Thursday, May 07, 2009

Open Letter To - What Do I Call You? - Dad?

Posted by Anonymous.

Background: i met my dad via facebook, (seriously), after finding his mother after a 13 year search. after a month of small talk he told me that my mother raped him and that i was a product of the years of horror that ensued. my parents were both teenagers and he was gone before my birth, never to be seen or heard from again. i am still in contact with his family who have welcomed me with open arms.i posted this on my blog for a minute and then took it off because i didn't want the new family who still talked to me to get offended, as they read my blog. in fact, i have been so depressed about this incident i haven't been in the mood to blog at all. i need some constructive criticism on how to get over this from an unbiased perspective.

i am upset and confused! who are you? and what makes it so?

this is why i erased your family from facebook so i wouldn't have to "see" you going on about your life without me. i liked it better when i didn't exist to you invisibly. every time i see your name i get younger and younger. but your family doesn't take no for an answer. i suspect you know this already.

i've talked a lot mostly to mary and anne and tania sometimes too. craig sent me a message only once that my showing up renewed his faith that his own daughter might find him someday. i told him not to leave it to faith and to pick up the flippin phone already! but not in so many words. but still he never wrote back. what is it about you men and the indifferent abandonment of your daughters? why is it up to the daughters to come to you?

can i think you're a big jerk? isn't that part of the natural progression of things? can i think that you are just being stubborn? because i am way more than anyone on my side and i assumed it came from you. and i've always had a way of making things happen. i just decide its time for change and so i do.

but i'm at a loss here. can i say that you are being a coward? because you hear something you don't like you delete my face from your book? but you can still hear me i know you can hear me. i'm pretty loud after all. and i have a lot of things to say that you probably won't like. but tough titties and too bad for you because this is supposed to be unconditional, asshole. can i call you asshole? no, i guess that's not very nice.

then what am i supposed to call you? dennis? who's dennis?

dad?

how many chances are you going to get to be somebody's dad?

how many more years do you think i will wait for you to swallow your pride?

because it is pride. i'm not a stupid woman. i'm a lot of things but i'm not stupid. and i know you are not stupid. everything that comes out of your mouth is a college thesis. i know you were smart as a teen too. i read the letter you sent my mom when i was very young. i know you sent her a message through facebook and signed it "hugs." so what gives? thats all i was asking for. for a friggin box with her face in it to be in your list of people you know. say merry christmas. there's a difference between tea and crumpets and an internet forum. p.s. its doubtful she wants your stupid ugly crumpets but that's not the point. she sent you the requests as a courtesy to me, as my mother who loves me, not so she could keep tabs on you. you're so vain, you probably think this friend request is about you?

i could care less if you are friends with my mother. but don't make me the sum of 30 years of woes. that pisses me off. be accountable, as begrudgingly as it may be, for the act of creating a human being. you don't even have to be accountable for your absence. we'll get to that later. don't be an asshole. be a dad. the hard part is over with. but dont try to lead me to believe you had the latin interpretation of an uvula floating around in your head, but didn't know about the birds and the bees. dont try to bullshit me, kay? don't make me go through the rest of my life believing that you think i am something that HAPPENED to you. don't make me the scab on all your old wounds. you know the biggest wounds have to heal from the inside out.

but whatever. i'm trying to be indifferent to your tantrum. i know it doesn't seem that way to you and you want to feel like you are being just and right, but you're not, dad. you are behaving badly. cause this is not all about you. it may have been then, but its not now. your blood is part of me and its part of my kids. so stop being such a baby okay.

what are the influences playing a part in this? don't they teach you morals and values in Bible school? WWJD and whatnot? isn't loving your heavenly father supposed to include loving your fellow man and doing right by people? you know like family? like daughters and grandchildren? aren't we included in your quest to be a better man? don't you think this is something to resolve on your spiritual journey? do you want to be old and look back on these moments and be heavy with regret? if you don't feel heavy hearted about this you are lying to yourself. you seem too genuinely good a person to in good conscience lay the memory of me down to die.

don't get me wrong. i am not chasing you down. i am not rushing into your arms with my pigtails held out by the wind. i'm not sending you pictures emblazoned with gold stars to hang on your fridge. i am pissed at you now, but not hateful. i wish you would change your mind, but it won't destroy me as a person if you dont. but i'm not letting you walk away from me for a second time, thinking you are doing whats best for me. thinking that your absence is out of respect for my wishes. you're not getting off the hook that easy.

i don't want your money. i have no idea if you even have any. i dont want to displace anyone you love or otherwise. i don't want to disrupt your life. i want an apology. "gee, sorry you had to go your whole life without me, but i'm here now." and guess what that's not even a college thesis.

so here i am now in my new house, surrounded however abstractly by hawaii. why is there no memphis? no fair you get to haunt me via internet, but all i get is a cold shoulder and a blue and white generic facebook sillouette.

but hey, you do what you need to do. i wont be bothering you anymore. but if you choose to stay in nowhere land in regards to my life, do it on your own conscience. dont let this be a memory where you get to be the noble knight rescuing the damsel from distress. if you want out, you better have the balls to admit to yourself why and own it. time doesn't go backwards as you know.

p.s. i got this tell-it-how-i-see-it attitude from you by the way. of all the genetics to trickle down, you couldnt have given me some piano skills or multilingual skills. you had to pass down bitchitude.
nice.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am confused about the details of your situation (is your mother your birth mother? Did she really rape your father or is he just saying that?), but as someone without a father, I can just say I sympathize with you. My father chose to stop being a part of my life when I was 12 and it's an ache that never goes away, a hole that can never be filled. I know (logically) that there is something wrong with my father, but emotionally I feel like there's something wrong with me or he would have wanted to keep me in his life.

All I can say is get some therapy and try to work it out on your own as best you can. Don't count on having some meaningful, healing conversation with your dad, because it's probably not going to happen.

Hayley said...

My dad also abandoned me, at 8 years old. He contacted me again at 16 and then he began drifted in and out of my life. Still does. Whatever.

Some people are just too selfish to be parents and it has nothing to do with you. It's just how it is. All you can do is try to be the parent to your kids that he never was to you.

Anonymous said...

There really is not much to say to this one aside from that I really hope you can learn to communicate and that you find peace. Forgiveness.

Anonymous said...

how do you mean, learn to communicate?

Anonymous said...

Hang on what exactly were you saying at the beginning of your post? Are you really trying to say that he claims your mother raped him? If that is true then it would certainly have been traumatic for him and it is certainly understandable that he wants nothing to do with her. And sadly it could also stop him from wanting to know you better even though you are completely innocent and a victim in all of this.

If he was not raped then he should certainly not lie or joke about this subject!