To say that we've been a bit busy would be an understatement. We're finally in our new house and it feels great. I didn't realize how much I missed having our own place in the world, a place to truly call home, until we had it again. I'm thankful to be in our new home.
Though I miss living across the street from my mom. A lot.
The past eight weeks have brought on a whole lot of other changes too. Some are pretty small and then others are pretty big.
Today was the perfect representation of one of the biggest changes though....
We spent the day at my mom's house trying to sort through all of my dad's stuff to be sold. What doesn't sell will be donated.
If you know my dad and you know of his OCD behaviors, you know this couldn't have been any small task. It was overwhelming so for the most part, I sat back and watched as my mom and some of her friends did a majority of the work. I'm so thankful that these friends took the bull by the horns and helped her do this because it wasn't something I was ever looking forward to doing myself. At one point during the day while she and I were alone I said, "I always knew we'd have to do this one day, I just figured it'd be when he was dead."
Hello, reality.
My grief has come a long way over the past eight weeks. I've started seeing a therapist which has helped me tremendously.
But as there always is in life, there was also a tipping point. A moment in which everything changed... again.
I've been receiving letters from my dad religiously for a while now. They always seemed to come on Fridays and Saturdays and I usually would get about two or three letters a week. At first they were focused around property issues; what he thought we needed to do with what pieces of property and so on. Over time though they began to take a different shape; he would ask questions about us and my mom in a way that made us all feel uneasy. After a few weeks of this it became clear that he was probing for information not because he genuinely cared but because he wanted to keep tabs on us to maintain some sense of control. He tried to maintain this control through his manipulation as well and I've come to see just how good he is at this.
For me though, the straw that broke the camels back came a few days after Easter when I received a letter stating that he "hoped to never have to live through another holiday without Liana and Lukas" and that he was "planning to make that happen".
How is a daughter supposed to respond to such words?
Initially, my heart responded with agony. How did we get here? To the point in which my dad is basically telling me that he is going to try and kill himself while in jail and I'm not sure whether that'd secretly be a blessing or a curse? I cried out of desperation. His, mine, ours.
In tears, I walked across the street to share the letter with my mom. (Each letter that comes, whether it's addressed to myself, Brittany or Mike, is shared. Everyone reads it and my mom keeps them.) We sat on her bed, crying together and unsure of what to do. The social worker in me knew that the right thing to do was call the jail and report this to them so that they can do what needed to be done in order to ensure his safety. But the daughter in me, well, she often felt like he would be better off if he had succeeded in his suicide attempt that night. Like we all would have.
As I sat there talking to my mom, reading and re-reading that letter dozens of times, it clicked -
Would a suicidal man really spell out his plans to his daughter in writing?
Would a suicidal man really still be fighting for 50% of the estate?
No. But a manipulative man would.
In that moment, I felt like I could finally see my dad for who/what he was.
I saw him for the control that he was trying to bestow upon us. For the way in which we were just a means to an end. I realized to him, we were nothing special. We may be his daughters and his wife but to a person like this, those are merely words with little meaning behind them. He doesn't love us, he only loves himself. He only looks out for himself.
Which he so clearly proved the night of February 15th when he shattered our worlds, one by one.
That moment was one of liberation for my heart. It was the moment in which I realized that my life would be better without him in it. That I didn't have to continue fighting for him, taking care of him, worrying about him because he certainly wasn't doing any of those for me.
Don't get me wrong, I love my dad and I always will. I never wanted to have to push him away and close him out from my life. All I really wanted was for him to love us the way that we loved him.
But it's pretty obvious that isn't going to happen.
Cutting my dad out of my life isn't about being hateful towards him. It's about self preservation. It's about not letting him get the best of me anymore. It's about not letting him ruin any more of my days. It's about not walking out to the mailbox in dread because I know that even if there's a letter in there with my name handwritten on it in pencil, I'm not going to let his words weigh on my heart. He can only hurt me if I let him and at this point, I refuse to let him hurt me.
My dad wasn't always a bad person. I look at old pictures now of the days when things were good and I find myself questioning how he could have changed so much. He surely was never a perfect person or a perfect father, but he loved well for at least a little while.
I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that the man I know now, the man in those mugshot pictures, isn't the man I've loved all my life. In the words of my therapist, "that's the 12 year old you that feels that way about him." She's right. I love the man that he was but I can't love the man that he is now.
I just can't. I won't.
I hope that someday, he can find love in his heart again. I hope that he sees my actions for what they are... not of a hatred towards him, but of a love for me. I can't take care of myself and try to take care of him at the same time. It just doesn't work.
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