I'm the first one to admit, growing up, I didn't have the best parents setting the foundation for life. In fact, I've even had my own mother tell me that, because I didn't graduate high school, she would never be proud of me, no matter what I did. For years, I knew she meant it. I knew whatever I did, in my mother's eyes, I wasn't going to make her proud. Ever. Well, I no longer believe that. Things slowly started changing after I moved out here and we had to work on our relationship from a distance, but our bond has grown even stronger since the custody issues have arrised.
My father, on the other hand? We never had a good relationship when I was growing up. He was physically abusive towards me. He's also an alcoholic. I despised that man. After K became pregnant and had A, I wanted A to have a relationship with him, even though Thugboy and K were against it. For two years, I worked on trying to bury the past. I tried to overcome and forgive him. I was trying to be the bigger person. Maybe if I made the first step, he would follow. When K moved out here, things changed between my father and I. He no longer wanted to have a relationship with me. Now that he's taken K's side completely and hasn't had any real meaningful conversation with me in over a year, it's starting to sink in a bit about how much it sucks.
It sucks being completely ignored by my father. It sucks feeling like an outcast. It sucks not being able to tell him how well I'm doing in school. It sucks knowing your father is making up things about you to protect his other daughter, the one he's always loved more than you.
This is probably something I'm going to have to work on for the rest of my life. I will probably never have a proper father-daughter relationship that I hope my daughter has. Despite that pain, I try to realize he doesn't matter. I have other people who do love and care about me. I have other people who are proud of me.
I have friends who are proud of me. I have some family who are proud of me. A is proud of me. Some of you are proud of me. That is what I need to focus on. It's more his loss, than mine. It's hard, though.
3 comments:
I am damned proud of everything you are doing...fighting for A, bettering yourself through education...you ROCK! I'm sorry your father will never recognize what an amazing woman he has as his daughter.
It is so hard to deal with the baggage from our parents.
I am proud of you. Look at all that you have accomplished and all you are currently accomplishing. You are amazing!
It never stops being hard. But knowing that it is what it is: that is so important. Once you can see it for what it is, it is so much easier. I'm sorry you don't have the father you need, that we all need. I hope it doesn't sound hokey to say you have a heavenly father, who can be everything you need if you let him.
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