My Male Role Model

I often think back to the day you were in jail, the day we first fought without me backing down because of the glass between us. The day I drove in a snowstorm to come see you and all you could ask for was if my brother was waiting in the van. He wasn’t, I should have listened to him when he told me not to bother. I often wonder if you remember what happened, what was said, and if you in fact ended up in PC for wanting to “kill yourself”. You see you have lied to me my whole life, and hurt me in a manner that I can’t seem to get around.

I believe all women in your life were just nothing, including me. Your daughter. I remember yelling at you through a phone “Why can’t you just be happy that I’m here?” if you remember you went to jail for beating up your girlfriend, right after I was kidnapped and raped in a basement. You asked me and my brother to bail you out. We weren’t allowed given his record and the fact my face was closed shut. How was I supposed to keep a man like you in line when I was beaten and raped by another. You snapped back at me “What do you want from me” and without hesitation I screamed as loud as I could “A fucking father” you started to look around as one of the other inmates was a friend of mine, and was being visited by the only female friend I had at the time. “Are you trying to get me killed?” “Is this a set up” you said all paranoid like I had any power over your situation. I guess the other inmate looking over at you scared you. Bunch of 28 year olds with a 45 year old addict in jail for things we didn’t speak of. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I snapped back. “Do you think I even wanna be sitting here right now dad? You think I would have jumped in jail? What the fuck is wrong with you why can’t you just be a father?” and there it was “I didn’t ask for this shit, I don’t know what you expect from me, I don’t know how to be a father, I was young and I didn’t ask for this shit”. Guess what...I didn’t ask for this shit either.

My father was from Regent Park, Toronto housing. He blames his life on this, and the fact that his own father died in a fire in a halfway house. He calls him a hero, but he was the same man. He raped his kids, and he beat my grandma and would vanish for days. He blames his sister for showing him how to smoke crack at the age of 13, yet when I was 13 he was smoking marijuana with me before it was legal. Allowing me to have “birthday parties'' with the neighbourhood kids, and my older cousin would bring us booze to get drunk. Being mad at me for getting the morning after pill, at 14 because I was raped by a friend's boyfriend in a park. “That was my first grandchild, I would have helped you raise them” I was 14. All I ever saw was my fathers anger and aggressive behaviour. That is when I got to see him, if he wasn’t in jail the weekend that I was to visit a house full of people. My father was my first abuser, and stayed that way until the age of 30 when I finally let him go.

I was a baby when my dad’s side of the family lived in Regent Park, the times that I can remember they lived in Don Mount Court. Across the bridge, my uncle and his family stayed in Regent Park. They would visit, while the rest of the family lived in a three bedroom basement townhouse in Don Mount Court. When I visited my father he was in the basement, my uncle was upstairs with my grandma, and my older cousin was being taken care of by my grandma and whoever needed it was on the couch. I was also someone who had to sleep on the couch. I never got good sleep, as people were in and out of the house all night long. My abusive father was given the rights to see me every second weekend, and two weeks in the summer months. He wasn’t allowed to pick me up, he had a restraining order. My uncle would come get me every second weekend. Most weekends when he would be aggressive and beat up the mother of my soon to be brother, I would call my mom to come and get me. I never actually spent full weekends there as I was always frightened by him but didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I would make up an excuse of “I want my mom”. He didn’t like that I could do this, but my own mother was brutalized by him. He would admit at times that my mother was the woman he did the “most time” in jail for, like it was some kinda trophy or love he had for her. As an adult this always made my stomach hurt, and I often wondered what my step-mother felt when he would say this. He would also say that my mom was his first love, that he wished that they would have lasted forever, again right in front of the woman he was spending his life with. My father had no bounderies for himself, but he sure had us all on a tight leash of his lies and torture. I still to this day remember sitting with my three year old brother, dishes smashing and I would try to protect my brother from the noise, holding my hands over his ears. At the young age of 3 he put his little hands over mine to try and protect me from it, I often wondered what my brother went through when I was gone. It’s something we never spoke of even as adults he would just say things like “I had to deal with it all the time, you got to go back to your rich mom. The resentment was real for him and at such a young age.

