After years and years of hurt, my father has failed to surprise me and his ways are only getting worse. As far back as I can remember he has never been there for me, not even when he and my mother were still married. Never can I recall an important event of mine that he was present for. Not a single dance performance, tennis meet, banquet, nothing. I guess I ought to give him credit for arriving late to my high school graduation with his wife. Although he made an appearance on one, of what I consider, the most important days of my life, he wasn’t there the way I needed him to be. The same way he hasn’t been there my whole life.
For years I kept telling myself that he would come around and that all he needed was time. But as I aged the same question lingered in my mind, “How much time does a father need to realize that his children should be the most important people in his life?” How much time did he need to realize the pain all of his cheating and sneaking around caused my mother? How much time did he need to realize that my grandparents were sick and needed my mother more and more with each passing year? How much time does he still need to realize he has been wrong for fifty-five years of his life? I no longer ask myself whether or not he will one day realize any of the answers to these questions–and it has taken me eighteen years to do so. My parent’s divorce changed my view of marriage and love as a whole at the young age of nine. In a sense, my father made me completely change my view of the world and the people in it, for the worse.
I along with my sisters have tried beyond our abilities to be a part of his life, but he just didn’t want it, and maybe he never will. I’m tired of trying to be the better person in a relationship that just–isn’t. He continues to think it’s about money or how my mom divorced him. I guess he thinks it’s our fault. Blaming us for his screwing up is beyond immature, it’s sad. My father has never helped raise us even when he and my mother were together. I can’t remember the last time he called me to see how I was. Or the last time he offered any one of his struggling daughters a kind gesture. I can’t remember the last time he told me he loved me and meant it. Maybe he never did. For a while all of these things hurt me so much that I couldn’t bare the pain. I used to cry because the situation made me sad. But now I cry because of all the hate and anger I have built up because of him. My father is without a doubt the most stubborn and heartless man that I know, and although I would like to believe that one day he will realize all he has done wrong, I can’t anymore. My father has made me doubt every guy that I have been with, but I know now that he is what I will never look for in a man. It’s sad to say that I have stopped believing in Love because of him.
I can remember this one incident vividly when I was a little girl. My father had come home late one night from the local bar. He reeked of alcohol and cheap perfume. His presence always scared me, but did even more so when he had been drinking. My sisters were in my room with me and my mother was is her room. She had been crying before my father got home, I guess it was because she knew he was cheating. Maybe she was finally starting to realize that their marriage was a failure. Their marriage was not a failure because of my mother. She loved him unconditionally, despite all his bullshit. That man failed my mother. My sisters and I heard my father walk into their room.
“Why are you crying,” he asked my mom in a slurred, loud tone.
She didn’t answer, but instead asked where he had been. My father never felt it important to tell my mother where he had been.
He’d always say, “I’m a grown ass man.” He sure as hell didn’t act like one. I considered him to be a large child who expected to be waited on hand and foot, like a young, immature little boy would expect.
“You smell like another woman Sonny,” said my mom in a choked voice. I guess after that he just started throwing her around, because my sisters and I didn’t hear anything come out of his mouth, but instead heard my mothers loud cries.
My sisters and I had always contemplated calling the cops on him, but never had the guts to. That night we did. He denied it of course and nothing was really done about this bloody situation. However, my mom decided that enough was enough. She left my father that night and we slept at my grandparent’s house.
I never will quite understand my father as a person. I believe he is inhuman, as I do any man who hits their wives. It’s funny how once they are accused of cheating they hit the woman even harder. I don’t know if this is because they were caught and feel like an idiot for being caught, or maybe they actually feel ashamed that their wives were smart enough to figure it out, finally summing up the courage to leave them. You know that old saying, “people work in mysterious ways?” I believe some men work in monstrous ways. Sadly, some of them never change those ways; my father is one of those men.
I saw my mother endure pain for fifteen years of her life, and if I could have changed that I would have. If I could have made her find another man after the divorce, I would have. There is no worse feeling than seeing your mother miserable because of money issues, the death of her parents, and lost love. I only wish I could be there for her always. However, my mom has something my father will never have–her daughters. I will never quit on my mother the way my father did. I am tired of trying to prove myself to a man who knows nothing better than to love only himself. In God’s eyes this may be the worse thing to say, but this I believe—my father is dead to me. I write this in confidence that I will one day be able to fully let go of all my demons, my father being one of them. So I say goodbye to a man that has been nothing in my life but a negative existence.