I miss my dad.
It all pretty much boils down to that. I just miss him. I'll be fine most of the time, I'll feel like I've moved on but like once every month or two for some inexplicable reason I suddenly become overcome with deep sorrow and longing and grief. Tonight is one of those nights and I just can't take it anymore.
He's not dead or anything we just don't speak with him anymore. Throughout childhood he was the best dad I could've hoped for. When my mom would get frustrated or annoyed with me he would be patient and grounded. When mom would roll her eyes at my feelings dad would just sit and listen and tell me I had such a big heart. He'd listen to me and my brothers' thoughts, feelings, and interests with genuine interest himself. These are just a few of the reasons that I never doubted he truly loved me. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I always thought I'd cut contact with mom and keep a relationship with dad, I never would've guessed it would be the other way around.
In the interest of keeping this post under 1,000 words I won't tell the whole story why I'm not speaking to him anymore, but long story short he and mom divorced when I was 6 with no formal/legal agreements then when I was 17 he met his now husband and betrayed our family at the worst possible time. My mom would've ended up homeless if she hadn't pulled 2 jobs and 60 hour weeks with her broken body. There's also my evil step dad (mom's second husband) in the picture who reached his worst around the same time my dad betrayed us which is why the timing was terrible. My mom is the only one I've have been in contact with for almost 3 years now (I'm 20 now) but my older brother occasionally talks to dad, which reallt upsets my mom.
I loved my dad with all my heart for so many years, my dad who made me feel more loved than anyone else even came close to. That dad changed so suddenly, that dad is gone. In the last months of knowing him after the betrayal he was a completely different, self centered person. I just can't wrap my head around that. I just want to remember my old dad and look back on that fondly but the worst part it whenever I try to look back at the happy memories of him it just seems fake. I have to wonder if he was faking it the whole time, if underneath he was always that self centered man he revealed himself to be. That's what my mom says. Would it have been easier if he just died before any of that happened and I could just remember nothing but good of him without questioning everything I ever knew of him? It's been almost three years and I still desperately want to reach out to him. Part of me wants to reach out to the man he is now and be like "Why? Can't you see yourself? Can't you understand what you did to us?" For a while after I stopped talking to him I buried him in resentment in my mind kind of like a "fuck him." But now that's just made it harder to remember the good times fondly. And another part of me desperately wants to reach out to the old him, my dad who I loved and who loved me, and start a relationship again. But from what I hear from my older brother that's never gonna happen, he's gone forever.
I don't know why exactly I felt like I needed to talk about this, I guess because I've been keeping it to myself for so long. I'll be honest I was looking for a little sympathy or advice on how to mentally handle this, or heck anything to remind me that this isn't all some terrible mental abomination confined in my own head, that someone else understands on some level that this is real. So yeah, hope you enjoyed my ramblings