part of my dad

My mom was my dad’s second wife. I met the daughter my dad disowned (because he told his third wife she “wasn’t his” when there’s obvious proof she is), the one from his first marriage, when she found me on the internet after ten+ years of looking for me. She told me some horrible stories like that he told Mary, her mom, that he was going to medical school, had a pager and scrubs, and went to class every day, but had been lying and never enrolled at the school.

My dad and my mom both did horrible things to me as a child. Never sexual abuse, but they had their own issues and paid very little attention to me, even when I acted out to specifically get it. My mom was on drugs. My dad was a workaholic. When they got divorced (I was 9 and my younger sister was 7) my dad fought a custody battle to get my sister and me, won, and then moved us away from my mom and blatantly ignored us.

Years later, my mom cried and apologized to me for not being able to be there for me; my dad’s response to me has always been one of “I never did anything wrong, why are you so fucked up?” I moved away in 2001, when I turned 18.

In 2006, his third wife’s parents went on a Caribbean cruise. They invited every child and grandchild (my stepmother has 4 and my dad has my sister and I) and their significant others except for me. I found out through facebook. My stepmom felt so much “guilt” at me not going that she and my dad paid for my trip, barely talked to me the whole week, and though she hugged me tight and promised she wouldn’t “forget” to call me the next time one of my grandparents died like she had earlier that year, we haven’t spoken. Her father died a few weeks after we got back.