My Father: Almost Always In The Home But Almost Always Absent From My Life

In my conversations with men who sadly seem to be absolutely clueless about their intense impact on the lives of their daughters, I have noticed a definite pattern of these men adamantly refusing to accept responsibility for their actions, and inactions, toward these girls that they fathered. Almost anyone can have sex and bring a child into this world, but in the wake of all the damage done by indifferent and uninvolved dads there is a deluge of offspring that can attest to the fact that not being properly parented has had a definite lasting and negative impact on their lives. Because of my own experience with this, as a daughter, and my firsthand knowledge of what the consequences of this have been, for me personally, it disgusts me when these men tell me, very unapologetically, that they are absolutely dismissive about anything that their daughters have ever conveyed to them regarding the various types of harm done because they were not there as fathers in many, or sometimes any, positive ways.

These men simply shrug off their being told these things, often even displaying an obvious annoyance directed toward their child as they describe to me their being confronted by their daughters in such a way, saying that these girls are simply shirking their own responsibility for their own messed up lives, which has nothing whatsoever to do with them as their father. They also devalue both the communication and the daughter doing it, by saying that this type of 'tantrum' solely comes from the emotionalism with which females are often stereotypically branded, to be discredited, thereby conveniently providing these dads with a sort of perceptual permission to simply not take their daughters seriously about this at all. (Somewhere within them, though, I suspect that these men counter these daughterly divulgences in this way only because they feel that they then won't have to change or remedy what they refuse to acknowledge, something which would take real effort on their part, that, already clearly lacking from them, is at the very heart of this matter anyway.)

As it seemed with my father, men often tell themselves that if they stay with the woman they have impregnated, bringing home a paycheck, which contributes to the residence, food, and clothing that their offspring partake of, that they have therefore fulfilled their 'manly' duties within the family. However, any GOOGLE search quickly brings up no shortage of sites describing in detail the pervasive influence that dads have on their daughters, regardless of their level of involvement in their lives, while also documenting the need for these men to be helpfully involved in the lives of their children, and, the many areas of a daughter's life that are damaged if he fails to do so. Men are good at letting themselves off the hook, where this issue is concerned, forcing their daughters to have to live their lives with the consequences of their fathers failing them, while also getting the blame for what comes from that, which in large part should lay at his feet. She pays the price, for this.

I have memories of my father going back to when I was a toddler. The first few years were good memories, about him. He and my mother seemed to be happier together, in those early years of their marriage, than they would ever be in all the years following, up until my father finally divorced my mother late in life. Because they were a happy young couple back then, with my brother and I being the only children in the house at that time, all of our lives were happier. I remember a home life with a lot of shared smiles, in those days. Although I also felt lonely, and ignored, at times, almost invisible, when everyone else would settle in front of the TV in the evenings, while I sometimes chose to play with one of my toys instead, and, my brother was occasionally violent toward me, regarding all that was 'his' before I came along, I would still say that overall I had a happy home life, at the time. This included my having a real feeling of emotional closeness with my dad, which is so important to a little girl who depends on her father to be there for her, both physically and emotionally.

I can recall sitting on his lap, as a toddler, and sitting beside him in his chair (of course, watching TV) in the den, later on. When that suddenly stopped, and was simply gone for good, then, between us, by my dad's decision, I couldn't understand why. It was very confusing to me, as a small child, but also deeply traumatizing because it impacted me as being a rejection by him. My father was the very first person to ever break my heart. Beginning around the time that I was 6 years old, I remember him being a man that began to stop smiling as much, which only intensified, with him, as the years passed. He seemed to become resigned, in a way that left him bitter, resentful, and even cold. He also seemed to become increasingly escapist, within the home, being visible there in physical presence but that was about all. He was shut down, emotionally, most of the time, and when he did speak it was usually to express his displeasure or even anger.

Although 2 more girls were added to the picture, after my brother and I, completing the family, a lot of ongoing stresses and strains, primarily between my parents, but due to other things as well at times, seemed to always be tearing at the marital bond that was tenuously holding my parents together with one another, with us children caught in the middle of that in various ways. Ways which were hard to understand, if not impossible, for a child in the home.