My brother resented me for that, but my mom when he was younger always allowed my little brother to be a part of my life. She would give money for me and both my brothers as I had one on each side of my family, for us all to go to the movies together. This faded away once my mom got a job in law enforcement, she had no say on me going to my fathers, and I believe just did not want to fight with him about it. I was allowed by the age of 12 to take the TTC myself, because back in those days it was normal for a child to be able to do these things and I was one child who wasn’t afraid of travelling by myself. It was a different world for us in the 90s than today. My dad moved shortly after my brother was born to Moss Park in Toronto, which was not any better of an environment than Regent Park or Don Mount Court. Each weekend I was there we would walk back and forth to my grandma’s anyway and spend the day there with the whole family. By day we were a happy family, by night my dad was a raging alcoholic yelling and screaming and beating the mother of my brother. She often laid down with me at night not allowed in her own bedroom crying and saying sorry as I was always sleeping in the living room and had to hear the slaps, and yelling of nonsense while he was drunk. I always told her it was okay, but it wasn't; it was setting me up for a lifestyle of abuse.

As I got older, I started to abuse drugs, I needed the yelling and memories in my head to shut up. I spend my days and nights on Danforth Ave in Toronto, meeting random people doing ecstasy and smoking marijuana. Living in the park behind my grandma’s or spending the night at an internet cafe that would allow all the teenagers to stay all night playing WOW. $10 each a night, the chinese owner would lock us all inside and go upstairs where he lived. We smoked, did drugs and played computer games or spent the night speaking to others around the world doing the same thing as us. The person who stands out the most from this time was a guy we nicknamed OZ. He didn’t engage in drugs, but he always hung out in the park listening to me rant off, dance and have a good time while being completely fucked up on drugs. He lived in mississauga, I often wonder what happened to him, if he is now a successful person. One day he went home and never returned to the spot, a lot of us did, my mom moved me to Stouffville. At this point I didn’t see my father that much, I stopped hanging out on the streets of Toronto for about a year before I started to run away.

Stouffville was a place where I felt isolated and in a jail setting. My mother was in law enforcement and my new step dad as well, just in a different manner. I would still smoke marijuana at school with the smokers at “smokers corner” a place at the school designated for smoking off school property. I didn’t like rules and regulations, I was shown a world where there were none at my fathers I wanted that life it seemed so easy. The mother of my brother had a grade 3 education and didn’t really know how to read, and my dad constantly went on about leaving school in grade 8. Who needed highschool? They both had no cares on whether I was in school or not. My mom on the other hand wanted me to be successful in school and life, but I kept running to my fathers where I could get away with doing whatever I wanted. He was too drunk and high to really care. One day I stole my mothers bank card and took $300 and ditched it at the union station GO terminal. I had enough to get my drugs and I went to the streets looking for the friends that used to be around. They were not around, most in school. I went to my fathers with a little bag of ecstasy pills and asked him if I could live with him. My mom had already called and told him that I stole her bank card and money from her, but he wasn’t phased, he gave me a lecture on how I shouldn’t have done something like that and she was pissed off at me, but there was no consequence other than giving me a pill. He had never done ecstasy before, his drug of choice was crack, but he was fiending leaving reality, and I was already flying high.

I handed my father a pill and told him to drink lots of water, he kept repeating to me, “I know what I’m doing, I’ve done worse than this” 15 mins went by and he told me it isn't working to give him another one. I want to stop here to say that I was only 16 at this point. I gave him another pill. He came back out 5 minutes later and said whoa, don't tell your stepmom grabbed a glass of water and went back to his bedroom. 3 days later when I had done all the pills I fell asleep on my brother's floor on a mattress. 15 hours later my dad woke me up screaming and yelling but I needed to get up. My brother couldn't see me this way because he needed his room. in a haze I started yelling about how he sees you this way all the time what's the difference and at that point I grabbed my stuff and I left. I went to my grandmother's house, my dad's mother and slept on her couch some more. my dad was angry because I never listen to him, but why did I have to he is abusive alcoholic couldn't give a s*** about me.

