My childhood is not one that I have many happy memories of. I have blocked out so much of my adolescence that I get so frustrated when I try to remember it…and then I wonder if I really want to. You came into my life at a time when my mother and I were both in a needy position. I needed a father and my mother..Well she just didn’t want to be alone. I learned from an early age how to be co-dependent and thanks to you I see why that is such a bad thing. Things started out OK from what I have been told but once September 1, 1985 came around my whole life changed forever. From the first day you were married to my mother and you drove off in that little sports car with her I knew things would never be the same. I cried like any 6 year old would - unhappy that my mother, the only person who was ever consistent in my life – was being taken off to some place that I couldn’t go. I know now that it is a journey that I will never take and thanks to you, I never want to get married and I never want to have children. You have effectively ruined any hope that I ever had to get married, have kids and live happily ever after.
My earliest memory of you being your true self was in our apartment in Raleigh. You came in from work and got furious that I was watching cartoons that you deemed violent. How IRONIC that you would be offended by violence when you would later inflict so much on me and my mother. You also insisted that I refer to you as my father. Out of fear and deference to my mother I obliged. It wasn’t easy at first – I refused to refer to you by anything – and then progressed to referring to you as Dad. I will always regret doing this because you were so far from a father. You have no idea what it is to be a father and I can’t imagine anyone wanting you to be the father of their children. I never called you anything other than Dad – no Pop, no Daddy, nothing. You were a hollow shell of a person that represented the father figure in our family structure and nothing more. You could have been a sack of rocks painted to look like a man and even that would have been a better father.
My sister came a year later. Everyone was so excited. I took Big Sister classes and learned how to take care of a new baby in the house when I was not much more of a baby myself. She was a fantastic addition to the family and for her I am so grateful. She is beautiful, nothing like you, and I hope she never will be. The same for Kellen – what a joy he is and what a smart, handsome young man. Oh wait, I almost forgot – you blamed mom for his MD since you know, she can control how her genes work. Aren’t you smart enough to know that? Are you so stupid that you don’t know that YOUR genes control the sex of a child - knowing that Mom was a carrier for MD that affects males - still chose to get her pregnant so you could continue on your pathetic legacy? That was another sad attempt to make you relevant to this world. Kellen will continue to grow up to be a great man and you should know that it will have nothing to do with you.
As I got older, the physical abuse started. I learned how to fight a grown man, so I guess I should thank you for the free boxing lessons. I learned how to take a punch in the face – oh yes – and when it happened to me at the hand of a drunk ex, I knew exactly what to do. I also learned that hot food works well to throw on someone if they are beating the living daylights out of someone you love. Sitting in the living room trying to enjoy my dinner and you have to come and scream about something as usual, leaving Mom to protect me, as usual. Her 100 LB frame compared to you was no match. I am surprised you didn’t kill her. Your beady little eyes would glaze over and the real person would come out and we would all know it. What a frightening thing and I will never forget it. Your hatred and contempt for me still lingers at that house to this day. I hate even being in that house.
You beat me before my first big choral performance of my 9th grade year. Did you know that the day before some boy played a joke on me by telling me he wanted to go out with me? I had no idea it was a joke and I fell for it, because I just wanted someone to like me, since no other man in my life did. It was so embarrassing for me, and then the next day I get to go home and have my stepfather punch me in the face because he heard me call him an asshole while I was sitting in my room. You were above the garage and you heard me. You stormed down the stairs from the attic and into the house and up to my room. You know the hole you punched in the door is still there? I hope if you ever see it you remember what it is from and it eats you like a cancer from the inside out. You didn’t find me under the bed because I ran down to Mom’s room and hid under the bed. You pulled me out from under the bed, threw me on it and punched me in my left jaw. It was so swollen that I could hardly sing. I was so embarrassed and had to make something up. At 14 you shouldn’t be making excuses for being beat up.
Sure, you coached a softball team and I did have a good time. You also leered at my friends and wanted me to invite them over, probably so you could go fuck my mother while thinking about underage pussy. You sick bastard. I know you did this with my sister’s friends too. What in the hell is wrong with you? Your life isn’t some Nabokov novel! Oh wait, let me break that down – Nabokov wrote Lolita, which is about an older man who lusts after some teenage girl. You understand right?
Good.
You would beat me so hard with a belt that some days I couldn’t sleep or sit right. I cried so many tears that I didn’t think I had any more in me, and still I had to be there for my mother. I was her only protector. Thankfully you chose to spare your blood children from this misery. Why? Why me? Why did you choose me to be your punching bag? Why did you choose my mom to cheat on and beat up? Why did you even come into our lives? Why are you still obsessed with speaking to someone who would rather see you in the ground than on her doorstep? Why did you choose to take any hope I had of a real father away? I just wanted a Dad that would talk to me, love me, and protect me from those things that could hurt me. Instead, you were all the things that a father shouldn’t be, and now I have to pay the price for it. I hardly even know my father. I wish I had grown up with him instead and I wish mom had never met you.
You tried to apologize, I remember one night you crying in the kitchen and I was crazy enough to believe that you wanted to change. WHAT A FOOL AM I!? HA! Thinking of that now is so freaking hilarious.
I have many more memories of you and your crazy antics but I don’t feel like digging into my brain to find them and rehash them here. I just want you to know that I never, never, NEVER want to speak to you, see you, hear you, or think of you again. I don’t care if you are dead or alive and as far as I am concerned my siblings do not have a father. You are nothing more than a sperm donor. You took so much away from me and you took so much away from my mother. She stayed with you because she felt she had nowhere to go, she didn’t love you. How can you love a monster?
Do not attempt to contact me ever again. I do not care for you, I do not love you and I do not want you in my life, nor do I need you in it. I have done very well without a permanent father in my life and I can continue on this way until I die. I hate you more than you will ever know and I hate that you even think of me. It makes me sick. I don’t even want you to speak my name because all you could ever do was scream it before you beat me with your leather belt so hard that your name that was engraved in the belt was a reddened mirror image on my thighs.
You are a sad human being and I hope in the end you get what you deserve. I am just sad that you have to be related to 2 people in this world that I love so much, and I am so glad that you and my mother are no longer together.