When I was 6, my dad told me that I was too big, now, to sit beside him anymore in his big, cozy chair, where he spent most of his time when he was home. Instead, without further ado, he sat my younger sister there, in my former seat alongside him, and eventually he had both of my younger sisters sitting with him, one on each side. I recall looking down at my waist, pulling the top I was wearing tightly enough around me for me to see my actual girth, and I compared it with my younger sisters. We girls also often bathed together, back then, so I could easily see our size. There was very little difference, and more perplexing to me was the fact that both my younger sister and my baby sister could fit in the chair together, with my dad, and I knew that I wasn't wider than the two of them combined! If he had meant that I was 'too grown up' now, at age 6, to want or need to sit close beside my daddy, he was sadly mistaken, although I was never clear as to exactly what he meant by it since he never explained. I only knew that I had suddenly been replaced, as a skinny 6 year old, by two other bodies.

I felt like I had been literally cast aside, by him, and replaced by my two sisters that I resented as I saw them sitting in my spot while I wistfully looked on from a hard wooden chair across the room, alone. He did nothing to ease the transition, for me. If I had still received some acknowledgement or attention from my dad, despite this change in seating arrangements, I most likely would have felt less alienated from his affections, but he rarely paid me any mind from then on. It almost felt as if I had suddenly been banished to the other side of the world, rather than to the other side of the room, given that I seemed to fall almost completely off his radar from that point on.

However small this incident sounds, it sent an emotionally powerful message to a little girl, who didn't know why her father had no interest in spending time with her, anymore. Around this time, there were other signs that I had somehow gotten on my father's bad side, only I was a good and loving child, so I just couldn't comprehend how this relational nightmare had happened to me! When we were putting up the family Christmas tree one year, my baby sister was there in her bassinet. Wanting to include her in the festivities, as I had acted as a miniature surrogate mother to her ever since her arrival in our household, I placed a few of the silvery strands of tinsel above her, on the handle of the bassinet. My father snapped at me, scowling as he scolded me to "GET THAT OFF OF THERE!" While his concern was likely that the tinsel might fall in to the bassinet, and perhaps become a choking hazard for the baby, I would not have had any awareness of this type of potential danger to her, when I was so small myself. He never explained any of that to me, anyway, or simply directed me to remove it in a more kind or understanding way, which wouldn't come across to me as if I had somehow just committed an inexcusable crime of some sort. My feeling of always walking on eggshells, with him, began.

Once, he was lying on the couch in the living room and playing a made up game with us kids. It was special because my father didn't do a lot of this type of thing with us, and every child wants to interact with their dad, especially in a fun way. He was pretending to be a kind of monster, like a giant octopus, catching us in his clutches and holding us captive briefly by our arms before letting us go. We would then run back to the other side of the room, squealing with delight that we were free, before each of us, in turn, would run toward him another time, and be captured all over again. This went on for several cycles, with my dad as much into the game as we children were, making monster-like noises as he caught us in his grasp once more. After awhile, he apparently got carried away with it, though, because on one of my turns, he held me so tightly by the wrist that it hurt me, and I reacted to that by crying out in pain. Seeing my discomfort from that as being displeasure with him, he let go and flung my arm away from him.

Running back to the other side of the room, as my siblings took their turns, I felt my wrist stinging from the grip he had held me with, that last turn I had with him, and my skin was very red there as well. The next time that I ran up to him, confident that he would simply be more careful about how hard he was holding me, he wouldn't even look at me, and he would no longer play with me at all. He just acted as if I were invisible to him. I tried to continue with the others, in the game with him, but because I had said "Ow!" when I had been genuinely hurt by his roughness with me, he would no longer let me participate. So, I finally quit trying, and left the room, with tears welling up in my eyes, both from the pain I still felt in my wrist and from his shutting me out of the fun with him and my siblings.

