her Drama King.  Fueled on drama.  They breathe, eat, and sleep drama.  I can’t remember the last time I heard my Dad say anything nice about a family member unless they were dead.

On Easter, after watching my Dad and his wife scream and yell at my aunt in the garage, I called my Dad out on his childishness.  I laid out my thoughts and feelings for him completely.  I received minimal resistance, and actually received praise and thanks from 3 of the 4 family members I was speaking to, including my Dad.  My Dad said that he was proud of me for speaking up, and then his wife thanked me for saying what “needed to be said”.

A month later after I haven’t heard from, nor reached out to my father, I began to hear stories about myself.  Stories spoken by none other than my father.  He’s told my aunts and my uncles and my cousins and even my brother that I said something I didn’t.  Not just “said” something that I didn’t- but he’s actually going so far as to tell our family that he’s upset with me for “saying” these things.  He’s angry with me for saying things I never said, even with 3 other family members as witness.

At first I was angered.  Angered because I dont understand him or what happened.  Angered because I don’t understand the world he lives in.  Then I slowly became thankful I can’t understand that mindset. Psychosis.  And today I’m in tears because I feel like I lost my father- not gone, but certainly not here.  And I think what hurts the most, is that I know it’s better this way.