Now that's fast forward, when I was 20 years old I got pregnant with my first child. For the last two months of my pregnancy, after living in a rooming house in Scarborough. I moved in with my step mother. She was packing up to go live far away from Toronto, as her sister bought a house in a small town and she finally after 19 years with my father was ready to leave and start over. At this time my grandmother on my fathers dad's side died and left all her grandchildren, my dad, and his two brothers and two sisters a sum of money. My father got $11,000.00. He spent it all on drugs in two weeks, by the end of this bender he was in a state of psychosis. My step mother would spend time at friends' apartments within the building she lived in. She was always doing everything for everyone else. I was 8 months pregnant. One morning when we all were having breakfast my father came to break down the door. He wanted to “speak to my step mother”, he was yelling and screaming outside the apartment door. What we didn’t know was that he had already smashed the window in the lobby to get up to the floor we were living on. He was in a state of psychosis and we had no idea the power of adrenaline that he was going through at that moment. I told my brother and step mother to ignore the door that he would eventually go away. I wanted to believe that he would, but instead he started to kick the door. With my step mom standing right behind it, crying “We should just let him in” I told her no to call 911, we need to stay safe. Within seconds of her calling that number he busted through a metal, bolt locked door. She panicked and hung up the phone. He ran in and picked it up yelling at the 911 police operator “Who is this? Come fight me buddy” thinking it was one of the many men he made up in his head that she was cheating on him with. I stood up and told him to leave. He laughed, like his behaviour was valid and I had no right to tell him what to do. He went after my step mother asking where the man was, he could hear his voice. That wasn’t true, maybe in his head because the only three people in the apartment were my step mother, my brother and me. I had gotten into yelling matches with my father before, and didn’t back down, I was pregnant and this was insane. I got up from the couch, yelled at my brother to go into his bedroom, and told my father to get away from my step mother. He laughed some more and my step mother grabbed a frying pan attempting to scare him into leaving us alone. In that moment I saw the fear in her eyes, I saw the anger in his, and I screamed “GET THE FUCK OUT” My father then turned around, and pushed me. I flew over the coffee table 8 months pregnant. Then we all heard the police sirens. He ran.

The police took our statements, and later found him at his mothers house and arrested him. I went to all his court dates, thank god me and my baby were fine. I fell backwards and not straight onto my pregnant belly. He got three months. I was upset by this as my step mother and brother were not moving for another five months. That meant he still had the time to come after them. In the meantime after this my grandmother, my mom’s mother found us a nice house to rent in Scarborough. I reached out and told her what had happened and explained I didn’t want me or my baby to be exposed to this type of aggressive behaviour, that I knew he wouldn’t stay away no matter how far away we lived. My father used to tell me all the time “Your my daughter, I will find you if you ever leave”. I have left out years of abusive moments like this, police coming and going, my father in and out of jail for the weekends getting bail on his own using the system to his advantage. This is one that traumatized me for a while, because you see before he broke down the door that day. He was on the run from a previous call made by me. He would show up and want me to go get my step mother, I would call the police, and then he would be gone. This put so much stress on me at the end of my pregnancy.

My step mom and brother were able to move without him following, there were orders in place that he wasn’t allowed to see my brother without a third party, and that he stayed away from my step mother completely. My father became homeless at this point. In June 2008, I had my first baby, and I remember bringing her on the TTC to Nathan Phillip Square to see my father for the first time. He went on about going to a detox center and that he had been sober for a while, to be honest I didn’t believe him. He spoke of living in the shelter with bed bugs and things like that while I held my little girl 5 months old in a dalmations fuzzy snowsuit. I told my father I never want her to see him this way when she is old enough to understand, I told him I needed space, that seeing him living on the streets wasn’t something I wanted to see. I felt bad. I was 21 years old and was trying to let him go, but that only lasted about 2 years. Within that year, I got my GED because I never wanted my child/children to say their mother didn’t have a highschool diploma like my father and stepmother, and I started working full time as a security guard downtown Toronto at College Park the same place I would go see my fathers court hearings years before. My grandmother took care of my daughter as I worked and her father went to school. I was doing well. I had kept contact with my step mother and brother, but had no idea where my father was. While working security I got pregnant with my second child.