I have always remembered that incident, because it sent an extremely strong signal to me, as a little girl. The message that I got, which my father had communicated so clearly to me by how he had treated me, after I spoke out from being hurt by him, was that I had to allow men to hurt me, without speaking up about it, beginning with him, in order for me to receive any attention or affection from them at all. I was also being taught to believe that I was merely treated by a man as I deserved to be, which meant that there was no problem then, unless I made it in to one by using my voice to protest, on my own behalf; something which apparently put me in the wrong.

What my dad taught me that day, when I was 7 years old, would affect my relationships with men for the rest of my life, and be something, deep down inside me, that I would have to consciously and conscientiously counteract. It influenced how men were allowed to treat me, and my remaining in a relationship with them in ways that weren't good for me. It affected whom I would end up marrying, and why, with me always settling for men that in some way or other had not, and were not, treating me very well, from my feeling unworthy of better, based on what I was raised to believe about myself. It left me feeling uncertain about my being entitled to hold men accountable to respect and value me, from my being taught that I had no chance to be loved if I did not go along to get along, as my dad had shown me I had to do, with him, all those years ago.

What I experienced on that day, with my dad, when I was just a little girl, had far-reaching effects on my life, and especially in my relationships with men. What my father had taught me, by his behavior, seemed to come up in every one of my attempts to find and have a loving relationship with a man. Studies have shown that a girl often ends up with a man much like her father, whether for better or worse, because that relationship was the primary one forming her view of what a husband is to be like, and how she is to be treated by a man in that relationship. It is not surprising at all, then, that I was married to 4 different men, and was not treated well by any one of them, in various ways, before I finally gave up trying altogether, realizing that I had been too damaged, especially in my parentally undermined sense of self-esteem, to be able to have that work out for me.

How I had been taught to see myself, due to my upbringing, was not serving me well at all. My parental role models weren't healthy ones, either! I wasn't raised having any idea how to maintain a happy marriage, since my parents were miserable for most of their marriage. A father is a daughter's first relationship, and her learning experience, with a man. That day, during the grabbing game, my dad taught me I must accept it when a man hurts me, and that I was to keep my mouth shut about it, by his demonstrating to me that it was the man, and my maintaining the relationship with the man at any cost, that was important; not me, or how I felt about how I was being treated. Children are always learning from their parents, lessons that are very impactful in their lives. This one certainly was, for me. My father's behavioral threat, that day of the grabbing game, and many, many other times, later on, of withdrawing all his interaction with me, and with that his attention and affection, as well, was scary, and quickly squelched my using my voice on my own behalf, both then and for many years of my life afterward. While this became the main weapon that my father used in his relational arsenal, throughout his life, I did finally find, and use, my voice, to speak my mind, to him and to others, and to stand up for myself, about things affecting me.

When I was a third grader, my parents were frequently fighting with one another that year, and one of those times was even more frightening for me to hear--- and see, some of it--- than usual. It was yet another late night, when I wasn't able to sleep because of it, listening to their voices arguing in their bedroom. Even though their door was closed, I could still hear this going on, with accompanying sounds that seemed to be slams and thuds, and brief silences, in the midst of all that. It was terrifying to me, as an 8 year old!

This particular night had seemed just like all the others, with this, up until the door of their room flew open and dad came rushing out through the den, headed toward the garage, with my mother close behind him, screaming, "Johnny, don't! Stop! Johnny, don't!" They both went out the back door, leaving it ajar. I could still hear their voices, outside now, and the sound of a car engine starting up. I crept out of my bed, getting to the open back door just in time to see dad taking off down the driveway with my mother just barely able to get herself into the passenger seat before he was gone. I could still hear her screaming for him to "Stop! Don't do it! Johnny, don't do it!" (whatever "it" was, which seemed too scary to think about, given the scene I was seeing), as I watched him weaving the car crazily along the driveway, as if he were trying to wreck the vehicle, with them both in it. Standing there in my nightgown, I wondered if I would ever see either of them again, especially alive.

