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To My Father

An Open Letter About Letting Go

By Stripes JoplinPublished 6 years ago 10 min read
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With Mother’s Day having been a few weeks ago and Father’s Day right around the corner, we need to talk about strained familial relationships and why it’s okay not to reach out to your family members just because you’re family. I’ve never put all of this on paper in words, and it was equal parts painful and cleansing. If it helps someone sever unhealthy ties to another person or other people, I’m okay wearing private trauma on a public sleeve. I went back and forth with how I wanted to write this and decided that a letter in which I speak to him would most clearly convey my anger and pain.

To my father:

I was too young to understand what kind of person you were as a child. Even as you hurt my mother I didn’t understand that your behavior was a pattern. Even as I stepped in front of her and screamed at you to leave her alone, I didn’t understand that this monster I saw before me was just who you are.

When I visited you in California, I didn’t know that you were using meth in the next room. I didn’t know that your mother had tried to get you to call me repeatedly and you showed no interest in letting me know that you were alive. You didn’t care about anything but getting high. You let a convicted meth cook live in the house with us when I was 14, and you even warned me that he might hit on me. You didn’t notice that your 25-year-old best friend was hitting on me when I was 15. Someone else had to point it out to you, and then you acted like a concerned father.

When I visited you in Utah, I didn’t understand the ways in which you were controlling and manipulative. You used to ignore me for days on end in response to a disagreement. Even when I was right, you used fear and intimidation to scare me into agreeing with you, and I agreed with you eventually, because who knows whether or not you’d snap and kill me.

I can’t trust you. I only know the difference between truth and lies with you by whether or not someone else can corroborate your story. If you told me the sky was blue, I’d have to check with two other people and then go see for myself before I’d believe you, and that’s your doing. You don’t follow through and your word means nothing. You’re still doing it, too! I texted you on your birthday because until recently I felt guilted into reaching out on the standard holidays and you replied, “thanks love you busy talk soon.” That day, I bet I wouldn’t hear from you again until my birthday. It’s May 24th. My birthday is about a month away and I still haven’t heard from you.

I’m not going to be the one to take care of you because you never took any measures to take care of yourself. I’m not going to feel bad for you as you get older, because you’re still the same person you’ve always been. You had the audacity to lie about sending cards and gifts, stating outright that my mother and her parents intercepted the things you sent and threw them away to hurt you.

Let me tell you something, “dad:" my mother and my grandparents don’t hate you more than they love me. The person who stands to get hurt the most as a result of that kind of interference isn’t you. It’s me. My mother and my grandparents would never, ever do anything to interfere with you trying to get in touch with me and fuck you for insinuating that they would. Fuck you for trying to poison me against them. Instead of taking responsibility for dropping off the face of the planet, you lied to me. I’m not stupid. I always know when you’re lying, I just don’t call you out on it because I value my safety more than I value being right. Here’s the kicker, though: I would have respected you if you could just admit to being a shitty person and a shitty father, but instead you had to try and drag my mother and my grandparents into it. You hoped I’d be mad at them and feel sympathy for you, but it’s backfired and you’re left with less now than you had before.

Do you remember just after my mom left you, you two would make arrangements for me to spend some time with you, and over and over again you’d call to say you were on your way, but you’d never show up. Do you have any idea what that did to me? Do you have even the slightest clue what kind of effect your habit of disappearing and flaking out had on me? It taught me not to trust people. It taught me to expect people to let me down. It taught me that no matter how much someone insists you mean something to them, you can’t count on them to show it.

When I was 10 or 11, you gave me the wrong number to call and talk to you. I know it was deliberate because you had me read it back to you when you gave it to me, and because you never called me to find out why I hadn’t called you. My phone number was the same for ten years, and my mom’s parents’ number was the same for even longer than that. It’s not as though you didn’t have a way to reach me. You just didn’t want to. You didn’t want to be a father because drugs were more fun.

I have to say, I agree with you. Drugs are a lot more fun than kids. Here’s the thing about that, though: I’m allowed to feel that way and to act on it if I so choose, because I don’t have any children. When I was born, I should have become your priority, but I didn’t. Your behavior should have mimicked my mom’s, but it didn’t. Your choices are no longer your own when you become a parent, and I will never forgive you for the selfish things you’ve done, one right after the other.

