Choices
My dad moved out when I was in fifth grade, so I was about ten or eleven years old. I was surprised when my parents told me that they were splitting up; I truly never saw it coming. I don’t remember ever thinking that they were unhappy, but I was an only child so likely wrapped up in my own little world. It got weird after that. I realize that it’s always weird for the kids when marriages break up, but this was a different weird. It took me a few years to figure it out.
My dad, before the split, had always been there. He was present, he was attentive. And then he wasn’t.
You can be attentive without being there 24/7; it’s hard, but you can do it. I know that it’s possible because I’ve watched other parents split up over the years, and I’ve seen how they make it work. But it was different for us. When he left, he left.
The deal for us was Sunday afternoons. That was his day to pick me up and spend the day together. It didn’t last very long, and for a while I didn’t understand why. All I knew was that I started spending my Sundays waiting. Two o’clock became four, then 7. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all. My mom did a good job of sheltering me from his demons. I didn’t know that he was struggling. I didn’t know that he had probably held it in as long as he could, and finally he had to leave. Leaving for him meant freedom, no wife, no kid, no responsibility. (Looking back, he must have thought that if you left the wife you got to leave it all).
And so most Sundays I waited, until I couldn’t wait anymore. I became teenager, and teenagers have friends that they want to hang out with. And so, I chose friends instead of waiting on many Sunday afternoons.
Teenagers notice things that ten-year-old miss. Teenagers often see the demons in other people, they can name the demons. His demon was alcohol.
The teenage me didn’t see him much. It was hard not to see him, but it was even harder when I did. The drinking was hard to deal with, the teenage girlfriends (barely older than me) were almost as hard. The insane girlfriend who threatened to kill me when I was a senior in high school (she wanted him all to herself) was a doozie, too. Finally, the teenage me had enough, and I went into survival mode. I’ll skip the details, because they aren’t pretty and who needs that? I stopped initiating contact with him, so he became a Christmas and Birthday Dad, although we lived in the same city.
I became a young wife at age 22, and a young mother at age 25. Christmas and Birthday Dad still usually came around twice a year, and by now he seemed to have settled in with a new love. But his demons were still there. I wasn’t sure how he would act when he came around, and although it wasn’t often, I couldn’t take chances. I needed to do it differently for my kids. I had a wonderful husband, a growing family, and they were my responsibility. I let my dad know that he needed to get himself straight to stay in our lives. He wasn’t on board with that. He said I was spoiled. He said I couldn’t take a joke. I was twenty-eight years old by that time, and I’m fifty-five now. Twenty-seven years have gone by without contact.
I know better than most how the months become years that turn into decades. I know how hard it is to walk away from someone that you once loved, someone who was so very important to you. I drew a line in the sand when I was a 28-year old mother of two (who became a 35-year old mother of four). Would I change that? No way. I did it for my kids, for my family. It was my turn to shelter them from his demons just as my mother had tried to do for me.