I was wrong about my dad.
I've always thought, at least for awhile lately (so it seems like always, and maybe it was), that my dad wasn't doing his job- as a dad. For years I only heard negative things about him from my mom. And I saw only the bad things. My dad wasn't there. My mom and dad fought. My dad was impatient, and controlling. As I entered my teenage years, I blamed him for him and mom almost getting a divorce. I blamed him for every move, for giving away our dog, for not providing for his family, for not being there, and probably for all the pain I felt too.
As I was growing up, I felt alone, hurt and abandoned, because my dad was never there, or so it seemed. When he was there, I remember telling him to stop trying to control my life (and this was while I was in Elementary school- or perhaps, before). I hated moving, starting over, and we were doing it constantly. Most of the time we moved because Dad didn't have any work, and so, I started blaming and loathing him for that too.
All I saw at 'home' was Mom and Dad fighting (verbally), disagreeing, miscommunicating, and arguing. There were very few times it seemed my parents loved each other. When I was almost in 5th grade, my mom was so upset and hurt that she told her three children that she was going to leave and not come back. For a 10 yr old, that's worse than hearing your pet just died. She got in the car and drove off in a huff. I was bawling my eyes out, and completely believed she was gone forever. Later that day, she came back, and I was so happy. (For some reason, I turned many of my parents failures on myself. I told myself, and believed, that it was all my fault. And when I told my parents that, they couldn't understand why I thought that way.)
And then there was the teasing. Dad loves, I mean LOVES to tease me. He's always teased me, throughout my whole life, and I've told him to stop, but he won't. He says it's his way of telling me he likes me (as his daughter), but I just see it as annoying. Many times, his antics would remind me of a child, or my immature peers.
My dislike for my dad and my disgust for his antics grew untill I started to really loathe him. And it grew little by little every time we would move. Lately, my relationship with my dad hasn't been quite up to par, and that's putting it mildly. At least in the past few years, it has progressively been getting worse. Multiple accounts of his teasing getting way out of hand, and bordering on insults, his incessant will to tease me, appearing to me like deliberate attempts to damage my fragile self-esteem, and outright discourtesy towards me as a person have caused me to hate him more, and in the past few months, even label him as a total and complete monster.
And that's what I believed. I believed it with all my heart and soul. But I was wrong.
Today, I was able to go to work with him. At first, I only saw it as an opportunity to earn money. But it was so much more than that. My dad's a carpenter, contractor, electrician- he's a "jack-of-all-trades" really. Today, we were working on someone's house. The lady that lived there talked and talked, about many different things, while her husband sat in the chair next to her. After awhile, although I had just met them, it seemed as though I'd met them before. When we were leaving, one of them told Dad that he'd done a good job (talking about me). That struck me to the core, and as I thought about it, I began to see that it was true. He had done a good job raising my sisters and me. He'd done the best he could. My dad wasn't an alcoholic, he didn't beat me or my mother or my sisters, he didn't do something stupid and go to jail. He did the best he could to provide for his family.
Through the eyes of a child, I understood very little. I blamed and loathed my dad for nearly everything bad that happened to me. Through the eyes of an adult, I can clearly see that I was wrong, and I understand so much more. I have been so selfish, so blind. I was wrong, and I'm terribly sorry and ashamed of the way I've been thinking of and treating my dad. I'm not saying everything's perfect now- it defiantly isn't, and I know we both will make many mistakes in the near future, and I still won't like his teasing, but maybe now that I understand a little more, maybe I can finally begin to forgive him.
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