Transparency: Part 1

Tweet

Transparency is a word that has become very popular with content creators on various social network websites. It has become the it word for people to describe themselves as open books. While I have for many years, said I was an open book and in a lot of ways I still am. But there are bits and pieces of my life that while they aren't hidden. They aren't really all out there in the open. I don't really know how to approach this, and the bringing those locked away chapters out. But I figure that it's beyond time to get it all out in the open. Like I said above, if you ask me a question, I will answer it with bluntness, honesty and tell you all the bitter, ugly details, no matter how bad they make me look. There are decisions, choices, and things I have done in the past that I am not proud of. But that doesn't mean they didn't happen. Anyhoo. In the last couple months, my father has re-entered my life. Since my therapists growing up, and the hip in the know people on Tik Tok say he is one of the main sources of my childhood trauma, I figure he is a good place to start with this transparency journey. Some of you, very few of you are aware of the almost non-existant relationship with my father for the first thirty two years of my life. Here's the version of the story I grew up being told by my "birther" (I don't usually refer to her as my mother, because quite frankly, she hasn't ever had a motherly bone in her body) is as follows. He wouldn't get a job, wouldn't do anything to support her and I when I was a baby, so when I was a few months old she packed me up and moved to Oregon, from Idaho to live with my grandparents. Now if you ask him he says that he did freelance art/or writing or something for the newspaper and that wasn't good enough for her. So I don't know. I want to beleive him....but you know I don't know the guy. So, that's hard to grasp as well. Since I was about two years old, I have talked to him a handful of times. Once about six or seven years ago for a couple weeks, and then again a couple years ago for a month or so. Both times I regretted it. When my other half's dad died earlier this year, it got me thinking about my own dad. While we obviously have never been close, or had any sort of relationship and I swore the last time I stopped talking to him, that it wasn't worth the effort I was putting in to it. But something about the other half's dad dying caused me to seek him out. So a month or two ago I started searching. The man isn't a interent person, so it took a little more digging than it would usually take to track him down. But I did. I found his "wife" on facebook, told her my cell phone number and then texted the number I found for him. It took a day or two, but he called me. I didn't answer. Because I just wasn't comfortable doing so. I told myself that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it on my terms. We started texting, which was werid, then one night after a few too many drinks, he called and I decided that maybe being under the influence would make it a little less awkward to talk to him. We talked for maybe an hour. It was weird. Because he just jumped into a conversation like we had always been a part of each other's life. That's what he did the past two times I have gotten a hold of him and tried to build a relationship with him. That's always been a red flag to me. I do not for the life of me understand how someone who hasn't been a part of their child's life for three decades thinks he can just step in and act like he wasn't absent. I haven't said anything to him about that, because we have yet to have a conversation that deep. It has been very surface with him. Very day to day talk, not quite small talk but not anything very deep. I can't say that growing up I missed him. Because I never knew him to miss. If that makes any sense. Plus my maternal grandfather stepped up and along with my grandma raised me, so I had in my eyes one of the best father figures I could of asked for. Some of the questions I have asked though he has shied away from, or he'll answer but not really. There are several answers I've gotten from him, that don't add up to what I grew up hearing, or what I know for a fact. So I don't really know yet where I stand with him. While I never really missed him, there is a lot of hurt there. I guess. I don't know if it's hurt persay. Or maybe because it has always been that way, I'm just used to the hurt that he has caused. One of the biggest issues I had with him the time I talked to him before this is his wife. I don't really know if they are married, but that is what he refers to her as, so I gues that is what we will call her. I got frustrated with him, told him that I wasn't going to put up with the way that he was talking to me. Because it was not appropriate, not like that. But for someone who hasn't been a part of their kids life for as long as he has/hasn't, it wasnt appropriate. She got snippy with me, and I told her she had no right to talk to me that way. She called me some names and I told her not to speak to me if she couldn't give me the respect that I gave her. He tried to step in and play daddy and tell me what to do, and I said no. He pushed it and I told him that I wasn't loosing out on anything if he wasn't in my life. And that was the last time we talked until a couple months ago. So @TheHorse, if you want to anyalyze all that, and tell me your thoughts, I have open ears. As for where we are now, we're still in the small talk phase. He hasn't tried to explain, or take it any further and with everything else I've got going on, I haven't had the mental strength to either. I know this first post is pretty messy and rambly and all over the place. I promise it'll get better as I get on. If you made it this far, thanks for listening to me unload on you, if you didn't make it this far then you won't be reading this, and it won't matter. I know me being serious isn't something some of you are used to , but it does happen.