I Plead with you be a REAL PARENT
While I am well past the age of “needing” my parents (I’m almost 28) this is something that has been going on my whole life. So, my parents divorced just before I turned three, had been separated since I was just over one. As a kid, I lived with my mom and visited with my dad every other weekend, holidays, and usually one or two weeks in the summer either he or one of his siblings would take my sister and I on vacation somewhere. He would constantly blow us off when I was really little and my sister (she’s older) would get really upset. To me (I’m talking like under 8) I didn’t understand so I didn’t care as much, I was closer with my mom and her family anyway. There are a lot of them and they all lived really close so to me it didn’t matter. I remember very clearly the first time it really upset me, I was 8. My mom, my sister and I had just moved in with her boyfriend, an hour away from my mom’s family. I had not wanted to go to my dad’s that weekend anyway because it was the end of summer and my mom’s brother was taking his kids to a local amusement park and said I could come down for the weekend and go with them. My mom said no because it was my dad’s weekend and he had promised to make it a fun one. He got me all excited, (which I’ll be honest, I rarely got excited about going to my dad’s) I packed my bag first thing when I woke up and waited for him to come. He was supposed to pick me up at noon but he never showed, by the time two rolled around my mom was pissed. She called my dad from her room with the door shut and I sat on the stairs next to the door and listened to her fighting with him. I remember that she said well what am I supposed to tell our girls, then there was a pause, a huff and what I am guessing was our cordless phone hitting the floor.
I knew immediately that he wasn’t coming. Way before she built up the nerve to come out of her room and tell me. If I’m honest with myself I knew as soon as the clock hit 1215 and he wasn’t there but I had hoped he was just running late. I had hoped that it was different this time. As soon as I heard the phone hit the floor I had rushed, quietly to my room. I sat on my bed and tears welled up in my eyes. It was the first time I can remember when my dad disappointed me so much I cried. Then I thought I was upset because I knew that this meant I was going to be stuck at home bored but now as an adult I realize that I think that was the first time I admitted deep down that my sister, my two half-brothers, and I would never come first to my dad.
My dad is all about work. Deep down I know he loves us just not enough. He loves his job and adventure more than anything. If I’m being totally honest I think he always will. Like now. I live really far from my family and only really get to visit with them twice a year. Once usually at Christmas and then once in the summer. I am a college graduate that is drowning in debt (I know so unique *eye roll*) so most of the time, like this time, my dad pays for my ticket to come home and gives it to me as Christmas or Birthday present.
This year because of work, I am going home next week instead of Christmas, a couple weeks ago. He bought my ticket like usually. And yet he took a job for work that meant he was gone the entire time I was home. My sister was the first to tell me but she thought he was going to be there for a couple days and made me promise to let him tell me. I waited three days before I texted a group chat with us, my sister, my brothers, and my sister-in-law about what we were doing for my nieces birthday while I was home. It wasn’t until then that he told me.
He said that he wouldn’t be home and then that he’d call me and he actually did right then (I know I was shocked too). He told me he “had to” and that he was sorry he would be gone the whole time, but at least I’d get to see everyone else and I’d have the house to myself. I pretended it was okay like I always do and rushed him off the phone (I was at work). I held it together, well mostly held it together, until I got in my car.
My dad and I had been doing better. We had actually been talking lately and not walking on eggshells around each other like we usually do. I guess my inner child thought that maybe he was stepping up. That maybe he was finally ready to be a real dad but then this. And I know what your thinking, but he said he had to so maybe he had to, but I work in the same industry. I know how these things work and he could have said no. He could have been home but no he decided that traveling for work was better then seeing the daughter he never gets to see. I wasn’t as appealing as whatever country he is getting to go to for work.
So me there I was driving home from work listening to what my mom used to call my I hate my dad CD (well on my phone but same one I listen to when I was a kid Good Charlotte’s “The Young and the Hopeless”) crying over a man that has constantly disappointed me, my whole life.
My mom always worries that she is the reason that my dad and I don’t have a great relationship, (he cheated, she was bitter about it, still is sometimes and is very bad at hiding it) but it was never her and her opinions. My dad was one of those parents that never should have had kids. He was the one that only some times wants to be a dad and only shows up when its convenient for him.
I know some people may say well I am lucky that at least I had some semblance of a dad but I don’t agree. Parents that take off or were never around to begin with, it hurts the kid because they don’t get to know that parent and all but as long as the other parent is a good parent they get to adjust and move on. They get to learn to be happy without that parent, but kids like me and my siblings. There is no wondering. It’s just a constant flow of pain. Every time the parent decides they don’t want to be a parent and blow the kid off is a constant reminder that we aren’t good enough. That we aren’t important. We don’t matter at least not to one of the two people in our lives that should love us the most (I mean they created us). It doesn’t matter how many times they say they love us or how many presents they buy us we will always question, is it true or is it a guilt gift.
As an adult both my sister(32) and I(27) have not had a real, functional relationship. My mom always wonders if it’s her(she’s had two major ones and neither ended or really went well at all) but I know its not, at least most of it isn’t. I know that my cement walls lined with iron and equipped with an electric fence is almost all my dad. He makes me question my worthiness. I mean if my dad can’t love me then how can someone else. And that thought along with never really seeing a healthy relationship, the sexual assault I experienced as a child and the fact that the only people that I fall for that I don’t immediately sabotage or are people that I don’t any chance with are unavailable.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am working past my issues and I love both my parents. I also know that on some level he must care for me at least a little but it still hurts and I can’t help my subconscious. This why I plead with everyone. DON’T BE A PART-TIME PARENT! Step up or step out. The kid is better off with you gone, if you can’t love them and be there for them like a parent should be. And as that kid I can tell you it sucks!