Then, I started wondering what I would do, and how we kids would even survive, if they never came back, and the end had finally come, for them, from all this destructiveness in their relationship with one another. It appeared to me that my father was trying to kill himself, someone else, or both he and my mother now that she had left all her children behind in this house to jump into the car with this out-of-control man. Did they EVER think about US, when they were acting like that? >sigh< I recall still standing there, at the back door of our home, as the taillights from the car zigzagged down that long driveway, and then disappeared onto the road.

They were gone for awhile. I don't think they ever knew I had seen them acting this way; and heard them, that night, and so many others. There seemed to be some strong, unwritten law, within our immediate family, that nothing was to ever be talked about openly. As I stood there for a few minutes more, after they had driven away out of sight, before going back inside and closing the door, I found myself wondering if I would be able to cook anything for my siblings and I, to feed us, if our parents were gone, especially if they were gone for good. I had no idea if I would ever see either one of them again. This is not the kind of thing that any little girl needs in her life, and you better believe that it deeply affected me. Never being allowed to talk about anything, but having to just 'stuff it' all down inside me, continually, added insult to injury, for me, increasing the stress and strain that I felt from these things going on in my life.

My father started working out of town, in Oxford, for awhile, and he lived there during that time, for the most part. It seemed to me, because of that, and other things I saw, that my parents may have been separated from each other at the time. While I saw some things, one stormy night, that caused me to believe my mother was having an affair with someone, in our house, in my parents' bed, my dad's sister, my aunt, once told me that my dad had also developed feelings for some woman where he was living, as well. Mom drove us to Oxford, then, to see dad playing on the summer ball team there, perhaps for his company, parading all 4 of us kids around as if to make some kind of point to whomever. I was never sure whether his move out of town, during that time, was for economic reasons, marital reasons, or both. However, eventually, dad was back home with us again.

Once, mom told me to go out to the garage, where my father had been working on his car, and call him in to lunch, but I found him lying there unconscious, or possibly dead, I thought, on the hard garage floor, near an oil slick, with blood oozing from his head, and mom called an ambulance which took him away on a stretcher. Another time, mom came in the house, after being outside talking to my dad, and she was sobbing in a way that I had never heard her do before then. She began preparing the meal in the kitchen, as she kept crying, and she continually touched her hand to one of her cheeks, causing me to wonder if he had struck her.

I have mentioned, in my Blog post, "More Of My Memories Of My Mother", dated 5/8/19, the escalation of marital tensions between my parents during these years that I am describing here now, and I have spoken about my father in several of my posts as well, all of which is helpful as background information here, as far as filling in some of what exactly was going on. However, much of it always remained a mystery to me as a girl growing up in the midst of all this. Between the parts that I did know and those that I didn't, I was left feeling very uneasy. All of these troubling things had a real effect on me. Just growing up is difficult enough to do, even under far better circumstances than I was caught in.

While we were growing up, we were disciplined by my father in one of several ways. We would be spanked with his belt, or with a rose bush branch, a flyswatter, or his hand. He once broke a flyswatter, from spanking my brother with it so hard as he ran around the room trying to escape the pain of that, due to my brother taking a piece of candy from a store. Sometimes the belt would leave a welt on my leg, or the bush branch a mark, for awhile. I couldn't see my behind to know what the flyswatter did back there. The most interesting punishment, for me, was when my father struck my little leg with his hand as hard as he did, because for several days afterward there would be a big, red, raised welt, exactly in the outline of my father's large hand, that I would often place my small hand into, in the same position as his had been there, until it healed. My mother would rub Vaseline into it, for days, until it finally disappeared. We were not bad kids at all, though. We were very well behaved, most of the time. Apparently the small percentage that we weren't called for this type of 'basic' discipline, by my father, toward us.

Since he often seemed so grouchy, in general, and wasn't a very physically affectionate father, as well as the fact that he stood over 6 feet tall, which was intimidating in itself from where I stood as a little one, it didn't take much on his part to scare me or stress me out. Anything that he said had a huge impact on us, because he appeared silent and sulking, most of the time. This explains why, after him saying nothing directly to me for weeks on end, even though we were in close proximity to one another in the home, I would go from feeling absolutely invisible, to him, to wishing I were, when he would suddenly snap at me, as we all sat around the dinner table together, saying "GET YOUR HAIR OUT OF YOUR FACE!" No one would say a word at the table, usually, with everyone just looking down at their plates, causing this interjection of his into the silence to be even more startling. Being singled out like that, before everyone, in a negative way, felt humiliating to me. 

