DISCLAIMER: This contains things about my family, which might hurt the ones it concerns BUT it is not my intention. I need to vent this. I need to explain my own feelings. And hopefully somethings might become clearer for some of you. And if any of you think I should take this down. Let me know. Also, read to the end.
Growing up I was told this and that about my father, after we almost stopped visiting him I was told by my mother that he didn't want to see us. And kept telling us this and that he didn't like us, yet under all my doubts about him I put him on a pedestal like no matter what he couldn't be worse than my mother, even if he didn't like us or didn't want to see us he never tried to hurt us with words. And I loved him, probably more than I ever did love my mother, and I still love him.
Years went by, we saw our father sporadic, I got disappointed at every event he didn't show up to, he started missing holidays, eventually even birthdays. And it hurt, I couldn't understand how you could just not care about your child, your firstborn, your only daughter. Was my step-mother and youngest brothers so much more important?
When my mother was sent to the hospital, we were sent to live with our father seeing as he had shared custody of me. I wasn't happy about it, I was already depressed, and I was already inflicting pain on myself. Now I know they really tried to get us to feel at home there, but I didn't feel welcome. I always felt like I wasn't wanted so why should they even try to make it look like they did?
Of course I had good times with them, I really did, but the thoughts that they really didn't want me was always there. My step-mother never did the "my kids will have much better things than you", she tried to be a mother to me. But it just seemed fake to me, I was so used to how my mother treated me so anything else just seemed fake and like a bother.
And then at one of the summers, I was around 15-16, my mother had gotten back from the hospital for a while and I just wanted to be back with her, with her I knew where I stood. I knew what I could do to please her, I knew my place.
That summer I was in two plays, during one week I had shows twice a day but not ONCE did my father or step-mother bother to come see it. My mother in her wheelchair came, with my grandmother and my brother.
Eventually I just decided that I would live with her instead.
My father didn't like the idea, we argued over the phone and honestly I do not remember what we really argued about, the only thing I remember is him telling me I was worthless. My world crashed. The pedestal he was on crumbled. And around that time I tried to take my own life for the first time.
"If not even neither of my parents wanted me, why should I waste anyone's time with being here?"
All this got questioned last Friday when I learned that my fathers social-phobia (which I also have) had been just as bad, if not worse than mine. That he had struggled with it almost his entire life. Suddenly him doing his hobby with my brothers with no one else around instead of going to my events made more sense. And I have started questioning all the times he never showed up. Maybe he really couldn't come.
Just like I couldn't even get out of the door, or when I freeze up in a store or when I get a nosebleed from all the stress it causes me to even think about doing anything when there would be others around.
And the biggest question of them all, maybe it wasn't me. Just maybe I wasn't the reason he didn't come. Maybe he did love me back then. Maybe my dad really wanted to be there for me but couldn't.
Maybe I was worth something to him.
Maybe I wasn't the reason.
All of a sudden, my life kind of got turned around. All I thought I knew might not even be true, maybe everything is just what my mind created from the words of others and the actions of someone that couldn't tell me "Why".
I leave, lighter at heart but still a bit lost and confused.
with love
Sam
No comments:
Post a Comment