I remember as if it was yesterday. It was a sunny, but wintery day. A perfect day to go ice-skating somewhere. I heard a knock at the door. At three years old, you’re usually excited to have visitors because that means you have another playmate. But for me a knock at the door signified something else— my real dad coming to visit. Normally a girl wouldn’t mind to see her daddy, but not when your daddy has abused your mom physically and verbally, done every drug under the sun and has several grand theft charges to his name.
At three years old I didn’t know all of these details, but I could always sense he wasn’t right.
As my mom went to answer the door, I hid behind some fake plants that were in my living room. My mom called for me to come out, saying I had a visitor, but I knew who it was. I didn’t want to leave my safe haven to see him. But I did it for my mom, not him. He told me he was taking me ice-skating. I freaked, but couldn’t do much about it at the time because the divorce hadn’t been finalized, so I had to go. Needless to say I gave him hell when I left my mom. He was trying to be all nice and sweet to me as if he cared, but let’s get real, he was only doing it to appease the courts.
Anyways, we get to the ice rink and I throw the worst tantrum. People were looking at him as if he kidnapped me. Needless to say that was the quickest ice-skating trip I had ever been on. We may have stayed for 20 minutes before I got my way and he brought me back home.
That’s the last I ever saw or heard from him.
Now, let’s fast-forward 17 years. I was having lunch with my aunt, who is my real dad’s sister. She was always there for me and my mom because she knew the kind of person my biological father was. When the divorce was finalized, she told my mom she didn’t want to ever lose ties even though she wasn’t married to the family anymore. So, while at the California Pizza kitchen, my aunt dropped a huge bomb at the lunch table. She told me my dad was about to get out of prison, after 10 years, and was wondering if I had any desire to reconnect with him.
I immediately froze. For those 30 seconds that it took her to say that sentence all my past experiences flooded my memory. My mind was going in five directions. That was the first time I had thought of him since I was three. I had totally erased him from my memory like he did to me.
I snapped back into the conversation. I looked at my aunt. I was trying to convey my thoughts into words, but nothing was coming out. I didn’t have to say anything. She could read my facial expressions. She told me she only brought it up because there was a chance he was going to try to contact me.
But he never did, thank goodness.
Then, on November 1, 2008, I got a phone call I’ll never forget. My mom called to tell me that my real dad got hit by a drunk driver and didn’t know if he’d live. She suggested I might have to come home to say goodbye.
I freaked. I felt like I was three again. Is it bad that even on his deathbed I had no desire to see him?
Sometimes we, the victims, tear ourselves apart because we think we’re being bad people and have hateful hearts. But that’s not the case. It’s that we’ve been a victim of our situation for so long that our threshold has met its max.
It’s not that I was being a cold-hearted bitch while my dad lied on his deathbed. It’s because he never respected my mom’s worth nor cared about me until the courts were involved.
This was me taking a stand for myself and not letting him victimize me anymore. I have a life to live and it goes on whether he’s in it or not.
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