an open letter to my father...

words you'll never hear and never understand

Dear Dad,

This isn’t the first time you’ve been on the receiving end of a long-winded bit of my soul, of which you have no capacity to bear.

I learned of your limitations in the hardest way, but for now, I’d like to start at the beginning.

I, of course, have no memory of you and Mom together. Save for a few stray photos and a diary she kept leading up to your wedding, the rest is up to sparcely shared stories and imagination.

You didn’t have to marry her. And you certainly didn’t have to try as hard as you both did to bring me into the world, so I suppose I’m grateful to you for a chance at life.

But seriously, what were you thinking?

The degree to which you were damaged could really only spell trouble for your future offspring. I guess Mom talked you into it… You never really did learn how to stand up for yourself.

It’s not your fault, so naturally, I’m conflicted. How do I hold empathy and apathy together now, having grown up with your bullshit but loving you still?

Your mom was a nightmare, someone – something – no child should ever have to endure. Her psychosis, the drugs, and the unhealthy emotional attachment she harbored for her only son. You were her best thing. You were her worst thing. And she let you know it, let you too be conflicted, holding two halves of yourself that I don’t think you were ever able to make whole.

I’m sorry she did such horrible things to you. No child deserves to be blamed for their parent’s delusional and irrational behavior. I should know.

Here’s where you lose me, though. How did you knowingly have someone like Mom walking with you through the fallout, and all the while you’re entertaining the manipulations and entrapment of D (my then future step-mom)? Grown as I now am, I’ll admit, I can see the resemblances between D and your mom. Ever the “love” you thought you deserved, right?

I found your letters, as you know, the ones you saved from the fire.

300+ emails you sent to D during your affair. The sick little names you called each other, Sabine & Smokey Bear. Lady Macbeth & Lion. (ew)

“so how is it that you and L come to be dating? I have to beg, borrow, and steal for a few minutes. I’m trying to remember, but I don’t recall me ever being able to swing much more than one meeting a week with you. but then, I didn’t have the balls to show up post-sonogram when a dinner date had already been planned.” (sonogram appointment to see me, still unborn)

“yes girl, I too am plagued by thoughts of all the fun we would be having together. It would be magical. music, art, literature, travel, food, wine, play.”

“I’m going to burn in hell, and my only consolation is you’ll be down there with me”

“here is why we have to stay with the plan, even though it will be hell: I have been overtaken by a wave of grief, sadness, depression, so powerful I can hardly breath. watching myself annhilate and unsuspecting and fundamentally good world. she is so much better than us. that is what just tears me to pieces. and what can I do, the blood is already dripping from the knife. nothing but the awful consequences remain now.” (she being, my mom)

“okay, little June needs me, it’s her 3 month birthday”

-all pieces of letters sent from my dad to D. (I’ll spare you the mentally scarring lines that a child hates to read about a parent)

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oh yes, I have the reciepts

These are mere snippets of what amounted to a novel’s worth of deception and delusion. It’s clear in reading them that D made you feel divine. What a thrill to be so bad behind the back of your pregnant wife.

You already knew you were going to hell; at least now you’d have worthy company.

How dare you? How dare you speak my name in these tomes of your deceit?

How dare you hold me on your lap as you write such disgusting things to a woman who was, as we now know, taking calculated advantage of your obvious weaknesses.

For sex? How boring…

For revenge? On who?

For self-flattery? Perhaps.

I have always found it interesting that you only saved your own half of those letters.

And in case you were wondering, I finished the fire’s job.

You and I do not live in the same version of the world. It took me a long time to realize that such a divergence could exist for some people. That trauma and the inability to cope with it can indeed drive the mind off a cliff.

You’re subtle about it, though. People like you. They want your attention and don’t even know why. I think you mirror back to them their own darkness that calls from deep within. At first, it feels exhilarating - dangerous in a way that they’ve always thought their life needs more of. I’ve seen your charm work on strangers and friends alike. The lies you spin that feel real, because to you, they are.

The portrait of a successful family man: well spoken, well read, exceedingly intelligent, and also… fun. (Though, any of you that could be called fun starts and ends with a bottle of vodka.)

I’d be lying if I wasn’t partially in awe at the intensity of emotion and passion conveyed in your illicit exchanges with D. But underneath the undeniably well-written prose proclaiming unbridled love (dude, D really had you by the balls), I found your shame, your guilt, and a rather disturbing degree of self-loathing.

P (sister) and I found the letters. We were looking through a box of old cards we had given you as kids. At the bottom was a smoke-dusted, beige folder. Unassuming, yes, but it piqued our curiosity just the same. What was so important that you somehow managed to save it from the fire that destroyed everything?