This type of thing, that he did to me, also eroded my self-esteem, since he didn't ever compliment me for or about anything. He was either silent toward me, or critical of me. There was never any affirmation from him! Needing that so badly from him, though, and only getting this other, negative and hurtful, attention from him, caused me to simply burst into tears when these things would happen. The only sound at the table would then be my uncontrolled sobs and sniffles, coming from my deep heartache, as we all ate our fried chicken and vegetables. It seemed in this family that we were learning to never be there for each other. That, in this type of environment, it was survival mode in the sense of "every man for himself." This atmosphere in that house was primarily due to how my father behaved.

On a family vacation trip, one summer, headed to the beach in the car, we pulled into a gas station to fill up the car, and have a rest stop if we needed to use the bathrooms. Not very long after we got there, I lost sight of any of the other 5 of them, and as I walked out to where our car had been parked, I saw that it was nowhere in sight! I stood there alone, with nothing. No ID, no money, NO FAMILY. Nothing. Several minutes later, they returned, driving up to where I was just standing there, all laughing at how funny they thought it was that I had been left behind by them, there. I just opened my car door, sat down, and stared out the window, showing no reaction to their hilarity except for the annoyance that my firmly set jaw likely gave away. 

I have a great sense of humor! People that interact with me have always said that about me, going back to when I was a child, at summer camp and on church retreats, et cetera. However, I didn't see this stunt or oversight, whichever one it was, as being very funny at all, because I was growing up in this family already truly feeling that I was invisible, to my parents especially, as it was, and feeling disrespected and diminished, by them, due to the ways that I was being treated, some of which I document in my Blog posts about my mother. So, rather than seeming laughable, it simply came across to me as an event which simply accurately depicted, and further underscored, my place, or lack of it, within this family. Sometimes my parents were insensitive, and sometimes they were just ignorant. I didn't even need or want to know which one this was; the result was the same, as far as how it impacted me emotionally.

In this house that we lived in, in Mebane, North Carolina, the most alarming of the sights and sounds, for me, that I, as a child, would ever witness in our home took place. I was ages 5 to 12, there. From my bed, I could see into the den, where dad would sit in his chair, and I could hear my parents talking together, about adult things, once they were alone. One night, they were having a conversation in which my father was describing to my mother that he had gotten into an actual fistfight with a subordinate at work, whom he seemed to be the supervisor over, in some machismo clashing of wills between them. Apparently he lost his job over that incident. For awhile after that, he would be gone most mornings, while my mother was at work, but there became an increasing number of times when he would show up during the afternoon and watch TV with us kids. He seemed out of place there, that time of day. 

I recall he worked very briefly for a headstrong, successful, and well-to-do uncle, who was married to one of my mother's sisters, that seemed to be trying to help him out by giving him this job. But my father didn't look comfortable working as a subordinate himself, especially for someone he spent family reunions socializing with. He appeared to feel awkward and out of place, for many months. We kids were totally shut out of what was actually going on with all this, since things were never talked about openly in our home, and my siblings seemed oblivious to these things, whether they were or not.

Once, relatives dropped by with bags of groceries, which had never happened before. We had vegetable gardens in the summers, and a freezer with the lima beans, corn, and other things we had grown, in it. I don't recall us ever being without the usual meals to eat, during this time, by any means. My dad's job situation strained things, though, apparently. I likely won't be able to get the sequence of events chronologically, here. I can only describe what I did see and know of them. 

