I Don't Get Along With My Dad
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I was looking at old photos. It's like looking at strangers when I look at pictures of my parents. We were something more like an actual, normal family back then. He was even kind of normal. His addiction and lying was really what messed everything up. It ruined everyone.
I'm not that angry anymore. I've been fixing the mess of my life and making my changes. It's better now. I'm healing...finally. I'm too old for that grudge now. My oldest adopted sister is still sorting it out. Sometimes she says things that I know echo my own anger from before, and she has a right to her feeling. I just don't share it anymore. Besides, I knew a different guy. The man in this pic was a normal father to me once. Me, my older sister, and third biological are the only ones who remember that guy.
As far as I'm concerned, my dad died a long time ago. The shell of a man who rots in the corner of his bedroom isn't my dad. Not really. He's someone suffering from a lifetime of bad choices. He's someone I struggle to feel bad for. It's hard to feel bad for someone who hurt you and everyone you cared about, someone who turned from a dad into a nightmare. In some ways I do and in more ways, I'm indifferent.
No one wants to end up like how he has. He's my nightmare again, but for a very different reason.
I will never be able to admit to everything horrible that went on in my family during my adolescent years. It feels like my shame too. "Your family is fcked up," third biological's husband said to me before during a conversation. [i]He's[/i] no better. Still, he said it like it was my fault as well. It felt like it was. I was responsible for it too, kid or not. I was part of it, still am, and I got messed up too. And that guy had no right to talk...who's the freak who married into the messed up family?
Anyway, I'm just thinking. I visited my adopted siblings to see how their first day of school went. They tell me. They don't talk much to him unless they want something. Money usually. He really is completely alone in the hell he made for himself. I wonder what the guy in the picture would think if he knew how he'd end up. I wonder what he'd do differently if he knew. Knowing my dad, he'd do everything the same way but convince himself that nothing that bad would ever happen to him.
I was looking at old photos. It's like looking at strangers when I look at pictures of my parents. We were something more like an actual, normal family back then. He was even kind of normal. His addiction and lying was really what messed everything up. It ruined everyone.
I'm not that angry anymore. I've been fixing the mess of my life and making my changes. It's better now. I'm healing...finally. I'm too old for that grudge now. My oldest adopted sister is still sorting it out. Sometimes she says things that I know echo my own anger from before, and she has a right to her feeling. I just don't share it anymore. Besides, I knew a different guy. The man in this pic was a normal father to me once. Me, my older sister, and third biological are the only ones who remember that guy.
As far as I'm concerned, my dad died a long time ago. The shell of a man who rots in the corner of his bedroom isn't my dad. Not really. He's someone suffering from a lifetime of bad choices. He's someone I struggle to feel bad for. It's hard to feel bad for someone who hurt you and everyone you cared about, someone who turned from a dad into a nightmare. In some ways I do and in more ways, I'm indifferent.
No one wants to end up like how he has. He's my nightmare again, but for a very different reason.
I will never be able to admit to everything horrible that went on in my family during my adolescent years. It feels like my shame too. "Your family is fcked up," third biological's husband said to me before during a conversation. [i]He's[/i] no better. Still, he said it like it was my fault as well. It felt like it was. I was responsible for it too, kid or not. I was part of it, still am, and I got messed up too. And that guy had no right to talk...who's the freak who married into the messed up family?
Anyway, I'm just thinking. I visited my adopted siblings to see how their first day of school went. They tell me. They don't talk much to him unless they want something. Money usually. He really is completely alone in the hell he made for himself. I wonder what the guy in the picture would think if he knew how he'd end up. I wonder what he'd do differently if he knew. Knowing my dad, he'd do everything the same way but convince himself that nothing that bad would ever happen to him.