You were out of town when I made this discovery; we already weren’t talking, but until this moment, that felt more like a heat-of-the-moment temporary decision. A break after months of pleading into your void. See me.

It wasn’t until I read the contents of that folder that I realized I never stood a chance. You had abandoned yourself long before I ever existed. How then could you have ever shown up for me?

Your mother told you that you caused her suffering, and you believed her. So, of course, you, too, deserved to suffer.

“I’m going to burn in hell, and my only consolation is you’ll be down there with me.”

Well, you had that part right at least. You and D deserved each other. The control, the animosity… a true adversary to deflect your inner loathing onto. Now you could take that mutual darkness out on each other. That is, until you slipped away, passion dying as D’s shiny newness turned into yet another ball & chain.

Until D lost you, and turned her attention to me.

I was her ever-present reminder that she would forever be second string. It’s pretty clear you loved the idea of D, but that you never got over Mom. Given how she treated me, it’s safe to assume she knew that too.

Narcissists need an object of control, that one person who sits center stage, that they can abuse like a voodoo doll at their will. Once the uninspired tale of happily ever after wore off and you retreated to your bottles in the basement, only 4, 5, 6 year old me remained on stage.

I polished her ego on command. If only to avoid her wrath.

You left me alone in that. You ignored what you knew was happening in favor of drowning in your own victimhood.

I know you think you are the ultimate Martyr. D even confirmed as much to P. After your divorce, she told P that you truly believe you are uniquely fucked up. That you and you alone are permitted to hate, because life is unfair.

You raised me to be a cynic, a skeptic. To make you laugh, I used to joke with you that we were all nothing more than meaningless numbers in the system. License numbers, bank numbers, social security numbers… (I was 10 years old)

You showed me that the answer to my big feelings lay in avoidance, work, and liquor.

Once, at a party you threw when I was a teenager, you came to find my friends and me incoherently drunk at 2 in the morning. We handed you our empty bottle, and all you did was laugh and your words slurred too as you said, “Hey, I was looking for that.”

You let D demean me. You let her convince you that I was not a human who deserved and, frankly, needed love.

I also know that you burned down our house.

Rather than using your considerable intellect to navigate your woes, you hid behind your pain and a cool mask of indifference (one none of us ever bought, btw).

After I moved away, I was confronted abruptly by someone D knew. This woman proclaimed D my hero, that she and she alone saved my life during my eating disorder. More of D’s lies. I called you from the car, mid panic attack, and you said nothing.

“Oh, I’ve tried to tell her to stop doing that. Hey, by the way, I know it’s been 8 years, but are you fine now?”

Ya, Dad, whatever helps you sleep at night.

You knew D was evil. She ruined things for P. But you let her. Too cowardly to protect your daughters from becoming your mistress’s emotional punching bags. Hey, better us than you I guess?

You knew you weren’t a good dad. You’ve told us that you didn’t want either of us. I don’t think either of us even holds that against you. But we deserved not to be abandoned with the consequences of your actions, while you hid from us all just a floor below.

Inching your way closer to that inevitable hell, I guess.

I stopped talking to you shortly after that pointless call, for 4 years. I couldn’t take how you let P suffer after I moved away, still letting your own pain excuse you for any absense.

Did you know I called her every day until she answered me to make sure she was still alive?

Do you remember my warning that she was drinking too now?

The self-inflicted scars she and I bear on our bodies could be counted like tallies for every time we reached out to you and found nothing but empty promises.

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here's a bit of what you missed

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I came back to you a few years ago because P told me you might finally be leaving D, and that you were also likely dying from your alcoholism. Maybe not this year, or the next, but it was catching up to you faster now.

With D out of the way, I supposed maybe, maybe if she was the root cancer, we could salvage something like a relationship.

Turns out, you left D after all these years, not for me or for P, but because you were trading her in for a new model, one that still found your darkness tantalizing instead of pitiful.

That was a hard day. I had done so much work to come back into your life, and I knew I was crossing my own boundaries in doing so. And there you sat, like a petulant teenager in the back seat of my car, smirking at your own little secret as we asked if there was someone new.

Here we are, I guess. Forever at an impasse.

To have a dad and accept all that he isn’t and all that he’s done.

Or to turn away from your darkness, and remain fully in the light of my own sun.

Is there a middle ground?

No.

It’s always been all or nothing with you.

me & you, before I knew

-June

I invite you to stay and be seen here.

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for words with nowhere else to go

unspoken thoughts, unfinished feelings, & everything in between

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