My mother helped me to rent a small townhouse in Uxbridge while I was on mat leave, and I moved out of the city. By this time I also got my G2 licence and was able to drive. One day I drove to Newmarket, taking my children to see the Santa Clause parade. As I walked up main street trying to find a good place for my toddler to watch for Santa, there it was, my fathers voice yelling my name. I couldn’t believe it, I thought I was hearing things, I looked behind me and there he was. I picked up my toddler, her brother was in a stroller, and he walked up to us “she’s gotten so big, what’s her name?” he asked. I asked him what he was doing in Newmarket, and he pointed to a set of three buildings, “I live here, I needed to get out of Toronto”. I was in shock, he asked if we could come by once the parade was over, and talk. I said ok, still in shock. He explained that the housing in Toronto took too long but he was given the chance to move to York Region and lived in a place that was for addiction and people who had been through the legal system, he said there are workers 24/7 for him to speak to and he was living in a bachelor size apartment. He told me he wasn’t doing drugs or drinking anymore, but I didn’t quite believe him. He looked depressed, his apartment smelled like he was chain smoking cigarettes. He started to explain his life story for the two years we hadn’t seen each other, and wanted to get into contact with my brother. I lied and told him I didn’t speak to them once they moved, he then said something that to this day still is a worry in my mind “See, I told you I’d find you, your my daughter I’ll always find you”. I explained to him that if he wanted to continue to see me and his grandchildren that he would stay sober, and I gave him my phone number and went home.

At this point in my life I was 23, and I wanted to believe that my father had changed. I wanted to see what a sober father would be like for me, I wanted to believe that a man like him had the ability to change, but I was very wrong. I can actually say that seeing my father at this time I lived in Uxbridge was nice. He wasn’t on drugs while around me and my children, I don’t know if he was when I wasn’t around. We took the kids swimming and to the park, anytime I went to Newmarket I called him and he was available it was nice. Then I moved back to Scarborough, I wanted to go to school. College Law administration. I had a new goal of showing my now two kids that doing something after highschool was important. I had already held down a security job, and Tim Hortons when I was younger, now it was time to show them that school was another important factor in life. My father even came to help me move into my new apartment. Soon after I started school I found out I was pregnant with my third child. I didn’t give up, I went to school while pregnant. My father got a girlfriend in this time frame, and she was on methadone. It was harder for us to see my father because she was constantly in the middle making him feel awful that she didn’t have access to her kids, and it hurt to see him happy with his own. At this point I was also seeing one of my female cousins a lot more, she had a daughter my age.

One Easter, we all decided to go see my father, he said he would make us dinner, we all didn’t believe this would happen as, usually he would get high for these types of family get togethers and or not show up. I drove all of us, and picked up my brother a few towns over from Newmarket. When we got there his girlfriend was sitting outside naked picking at her face. She looked unharmed just bloody from picking her own scabbed face, I knocked and my father finally answered, he wasn’t high but drunk thinking we were the police. He expected that he was going to jail because in his words “she went batshit crazy, and threw herself down the stairs, so I opened the door and kicked her out naked”. My brother and I split on buying pizza. We had 3 kids with us, they needed to eat. My father drank beers with my brother and was very paranoid that he was going to get arrested, he didn’t that day but I was contacted by my grandmother on his side a few weeks later because S.W.A.T. went to arrest him. At this point my uncle was living in an apartment across from my father and saw the whole thing go down. My father while drunk loved to fight with police to the point where they needed for their own safety to bring in tactical officers. Another thing he will glorify if you ever speak to him. I bailed him out this time. I fell for his “the police pissed on my new shoes and beat me up story I got when I got a three way call between him and my grandmother” I bailed him out to my home in Scarborough, he wasn’t allowed to go back to Newmarket or York Region at all, only once to retrieve some of his items or go to his already scheduled probation meetings. I bought paint for him to be doing something when me and the kids were gone, to paint my apartment. I was in school and the kids were at daycare. One shitty part of where I lived was there was a beer store within walking distance. My father utilized it almost everyday.

