I loathe my father, I love my father

There’s a very delicate balance that parent child relationships thrive on. When your existence depends on them it’s a bit simpler. As a baby you know nothing of the world or of anything outside the two people who created you. The older you grow the more difficult to navigate these dynamics become. Online it seems like almost anything a parent does can traumatize a child. I hate the notion that I’m reducing anyones experiences or pain, but I think it’s overblown at times how conflict and discomfort have shaped us as humans. My parents making me eat vegetables is not the same as the times they put their hands on me. My parents violence is not the same as their snarkiness. For they are humans too after all and in knowing such I am able to recognize that they aren’t infallible.

I could write and have written essay after essay about mother, but I have I think far less to say about my father. As most children who grow up with separated parents I was primarily raised by mother. My childhood, as I assume hers was too, was far from perfect. I don’t condone violence against children in any forms and especially not as punishment. However for all the animosity I hold towards her for her faults I know her well enough to also hold forgiveness for. How can I hold forgiveness for a father I do not know. If my mother was reliable 80% of the time my father was reliable 49.95%. There were years I don’t recall seeing him at all. Months on end I went without updates or hello. My father as a lot of fathers was a provider and so he became compartmentalized as only such. When I call or text him he asks simply, “How much do you want?” For years I felt guilt over this sobbing if I forgot his birthday and didn’t call until nighttime. Trying to take interest in him and the things he liked.

I replay his favorite song over and over until the metaphorical records scratch. I rewatch his favorite movies until the discs burn. I tell him about my life and ask him about his. I probe and probe hoping he’ll let me in, but he never does. He snaps quickly. His anger cuts quick and decisive. I never know what will make him blow up. My mother’s wrath at the very least was able to be adjusted to. I can deal with a beast I recognize, I can’t learn one that comes just as quick as he goes. I don’t know the man that I live with. I didn’t grow up with him.

My father when we lived in the same city was a fun weekend dad. Then he was an occasional phone call and eventually an every other weekend dad. So I can admit that distance and my mothers inability to keep us in a consistent place caused strain, I wasn’t old enough to be privy to specifics so I can only assume the obvious that being a single mother is incredibly difficult. The first cracks in our relationship though weren’t just due to the distance. I remember hating the distance and not being able to be close to my dad, but even when we were close I saw him not that much considering his insane work schedule. No, our first strain was his relationship with a woman who lived the city over from me.

New people aren’t my favorite. I don’t like meeting new people, but especially I hate being introduced to people by close friends or family and them assuming that they know you. How could you know me if you’ve never met? “I’ve heard a lot about you!” I’m sure you have, has he also told you that he knows nothing about me because he’s seen me twice in the past year? I think that I don’t know what healthy relationship between parents looks like and that will always cause a bias in how I act towards my parents dating. I don’t want to meet them and I am not happy that you’re happy. The interactions only further the pit I feel that you don’t love me or care about me enough to try with me.

Why does a stranger get to know more about you than I do? Why can you put effort into a relationship that isn’t ours? I don’t care that you don’t want to die alone and that old age makes you realize your mortality. How can you expect me to care for you in old age when I don’t see proof that you care about me now? But then I think is our relationship so transactional and that thought scares me because if I really think about it, it is. I don’t care if you ate or if you get home at a decent time. Because there was a time I did and I got burned for caring.

And yet I still care because how could I not? How could I stop caring when there are good moments? Should I disregard the bits of effort? I don’t think twice about the things he does do because I don’t have to he just does them. When it’s good it’s good. Is this good enough to forget the bad, to toss it out on the curb every tuesday and friday with the trash? Perhaps I should be content with not knowing who my father is, with him not knowing me. What a silly little thing to harp on, what a silly thing to let create cracks in my psyche. A little love is better than none. Having a father is better than not having one.

But there’s a pit in my stomach when my grandmother asks if my father’s arrive home and she worries if he’s not back when the sun has set. My father doesn’t worry about those things. My grandmother goes out of her way to make sure dinner is ready for him and won’t leave the house to do anything after a certain time if it means dinner won’t be ready for when my father comes home. I hate this, these shackles that she has put on herself of domesticity. It sets the feminist movement back decades the expectation that I should fall in line with her and serve my father. Is it patriarchy or is it a mother caring for her child? I grapple with this question daily. Should I want to serve him am I a terrible daughter if I think it’s not my job and that frankly he’s a grown man who can cook and serve himself. Would I feel this same way if it was my boyfriend coming home, a man I chose not one I didn’t?

To me it is different and that knowledge makes me wonder if it makes me a terrible daughter. Would I roll over and take the abuse if it was at the hands of a different man; never, but I don’t know my boyfriend as a father. I know my boyfriend as a man who keeps his word to me. Who on his own updates me on his life and his feelings. I hate the women who see this of my father. I hate the notion of them knowing more than I do. Claiming of his self should my doing as his child. Why doesn’t he want me to, why doesn’t he care that I don’t? This mask, this wall, this knife. All wedge between us harming me as I try to break through the defenses.

I loathe the most that I can’t love him as I should because I feel that he won’t let me. That he will die and have a life I know nothing about. That he will die and someone will come to me with stories of the man he was good and bad, protector and destroyer, and I will look at them blankly knowing nothing.

I wonder, selfishly, if it’s easier that way. Would it be easier to only know the shadow of him? To have never faced his wrath and his generosity? To only know his favorite songs as a playlist but not through memory? Would that pain be easier to bear for me and only me. Because I do love him, I think. I hope.