Father’s Day in the US is coming up soon. I feel a way about it because 1. my father is a jerk and 2. because it feels no more appropriate to apply to me than Mother’s Day does. In a way I think they are both stupid Hallmark holidays. Mother’s Day felt really weird and uncomfortable to me and thankfully we are at a lacrosse tournament instead of at home, thinking about it. Father’s Day feels equally weird because I don’t exactly feel like a father, although I think I am closer to that than mother.
My own father has been ignoring me since the visit, other than a couple of one line messages and sometimes emojis. Ok Boomer, keep your emojis to yourself. It’s all part of his love-bombing when he wants my attention again. But all of that dried up after he saw pictures from my college reunion. It’s undeniable that I will never be what he pictured and wanted me to be. That hurts in some ways and make me so angry in other ways. How can you reject the person right in front of you because they don’t meet the expectation you had of them before they were even born?
The part that really hurts is the realization that I’ve been living with lifelong rejection since my own personality began to emerge and I wasn’t what he wanted from a very early point in my life. How do you survive a lifetime of rejection and neglect because you aren’t the pretty pretty princess your father dreamed of having? How do you tell him that not only are you not THAT person, that you are someone completely different from what he even knows?
The problem is that I have never truly let him in so that he could see all of me. I cannot do that. After the years of neglect when I couldn’t take care of myself, there was no way that I could let someone in who would hurt me repeatedly. by coming and going emotionally based on what I looked like, my behavior, and the unchangable parts of my personality. He does not want ME. It’s not that he doesn’t want his two children, it’s that he doesn’t want ME in particular. I think if he could’ve seen who I was at birth, he would’ve put me up for adoption. I hate him for this. I truly hate him. I think part of the reason why he was so publicly nasty to me in the fall was because I looked like a dude. I look even more like a dude now. I’ve lived so long letting him ruin my life and making me feel like I am the problem. I have moved away from that FINALLY and started living my life how I want to, with the people I want in my life.
He is not one of those people.
He is barely hanging on at the outskirts of my life. He is selfish and mean spirited. He does not care about hurting me or making me feel like he doesn’t care. It’s not even about not knowing how to show love, as my therapist suggested. It’s about me not being who he wanted. It’s about me having a strong personality and not agreeing to be exactly who he wanted me to be. It’s about him, all of it, and it says nothing about me or the kind of person that I am.
I am toying with the idea of saying nothing to him about father’s day. Ignoring him completely. It will be an act that proves in his mind that I am the aggressor, the ungrateful brat, the jerk he regrets having. In my mind, if I said anything it would just be empty words. What I really want to say to him is that I don’t miss him, I hate how much he has hurt me over the years, and I hate that I was born to such a selfish prick. But I guess it’s true that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all. So it’s either that or the empty words. No more gifts, no more reaching out with an olive branch. After his behavior this past year, I am done with all that extra stuff. He can hang over the edge, maybe choosing to let go and fall down himself. Or maybe he will say something stupid and I will push him of the edge. Either way, this thought about what to say will continue spinning around until the day arrives.
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