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Took Dad to the airport yesterday. I am torn between my feelings of obligation as his biological offspring and my own personal distaste for his character. Especially since his intention is not to upset people. His intention is self-amusement but is maintaining the relationship worth two uncomfortable weeks per year.

I don't know.

We were close when I was little. I idolized him as a hero but the older I got the more I became aware of.

My stepmom kept me in his life 18 years longer than I would have been because she was my friend and now I struggle to communicate and identify.

At least it is over for another year.

Mood: Highly stressed



As a child my relations with my parents was strained.

My mother was Godlike in her intensity to instill a feeling of love or fear. My father was just fun.

The older that I got I came to understand that my mother's abuse was the fault of both of my parents but I never realized exactly how much of it came directly from my father.

I wish that abuse always came in the form of hits, kicks and profanity.

Life was ideal in the 70's and early 80's but as I got older things became more and more difficult. This was due for the most part to my father's gambling, drinking and stealing from work. It made life in the small towns we traveled through extremely difficult as we children suffered the slings and arrows of the children whose parents were affected by my father's manipulative and criminal behavior.

As a kid I did not know that much. I knew I was getting teased because my drunken father was an embarrassment to the town.

Even as I eventually came to understand that my father was stealing from my mother, from employers and racking up debts and cheating and all else I could not put the blame solely on him.

Mom stayed.

I thought she stayed because he was fun.



As an adult my perspective on my dad has changed. He seemed fun and always joking. He seemed to always have a no nonsense approach to problems. I thought he was smart but troubled.

Now I know that he is just a child in an old man's body.

The fun and joking is mostly at the expense of those in the room. The last week has been painful as every time we talk or every question I ask is met with sarcasm or worse; just the type of comments a person expects from a bully. Always his entertainment at my expense. His intelligence and approaching to problem solving are not what they seem either. They are closed mindedness and direct evasion of a situation. When he makes people mad he just says "ok lets forget it" and expects it to be forgotten. The expanded form of that is to go out of his way to entirely avoid the offending topic.

One week to go in his visit and I realize that had it not been for my step mom I would not have maintained contact with this man into my adulthood. It is a harsh thing to say about my own father.

The truth is he is my dad but he has been the clearest model of everything a person should avoid being.

I watch quite helplessly as he continuously teases my daughter who is diagnosed with a developmental disorder which keeps her from properly processing information which makes no sense. She has no actual sense of humor or imagination but he teases her over and over which has actually(in the moments)caused her distress which he has ignored.



Why am I saying it here instead of to him?

I know that by this time that is the question in the brain.

"closed mindedness and direct evasion of a situation."

If I tell him that he is being hurtful and inconsiderate he will go out of his way to play martyr in an attempt to make reparations or he will stop talking to any of us altogether while he is still visiting in my home; thus making the situation even more uncomfortable.



I hate to say how much I am looking forward to the trip back to Atlanta airport on Tuesday.

COMMENTS

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Isis101
22:38 Jul 04 2012

Wow. I'm sorry that you are going through this...especially your daughter. Hopefully at some point, you can sit her down and tell her about her grandpa in a simple, non-frightening way.

It's too bad that we can't chose our relatives, huh?

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moonkissed
00:01 Jul 05 2012

It really is.

My daughter is old enough to understand after a bit that he is kidding, but when it is happening it is confusing and she feels like she did something wrong.

I am glad now that we only see him once a year but I am seriously considering having a reason to not have company next year.

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