During the long weeks that my dad would show up at the house during what used to be work hours for him, sometimes watching cartoons with us kids, there was one day that was very different, and very scary to me. He walked in literally looking and acting like a zombie, staring straight ahead, walking stiffly, and breathing in a very strained, hoarse, gasping way, that was very frightening for me to hear. He walked past us children in the den, into my parents bedroom, and laid on his back across the bed a short while. Then he went back outside, looking and acting the same scary way, walking right past us children, again, without any acknowledgement of whether he saw any of us, or, that my siblings were observing any of this going on with him, at all! I often seemed to be the only one noticing these things, for whatever reason. I was a very aware, and a very concerned, child. My father was gone for awhile after that, days, maybe weeks. It seems to me that one of the relatives told me later that he had a nervous breakdown at that time. It was unnerving, to me.

I came home one day, from high school, after being at choir practice, where those of us in the school Chorus were preparing to present the Christmas Program to our families. I told my mother that one of the boys in the Chorus had a real problem that we could help him with, especially since we lived relatively close to the high school. His family was poor, and lived far away on the other side of our town, where he went home on the school bus each day. I asked my mother if he could come home with me, on the day of our show, so that he could be back at the school in order to participate in our program. He wouldn't be able to get there, that evening, by bus, and, his mother would meet him at school after she got off work, see him in the show, and drive him home with her afterward. Mom agreed, putting some steaks from the freezer into the fridge to thaw for when he came, to honor him as our guest for dinner that upcoming evening. However, as she and I continued to discuss Dale, she soon realized that he was black. Except for housekeepers we had, in years past, all of whom were black, and the little boy of one of them, which she brought with her to work in our home because of no other option, my parents had never had a black in their home; and certainly not as a guest! Telling me that he likely wouldn't be used to steak, and that she didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable, Mom quickly put the steaks back in the freezer and pulled out hamburger, instead. She said that she felt this would be a meal which he would likely be used to having. 

So, Dale came home with me after school, and we ate supper, on the night of our choral presentation, and afterward he and I sat on the living room floor, playing a game of Chess, near the large, brightly lit, Christmas tree, which had presents piled underneath it. Things had gone well, overall, and since he hadn't known, as he ate his burger, that steak had been denied him, he seemed very appreciative of our hospitality to him. The den, where of course my father was sitting watching his TV, was adjacent to the living room, and the door was open between the two rooms. My father called me into the den, to question me for no good reason, since he was already well informed about the situation, and the plan to help Dale be there at school to sing that night. 

It was about a half hour, at that point, until Dale and I would need to leave the house to go over to the school to get ready to perform in our Christmas show. Dad glowered at me, saying loudly, easily within Dale's earshot, "How LONG is THAT BOY going to be in MY house?" Looking back at my father, mortified by his behavior, I replied, staring him right in the eyes, "Dad, you KNOW that we are leaving for the Choral Concert at school in just a few more minutes!" Then, with my dad wearing kind of an arrogant expression of having made his point, by what he did toward Dale, I shot my father a look that said, "Do NOT say ANYTHING else like that while my friend is in this house", and I went back into the living room. Although Dale did the best he could to stay upbeat, it was obvious that he had clearly heard my father. I was so ashamed of my dad for his acting like that, and, for his other bad behaviors over the years. I just did not have a father that I could feel proud of, or good about, although I wished that I had, and that I could!

Not long after, my friend Dan, our high school newspaper editor, stopped me in the hallway one day, saying he needed to speak to me about Dale. He told me that Dale had submitted a very hurt and angry letter, to be published in the school paper, which seemed to directly come from the situation that had happened at my house with my father. We both felt that Dale was entitled to have a forum to have his say, especially since my father had so hurtfully had his. Dan published the letter, and what Dale expressed in it so resonated with our black students, what they were going through and how they were treated, that an actual race riot erupted at our school from that, which was very frightening. Teachers had been scratched, trying to restore order, and the school was closed down briefly due to it. When we went back to classes, ministers from many of the local churches were positioned in the large open area on the main floor of the school, to be accessible and available for any of us to talk to, since everyone at the school was feeling pretty upset at this point, from a variety of perspectives and reasons. All Dale had needed was my family's kindness and a little help, for one short evening, just a few hours, so that he could make it back to school to be able to sing songs about the joy of the Christmas Season, and my dad couldn't even give that to him.

