I'm happy whenever my dad isn't home, and I feel guilty but also not
Ever since I was young, whenever my eldest sister would bolt and hide in our room when our Dad came home, I didn't understand. Now, as I grow older I'm doing the same thing.
To make a long story short, my father has been every type of abusive except physical and has put my mother and sister through so much, as well as cheats on my mom as she pretends not to know about it. Because I am the youngest and apparently the most compliant I have suffered, but more in extension to their suffering so not much. He is a narcissist and he doesn't even realize it, and we as his daughters are tired of keeping up this sham of a family.
I'm in university now, and the only thing I'm interested in him for now is his money. I cannot stand being in a room with him for longer than an hour. When his car enters the driveway I run and hide all evidence of me being present in the living spaces, and my mother gives me this annoyed but understanding look; like if she had the option, she'd run too. He knows next to nothing about me besides my academics, and things he knows I liked from when I was a little girl. He doesn't know the current me since he was too busy going abroad to write his exams and pretend like he didn't have a family at home waiting for him.
A part of me yearns to know the father I have properly, because I can tell he seems sad whenever he gets home to an empty living room and a quiet house where the occupants hold their breath around his presence. But again, I don't care. He's shown me time and again that he never really loved my mother or this family to begin with, and is only trying to buddy up with me because I tolerate him and he thinks it's a chance to get closer to me.
So I will keep running. I will keep hiding my true self from my father, because he has not earned it. He has never put in much work to earn it, and I doubt he ever will. I hope he doesn't realise that he was the problem all along in his final moments, because that is a regret so deep that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I will keep running, because he has not shown me a world where I can ever feel free and authentic around him.
I do not hate my father, but if reincarnation is real I would choose to not be his daughter. All I feel for him is mild respect and filial obligation, and that is it. I just needed to get this off my chest.