crysthewolf

Wow.

I think that for a long assed time I’ve been working through some of this shit about my Dad and I’ve been banging my head into a roadblock… namely, pretending like everything’s okay to myself so that I can get along with him, have him in my life. And for a long time, of course, I’ve been asking myself if maybe he’s right about me having been a jerk of a kid (I wasn’t) and being too mal-adjusted for him to take me in when my Mother was being abusive.

I’ve been starting, just barely, over the past few days to think that maybe it really ISN’T me. Maybe it really IS him, maybe it IS his problem, and maybe it always has been.

I guess that, even as hurtful as it was, that blog entry solidified something for me. When I asked myself “What kind of parent says things like that about their kid on the internet?” I realized… it’s the kind of parent I’ve always had.

I’m not going to sit here and list all my Dad’s faults ’cause… why? I mean, he’s shown you enough of them himself, trying to warn you about what a mess I am. And no, it’s not like I haven’t gone off on some people or flown off the handle or, definitely, DEFINITELY, pushed some people away (I wonder if you’re reading? You were right, I pushed you away because of him), fulfilled my own prophecies about nobody loving me and nobody wanting me around.

But I didn’t do that to my Dad. My Dad did that to me.

I’m not in a “blame my parents for all my problems” place ’cause… again… why? What would be the point? No, the point is to find the source of the problems and work out from there. Take responsibility for what I’ve done but, honestly? Sometimes give myself a break for the fact that I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, or where all that heartache was coming from.

At some point last night I decided to stop being angry at my Dad, deep down, like I had been. What’s the point in being angry at him? He’s got his own issues, obviously. He doesn’t have much interest in being my father… really hasn’t in a long, long time. Oh, he tells stories about how horrible my Mother was and why he couldn’t come around… but I remember how all that went down as clearly as I remember the night he left, and it’s all a bunch of worthless excuses.

And the thing is, it’s his problem. Not mine.

I didn’t do anything to make him leave, or make him not want to come around, or make him mad recently, or make him not bother to make any effort to spend time with me… except for to exist. There’s never been anything wrong with me and I’ve never been mal-adjusted, that’s just always been his excuse for not taking responsibility. I was never a fucked up kid. I wasn’t even an ANGSTY kid. His idea of bucking authority was me taking up the shower for too long and his idea of me treating him like shit was downloading pictures from the internet onto his computer’s desktop, and then him accusing me of still doing it after he’d told me to stop because he found one that I’d downloaded BEFORE he told me to stop that I hadn’t gotten around to deleting. What were the pictures of? Dragons, unicorns, artwork for a website I was working on… and I won’t even go INTO his response to Aaron when Aaron caught him in a lie about why he’d engaged AOL’s parental controls.

And that’s the bottom line. It’s not that he couldn’t deal with a kid who had angst over him leaving… he couldn’t deal with a NORMAL kid. A GOOD kid, even. And the few mistakes I DID make, he still throws in my face whenever I don’t worship the ground HE walks on.

And it’s not my problem.

I’ve never had much more than a rudimentary relationship with my father and now, especially after writing this, I’ll probably have less than that. The fact that I haven’t, and probably won’t, give him any grandkids to play grandpa with takes away most of his incentive to even bother with me. But I don’t have any use for being pissed off at him for that. I DEFINITELY don’t have any use for taking it out on other people.

And I’m sorry that I have. I’m not big on mass apologies, but I do regret that, if it matters to anyone who might be reading (it may not.)

And, more than that… I don’t have any use for taking it out on myself.

See, I didn’t do that. I didn’t leave, I didn’t move away, I didn’t come up with excuses why he couldn’t be a parent. I didn’t write any ranting blogs about how he’s crazy and manipulative and he’ll only hurt people (which, ironically, I’ve written about OTHER people - how much does THAT freak me out - but never him). The worst thing I ever said to him was that I needed a break from my entire family and that what he had said about how horrible a kid I was hurt me. I didn’t do anything to him, I didn’t treat him like shit, I wasn’t even a bad kid.

Everything he’s said about me is his own opinion, the lies he’s told himself (and others), and a mass of delusions, and I refuse to internalize it anymore. That’s it, I’m done… and it’s not even worth being angry about.

And it’s been ages since I’ve felt as light as I feel right now.

Love,
Crystal