Things I want to tell my dad, but I never will, because I'm a co

[hurtfulthingsunsaid]

Why can’t I stop? I feel like my life would be so much easier if I could just say ‘You know what, let’s stop pretending and just leave each other live their own lives.’ But no, I can’t find it in myself to not go to your house for New Years’, even when I know no one really cares if I’m there, I can’t seem to make an excuse not to go for a few days in the summer when my brother does, even when I know you’ll only spend time pressuring me into things I don’t want to do. 

I’m never going to have a proper familial relationship with you. It’s impossible; we’re too different and indifferent to each other. Not to mention that to even stomach half the things you say sometimes I would have to change some of the essential building blocks of my being. 

I should just stop going. I really should. But I don’t seem to be capable of that.

[hurtfulthingsunsaid]

Money

You can’t do that.

You are supposed to send me money to live - and I went with you stopping sending it when I thought that we weren’t going to talk anymore and that you’d leave me alone;

but then you started using it to send me messages and now I feel like I owe you and that’s not fair because YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SEND IT SO THAT I CAN LIVE.

It’s not fair to send me the amount we agreed on only after I spent a part of christmas with you - and it’s definitely not fair to add a message of ‘I hope you appreciate it’, because I know that you want me to feel indebted.

How dare you.

I’m not telling mum, because she’d try to resolve it herself and I need to get myself together and take care of my life. I’m not telling my brother, because I think you two can still stand each other, and he deserves to have a dad.

But me?

I think you lost me there, buddy.

[hurtfulthingsunsaid]

Hatred

I don’t hate you.

I think I don’t, anyway.

I don’t think I know how to hate people, really.

But you come really close.

Actually, if you weren’t my dad, I think I might hate you - or at least, I would ignore you much more.

It’s not that you’re bad to me. 

You just don’t know how to try.

You haven’t known me since I was thirteen - but I haven’t known you either, so how do you expect me to trust you, to open up?

I don’t open up to people. Even my mum, who’s always known me and whom I love, has to use a metaphorical crowbar to get me to tell her what I’m thinking and feeling.

I know - or I hope - that you mean well.

But I don’t need advice.

I don’t need ‘help’.

I need patience and care and silent support and I need you to be more open with me than I can be with you.

You want me to ask how are you doing? Tell me, first. Tell me what’s going on in your life, full disclosure.

And if you’re patient enough, I’ll tell you what’s up with me.

Not just ‘I’m fine.’

Not just ‘It’s exam season.’

But ‘I ’ve been reading the most amazing stories.’

Or ‘I need to tell you about my writing, you would not believe what I just finished.’

Or ‘I think I should tell you I’m asexual.’

Or ‘I have this friend in Turkey, I think I’ll go visit her in the summer if we can agree on a time that we’re both free.’

I wish I felt comfortable enough that I could tell you.

But your insistence on telling me that my life is doomed the way I live it

and your constant attempts to tell me what I’m doing wrong

and the fact that I don’t know you anymore:

those are the reasons sometimes it seems like I hate you.

But you should know, I don’t;

I’m just like this with everyone that I can’t trust because they don’t seem to trust me.