You were horrible to my mother, and when you spoke ill of her and I defended her, you lashed out at me. Then you have the audacity to say that you “hope there’s a universe where you’re still together.” I don’t. I hope there is no universe in which my mom never realized that she and I deserve better. I can’t even express how much better our lives got once you were gone. Scot did all the things you should have been doing, and yet I was angry at him. I didn’t understand why this person with no legal or biological obligation to take care of me wanted to be my dad, but you didn’t. So I lashed out at him. I was too young to understand the complexity of the emotions I was feeling, and they came to the surface as anger. I wish more than anything that I could take all that anger back and direct it at you where it belongs. I understand now what an incredible human being my stepdad is. Better late than never, I guess.

Did you think we were going to have some kind of happy parent-child friendship where your past transgressions are forgotten completely? That’s not how forgiveness works here. I forgive you, but only insofar as is necessary for me to move on with my life and forget you exist. My significant other is still trying to help me undo some of the damage you’ve done and I need you to know that you will never meet him. I will never subject him to you nor will you be in our lives. This is the end for you. I’m not sorry.

Part of this is hard, and part of me hurts, but as soon as I remind myself of the years of abuse you subjected my mother to, how many times you disappeared from my life without a word, and how many times you used fear to win an argument in which I had a valid point, that pain is replaced with anger. You don’t remember how hard things were for my mom because you got your twenties back when you left. She didn’t. Things got much harder for her, and I’ll never forget that. I remember the times my mom went without food so that I could eat, and the nights she slept on the floor when we didn’t have any furniture in our apartment except my bed. I remember all the time I spent with my grandparents because she was working three jobs. I remember all the time you told me you paid child support like I wasn’t the one who was hurt by the fact that you didn’t. My mom took a job in a daycare so that she could get free childcare because we couldn’t afford it otherwise. She didn’t just leave the things you dropped where they fell. She picked up your slack.

Even after all that, I am ever the forgiving empath. I was still willing to have you be part of my life until ten years ago in Mesquite. We got into an argument and you picked me up by my neck and threw me into a door frame. I moved back to Phoenix the following week, and three years later when I decided maybe I’d visit you again, you somehow manipulated me into feeling bad for cutting you off years earlier. You could have snapped my neck and yet you bullied me into feeling bad for being angry with you. I don’t know why it took me so long to learn, but I’ve learned.

No more. Your phone number is blocked. You’ll never know where I live. You’re blocked on social media. I don’t want you in my life. You won’t be at my wedding. If I were going to have children, you’d never meet them. As it stands, you won’t meet my significant other, and you won’t meet Luna or any of our other animals. You will be but a bad memory; a tarnished spot on the thoughts of my childhood and early adult life.

I hope this helps people with similar strained familial relationships understand that just because someone is family doesn’t mean they’re obligated to have a relationship with them. I hope it gives someone the courage to cut their toxic relative out of their life. There are so many times that I saw a glimpse of a real father in you and then I’d blink and it would be gone. I hope you find some kind of peace. Maybe you’ll meet someone and have another kid, and I hope you do things right with that kid. I hope you explain why you’re not in my life and I hope you’re honest with them. Don’t force existence upon yet another human child only to damage them and let them down.

I am going to go into my thirties without you. I didn’t have any control over whether or not you were in my life while I was growing up. You weren’t there, but I wanted you to be. I needed you to be. Now I have control, and you will stay away. Birthday parties, Christmases, important milestones… I wanted you there for those things and you were absent. So you will be from the important events of my adult life, but by my choosing. It’s fitting karma, don’t you think? Maybe the pain you feel as a result of being barred from my life will help you understand the pain you inflicted upon me with your absence. The cherry on top of all that crap is this: if I could bring this stuff up to you and heal and move on as a family, maybe I would, but when confronted with the very real things you’ve done, you just get mad that it’s being brought up. You’re not mad at yourself, you’re mad that someone else is making you feel guilty for things you should feel guilty for. I have no patience or tolerance for it any longer.

You made your bed, now lie in it. You’ve always had a talent for lying.

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About the Creator

Stripes Joplin

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