My father could be quite cruel at times, displaying behaviors which absolutely qualify as abusive. This went beyond his trying to control and punish us, the members of his own family, by giving us the silent treatment, as if it were, stupidly, somehow a sign of his honor, to his way of thinking, whenever we were doing or saying anything which wasn't pleasing to him for whatever reason. We always had a cat, or cats, in the home, primarily because my mother was very fond of them. While Dad allowed it, he seemed to have some sort of rivalry with them, and at the very least a real resentment toward these small, sweet creatures, which wouldn't or couldn't harm anyone. Whenever one of the cats would get underfoot at all, or even when they were simply going through the room that my father was sitting in, in order to get to their dishes in the utility room, he would snarl at them, stomp to startle and scare them with that noise, and even take his big foot and literally kick them! It was so hard for me to watch that, and see these animals quickly learn to become, and stay, terrified of him. I lost respect for my father, for several reasons, over the years, and this is on that list. These animals were a comforting and affectionate presence in our home, which God knows we needed there, and which my father certainly wasn't. For him to torment them that way was absolutely inexcusable. I hated it.

In so many ways, and for so many reasons, I am ashamed of my father. His cruelty didn't stop with helpless animals or black boys. He was also callous toward me, his own daughter. When I was in my last marriage, the one that was so pervasively abusive that I felt as if I were literally married to the Son of Satan, it was cycling in a downward spiral, from my husband's abuse toward me, to the point that my counselor was telling me that my life was now in danger. Part of how he controlled and punished me was to make sure he isolated me, and kept me from having access to resources (which could help me escape him) such as the car or any money. I was in a desperate and dangerous situation.

In a phone conversation with my friend, Judi, she naturally asked me if my going home to my family would be an option for me, and she simply couldn't comprehend my saying that it was not, especially given the circumstances that I was in. Shortly afterward, she called me back, and was apologizing to me, for something that I was unclear about, at first. Finally, I understood what she was saying to me. She was the head nurse of my OB/GYN doctor, as well as my friend, having access to my medical record, so she obtained my parents phone number from that. She said to me that she then called my parents, and that she explained the situation I was in to my father, who had answered the phone when she called. She told me that she simply couldn't believe me, or understand that it was true, of a family, when I had told her earlier that they were not an option for me. That they were no help to me. So, she took it upon herself to call them, on my behalf, only, my father said to her, about me, "Well, she can go to a homeless shelter, but SHE IS NOT COMING HERE!" Judi said it took her breath away to hear that. It didn't shock or phase me at all, however. I was used to all the various types of coldness that came from my father at times. I had to console Judi, in her shock and grief, about it, after she heard it firsthand with her own ears, but I wasn't surprised by it at all.

This father, of mine, was the same man that would later tell my relatives not to provide me with a plane ticket they were offering on my behalf, so that I would be able to come home for my brother's funeral, after he had committed suicide, because my dad DIDN'T WANT ME THERE! I told my father, after he did that to me, that I would not be at his funeral, when he died. And, I USED MY VOICE to tell him how he made me feel by treating me the way he has.
       
Sometimes my mother tried to bridge the gap between us kids and my dad's lack of effort to form a real relationship with us for himself. Months would go by without my dad saying a word to me, even though we lived in the same house, and usually on Sundays and Holidays ate at the same table. But Mom made sure that we had a couple of conversations a year, at least, by requiring that he be the parent to sign off on our school Report Cards. So, I would go through the obligatory conversation with him, for that, each time, while knowing full well that it was never going to lead to him suddenly becoming conversational with me on any regular basis, or spark a real relationship between us that nothing else had ever seemed to, at any other time throughout each calendar year that passed. It just felt odd, and incongruous, to me, to have to do that. For 99.99% of the time he didn't want to be bothered, and made no effort at all to interact with me. Now I have to go before this stranger, holding my Report Card in my hand, and a pen, and discuss with him why I got a poor grade in math class, and so forth. It took all I had, many times, to be respectful toward a man who wasn't someone that I had a real high opinion of, as the years and the things that I endured in that household wore on me. I always seemed to be the one that Mom recruited to try to correct the relational lag between dad and his offspring, which he himself created and was to blame for, since I had tried, and been shut out, so many different times.

