This is the story of my old man

This is the story of my old man, like his father before him (probably, don’t know much about his family).

I realise I’ve mentioned my parents divorce before now, as well as my father a sample of times. When I usually speak of my dad now, I mean my mother’s fiancé and the man that I should really call my stepfather, but refer to by his first name. However, that’s only been the case since I was 15/16, and long before that back in my childhood it wasn’t so great.

People often ask me about my biological father, and my response usually is that he was a bastard. If there’s ever any follow up questions I respond with a rough count of how many times he broke my mother’s nose, or pushed her down the stairs when she was pregnant. After that people clam up.

When I was younger, my house was not a quiet place as you’d expect with four siblings, a drunk for a father and various other things. My father left the house “forever” (which I took to mean for a few days/hours in his head) more times during my youth than I can count, regularly threw insults and fists at anyone who’d look at him wrongly and arguments between my parents could go on for days and weeks.

There were times where he could be an okay parent, but I think he always felt let down that his first son had turned out to be a geek, as opposed to a manly man who was in to sports etc. It didn’t go well as the next son entered in to the fold of cooking (a subject my father had minimal knowledge of), the next one was a geek too but then finally the final son did have an interest in sports and all that stuff, and he seemed overjoyed and willing to neglect the others to lavish attention on the son he saw as a younger, less balding version of himself.

This isn’t to say that brother of mine didn’t also receive regular beatings from my father as did the rest of us. Everyone was equal in that regard.

We sometimes went to his mother’s house and I do have some fond memories of that (playing with LEGO, eating broken biscuits) and some not so good (crashing through their glass door to the garden) and I learned that she had been informed of the abuse that was administered to the rest of the family by my father, but chose to shrug it off and ignore it, which simply isn’t right in it’s own way.

Eventually, and thankfully my father left for good (after what I remember being most of the kitchen smashed to pieces and being told to go to the neighbours house whilst the police were called) and moved on to another woman (though I would not know this for several years).

He told us he’d moved far away (down south somewhere) but this fallacy didn’t last long as I soon spotted him in town and others mentioned spotting him with the aforementioned woman, as well as a pushchair avec le baby at points.

I must admit it was comical that we saw him after boarding a bus and got the driver to hold it for us whilst my mother spoke with him and made him feel so guilty (about not paying anything towards his kids etc., we got £1 off him for child support each every month I think…) that he slinked away with his head hung low and wouldn’t even speak a word to me. Oh how funny it was.

He still came to visit the family, somehow forgetting or pushing aside all he had previously done. He’d try and integrate himself back in to our lives, seemingly missing what he had done his best to cock up. Initially I did think about forgiving him, but for all the bad shit he’d done, I soon realised that forgiving him would be useless and any apology he offered would be fleeting. I’d still receive Christmas money and birthday cards, until one day I was just so angry and fed up with him.

It was my birthday a few years back and he’d sent me a text wishing me happy birthday and the like, and I responded by sending him one telling him to stay out of my life for good and launched quite a tirade of words at him.

Since that I’ve heard nothing from him, one of my brother’s still keeps in regular contact with him to the point that he’s been to his house a few times (I still have no idea where he lives and don’t care to know) and everyone still gets birthday cards and Christmas money from him. I don’t and I am so fucking glad for every day that I have that man out of my life.

I even go under a different name these days to new people in order to further distance myself from him (as my middle name and last name used to make up his name) as much as the rest of the family may think I did it for other reasons, that’s why I decided to do it.

I really fucking hate him, and he’s the only person I’ve known personally wherein I wouldn’t care if they died.

Look at how I have to communicate my thoughts via Lost. I just thought it was a nice parallel actually.