One morning, my father asked if his friend from Newmarket could come down, and I said yes, as at the time my mother and grandmother took some of the child care out of my hands so that I could study and be ready for exams. When I walked into my apartment 7 months pregnant at the time, I had flashbacks, but this time it wasn’t him trying to break in and hurt my step mom, it was him with an empty beer bottle and his friend cowering in a corner while he screamed at him, the painting wasn’t done, he half started one wall. My furniture was everywhere, there were spilled beer bottles and what looked like a scuffle. I walked into my apartment alone, and wondered what the hell was going on. He immediately calmed down, which was weird for him. I asked what was going on, and his friend said “he’s trying to kill me” my father just laughed and went over and hugged his friend “we’re just having fun right, there's nothing going on I swear” they both started to laugh, his friend more of a paranoid laugh than anything. They both continued to drink, and my presence seemed to calm whatever was going on. I remember this being a Friday night because I allowed my father to drive his friend back to what I thought was the bus station. He didn’t come back for the full day. My father pleaded guilty for this, and got some more years of probation added to his already years of probation. I was so embarrassed when he was pleading out because when you plead guilty the judge gives you a moment to apologize and tell your side of things before creating your punishment, My father used my pregnancy as he did back when he kicked the door down in order to “be there for his pregnant daughter”. The judge asked him how he broke one of the cell cameras at the police station and without hesitation and a bit of laughter he said “Well, Judge, I simply put my toilet paper into the toilet then started throwing it at the camera, and that’s when the cops came in with my NEW shoes and pissed on them in front of me, but of course you can’t see it because I broke the camera with the toilet paper”. The judge could see me at the back of the courts shaking my head, he pointed this out, “is that your daughter in the back sir?” “yeah” my dad replied “she looks very embarrassed with how you are acting” my dad didn’t reply.

Finally, my home was free of my father. I was able to breathe again, you see when my father is around I always felt on edge, because of the unpredictability of what he would do, or who would be over. I was too afraid of him to say anything and he used that against me most of my life, knowing that even if I did speak up, he always had the power to make me back down. He was always in charge it seemed, even when it came to the justice system he always seemed to get off easier than others using his mental health and addiction as excuses to his shitty behaviour. He was a good storyteller, he looked and acted as if he was educated, but he was only educated on how to get out of trouble faster than the normal person, and how to screw the government into giving him money when it came to social assistance and ODSP.

Now, I’m going to fast forward to the last conversation that me and my father had because a lot of the stuff in between also includes other people, and this one is mostly just to speak of who my father was to me. I have definitely explained the parts of our relationship since I was a child that were very rocky one, and there were many times we didn’t speak for a really long time. One of the May 24 weekends, my brother came to my home, and my grandmother asked if he could build the kids a treehouse, and also do a deck in the front yard. She agreed to pay him for this, and gave him a small down payment as she was leaving on a three week vacation to Finland. My brother decided to steal my car, he was high on cocaine, and to be honest so was I, I relapsed after being alone and clean for a year in my new home. That weekend I joined in, we got into a fight because whenever my brother was stoned, he would hit on me and ask me to have sex with him, he also drank a great deal. He wanted to go buy some more cocaine and I said no, as I knew how drunk and stoned he was, in the meantime while I was in the washroom he stole my car. I called the police as he had no licence and could kill someone in the state he was in, then texted him to let him know he should return the car before the police find him. INSTANTLY, my father calls, I answer and the screaming starts “What kind of person calls the police on their own family member? Are you fucked you know he will come back once he’s done picking up, isn’t he the reason you were able to party all night, where’s the rest of his money? You kept some of the money from him what the fuck is wrong with you this deal is between him and your grandmother so why are you putting yourself in the middle?” I asked if he was done yelling and why he feels the need to yell at me, I am not a child anymore “YOU ARE MY CHILD” he screamed, I asked how old he was, and why he felt the need to scream at me again, I then said something that he would never forget “Do you know why I get into domestic situations and raped Dad? Because you made me this way, you made me this scared little girl who doesn’t know how to stand up for myself, even to you and my brother. You didn’t even believe me when I told you my own brother was trying to Rape me until I showed you the conversations, I can’t even enjoy social media or anything without you people coming and fucking it all up for me, well guess fucking what I’M DONE you will NEVER be able to contact me or see your grandchildren again, I DESERVE way more than you will EVER be able to give me, you are the shittiest father, and I will one day be able to get over EVERYTHING you have done to me and you will still be the same, or at this point shooting cocaine into your arms DEAD, you are DEAD TO ME” and I hung up the phone, let out a huge scream, and fell to the ground crying.