So, the man who calls himself my father.....I am finding out I never really knew him at all. He is 70-something (I can never remember exactly because the mother-thing always lied about what year they were born), has Parkinson's Disease and stage 4 kidney failure. Has a stent from a mild heart attack (which he insists was major). Had diabetes. Had cataract surgery. Had a pretty miserable life...so he likes to say.
Let's go back to the beginning, though. As far back as I can remember, the mother-thing was a fire-breathing demon. Of course, the daddy-thing knew this; he was often the target of her attacks. Until I became her favorite. And I mean as far back as I can remember. Before I was verbal. The attacks were brutal emotionally, psychologically and sometimes physically. And they almost always came without warning. Even though three sisters came after me, I was almost always "it".
I always defended the daddy-thing in my heart/head because I thought he was just too gentle and passive to even try and stop her.
But he was NOT too passive to ride a motorcycle, especially up and down and all around a 4,000-ft mountain. Over and over and over again. For years. (This was after he came to me in tears when I was 22 and FINALLY living on my own to tell me he was in love with someone who was threatening to leave him unless he left the mother-thing. Of course, I encouraged him to be happy, so he left and married my now-step-mom, who proceeded, he says, to make him miserable.)
I recently found out some other interesting things about the daddy-thing. He traveled a lot for work...so we thought. Perhaps some of the "business trips" were just that. But he told me that at one point when he was married to the mother-thing that he had three girlfriends at once. NICE. So, he was NOT too passive to chase women. Or lie to get out of the house. Or leave his child(ren) in the dragon's lair.
Also, he wants some chick named Becky The Waitress who lives where he used to ride his motorcycle to scatter his ashes. Not one of his own daughters, but some chick named Becky The Waitress. AND, his STEPDAUGHTER is the executor of his will.
And then it occured to me that for years I had felt a little twinge of guilt over not calling the daddy-thing more and fostering a relationship with him, but HE NEVER EVER CALLED ME to see how the hell my life was going. Really, I kind of just feel like I am the result of sperm that found an egg and was left to live or die on its own.
So now I am being asked to "keep" him at my house some weekends when my stepmom needs a break. And I have. But now I am so angry that I want to say, "Call Becky The Waitress or the stepdaughter." None of my own sisters have stepped up to the plate, either.
Although I am pretty damned proud of the job I have done raising and nurturing myself to be halfway freaking human and not pass on the abuse/neglect/apathy to my children, all the wounds I thought I had healed have been slashed open again. I would like to know why the hell any of this matters to me now.
~Be still, dark shadows in my soul.~
