I contacted my father for the first time after 2.5 years of silence
Entry posted by LenaCs in Complicated feelings ·
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I cut him off completely the summer 2.5 years ago. My father is not the reason I’m on AS, but he was emotionally abusive, going as far as to lock me in his apartment for hours while he was at work, or raising his hand (though he never struck me, because 16 year old me had enough common sense to realise that I was in danger, and I managed to calm him down enough that he wouldn’t hit me). For a year when I was 16-17, I lived alone in Hungary, only daring to go to the capital with my hood pulled up because I feared what he’d do to me if he found out I was still in the country. The summer I was 16 was the first I’d ever see his violent side, even though I’ve heard stories of him trying to kill my mom on two separate occasions, installing spyware on her computer, having people to follow her around, kicking his teacher off his bicycle for being “gay” back in high school, or beating people into unconsciousness in road-rage accidents. But I never thought I’d ever see that side of him. It was not hard for him to hide it from me when I only ever went back to Hungary to visit him during summer holidays.
After more than two years of silence, I sent him a message on Facebook for his birthday. I told him I wasn’t interested in small talk, but if he was open to it, we could sit down and talk about that summer and how we each experienced it (through text because I wasn’t ready to hear his voice)—thinking that it would help me understand him and his actions better. He was open to it. It was like talking to a different person all together. Turns out his health deteriorated over the last 2.5 years. He almost died once, just days before I reached out. I think maybe that shifted his priorities a little. I don’t think he would have ever listened to even a word I said before the near-death experience.
We texted a lot. I think a lot of things shifted in me because of it. I realised I had all this resentment for him. I resented him for depriving me of a good father figure all my life—something that should have been my birthright. I resented him for every monstrous thing he did that summer. I resented him for having to know what it feels like to fear for my life, but not be able to leave because I was underage and I had no one else in Hungary. I resented him for having to live that one year on my own, basically in hiding. I resented him for not once having visited me nor in Ireland or in Spain. I resented him for not having bought me a single plane ticket in all my life, but through the phone he always cursed my mom for not bringing me back enough to see him. I resented him for loving the dog more than his only daughter.
I think all that anger was coming from a place of me unconsciously assuming that he was depriving me, despite him having more to give. Now I realise he never had anything more to give. He was fundamentally incapable of love—because he never learned how to love in the first place. I realised there’s nothing that he could give me. I realised I don’t need him anymore. Little me would have needed him to be there, to make an effort to be a “dad”. 16 year old me would have needed some minimal support from my father when I was studying liberty horse training. 16 year old me would have needed him to not berate me, calling me stupid to other people, going behind my back to screw up my interviews for internships I wanted to do, locking me in the apartment with no way out, raising a hand against me and make me fear for my life.
Child me would have needed the “dad” he never was. But 19 year old me doesn’t need him anymore. I don’t need him to be able to have happiness. In fact, whether we occasionally text about empty nothings like we did before the summer 2.5 years ago or not—it no longer adds or takes from my life. I don’t NEED him anymore. As shitty as that sounds, I feel like this revelation took a huge weight off my shoulder. All this resentment was because a part of me still, after everything, desperately wished for his approval. For his love that I never got. Now that that’s gone—I feel like I’ve been liberated.
Idk if I’m explaining it in a way that makes even the tiniest bit of sense, sorry. The days after our “chat”, I spent crying from morning to night. Even when I wasn’t crying, I couldn’t get out of bed. But I did a lot of thinking. After that emotional rollercoaster, these are the feelings and emotions that stuck: I feel like I can finally properly let go of him.
Edited by LenaCs
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