You never know how unhealthy something is until you get some distance from it. The relationship between my dad and me was doomed from the start. Before I was even born, my father was heavily into hardcore drugs. In fact, my mom wouldn’t even allow him in the delivery room because he was high on crack cocaine.
I can’t paint a picture of my dad in a terrible light without mentioning the bright hues. Our relationship wasn’t always bad. I’ve spent a few weekends with him, we’ve gone on daddy-daughter dates, and when I learned to read and write, we became pen pals when he was incarcerated. He’s tried to be there (something I’ve never given him credit for) but drugs inevitably always ended up coming first.
I didn’t realize how toxic our relationship was until I began dating at 16.
My first boyfriend was amazing; he spoiled me with gifts, and he was dependable. If he said he was going to do something, I knew it was going to get done, even if we were mad at each other, which is something I couldn’t say for my dad. In fact, sometimes my dad would pick a fight with me so he didn’t have to send money.
Over the years, I began to eliminate any and every guy that had any character trait as my dad. If they broke promises, lied, weren’t dependable, made me feel like I wasn’t a priority, didn’t contact me daily, or addressed me in a disrespectful manner, I immediately blocked and deleted them.
You see, the problem with my dad is he thought he knew me, but in reality, he constructed this idea of me to what he perceived to be true.
To him, I only contacted him when I wanted money. He also thought I was a lazy bum that didn’t have a job, ambition, or any knowledge of what it meant to be an adult. All of which were not correct. Ultimately, we were strangers that shared the same DNA. Which is sad.
I’ve tried a plethora of times over the years to connect with him and allow him to learn me and who I truly am. But each time he failed.
It’d start off good with promises he’d be sure to break about being a better dad because I’m all he’s got in the world, and that pattern would always return unsatisfactory.
This year I decided I’d had enough. You can only allow someone to disrespect you for so long. I had an epiphany and everything suddenly made sense: I wouldn’t allow someone I’m dating to treat me like I’m nothing, yell at me, threaten me, and treat me as a burden, so why take it from my dad? After that realization I let him know that I was done getting belittled and made to be a person I’m not.
How could I possibly be after money if I put money on his books every time he’s locked up? And what kind of bum writes a memoir and has a consistent workflow as a freelance writer? I decided not to explain my worth to him, because if he couldn’t see it, he didn’t deserve to. And the reality of it all is that he never saw my worth from the beginning.
It’s sad that the man that was supposed to teach me how a man is supposed to love me, failed me.
Yet I figured it out through his acts of showing what I didn’t deserve. Today, I am at peace knowing that I am living a beautiful life with people that value me in it. I am dating and being treated like a queen (as I deserve), and I am working on not projecting my daddy issues on him.
Dads don’t realize how essential they are to their daughters. They are the foundation. But I am grateful to have an amazing mom that always taught me and allowed me to see my virtue from within. Once you cut the toxic part out, everything pure just flows in.