He always made sure that nothing much was ever required of him, relationally, but then sometimes he, and especially mom, on his behalf, felt bad that he was left with as little emotional closeness as he had between his children and himself. Late one night, after I was already in bed, along with my siblings, Mom woke ME up (not the others) to come downstairs so that Dad could give me a children's bracelet that was too young for me, which he had bought while flying home from somewhere. As she later told me, he had been momentarily inspired to show some affection and appreciation for his own kids, because some man sitting next to him on the flight home had struck up a conversation, and was apparently enthusiastically telling my dad how great his own children were. My having to go through the motions, after being woken up, on this night, while I already knew Dad would never be different (and, he wasn't), felt as hypocritical to me as every Christmas Eve did in that home, when we children were each required to give some kind of a devotional presentation, before presents were opened. Neither of my parents ever led by example with that, themselves, and besides going to church on Sundays nothing religious was ever demonstrated in our home otherwise, except for various ones of us being asked to say grace, when we all sat at the dinner table together.

I developed a real aversion to anything feeling fake in relationships that I involve myself in, as a result of these things. I. Just. Won't. Do. It. Now. 

Dad did make more of an effort to have a relationship with his only son, my older brother who ended up committing suicide at age 40, but even with that, I don't think that my brother truly felt emotionally close with him. It seemed no one really did. Over the years, largely due to these experiences in my family, I lost my taste for my having to go the extra mile to have a relationship with anyone who isn't also expending equal effort. The return on investment, for that, emotionally, just isn't worth it, to me.

There was one afternoon, when we were still living in Mebane, that my mother took all of us children shopping for new clothes, and when we returned home, she sent us to our rooms with our bags, as soon as she saw dad sitting in the living room, with a couple of relatives from his side of the family. It seemed to be a surprise to her to see them there, that day, and it was unusual that dad was in the living room, and not in his chair in the den, watching TV, as he almost always was. The whole situation seemed strained, to me, and strange, including that my mother had brought us into the house through the front door, when she normally drove the car into the garage and entered through a back door of the house. As we came in to the house, that day, dad's voice had a tense tone to it, as he looked directly in my mother's eyes, saying emphatically, "Doris, you are NOT taking MY children out of this house!" It seemed, by the circumstance and conversation, that she must have been on the verge of leaving him, and taking all of us children with her. My parents remained together, following that, and for many more years, but my growing up in the midst of their troubled relationship with one another was not a happy or healthy position for me to be in, as a child.

By the time they were divorcing, dad wrote each of us kids a token letter from him, the only one ever, to me at least, stating how much he cared about our mother, while he and his lawyer argued back and forth with her and her lawyer over the financial arrangements in their final split from one another. Because he was the one divorcing her, I thought that letter to me was rather disingenuous, for that reason and because he also used it to say something negative about me, to me; not surprisingly, given the fact that he had ONLY done that to me for my ENTIRE life! He wrote that he felt I had wasted my life and talents, by not continuing with my artistic abilities, which he also stated in the letter had made him very angry toward me. I was in my late 40s, by the time my parents divorced, and I had long before this grown cynical about my father's behaviors. So, my reaction to what he said was that (1) he was trying to come off like the 'good guy' in their divorce battle, and (2) my "talents" he referred to never took root in my life because I was NEVER ENCOURAGED BY HIM, at ANY time, to EXPRESS MYSELF, through my art, or in any other way! THIS was the ONLY time he had EVER said to ME anything AT ALL about me even HAVING "talents" or "abilities". He had NEVER ONCE said or done ANYTHING to praise me, compliment me, or tell me ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT ME AT ALL! Literally. I felt angry that he was now taking THIS opportunity to say anything, well PAST the YEARS that I had SO NEEDED IT from him, and as the most backhanded compliment, by FINALLY bringing up something that I apparently did that he thought was a GOOD thing, but ONLY for him to state he was also UNHAPPY with my wasting that "talent" that he was only NOW saying he thought I even HAD, making it just ONE MORE THING that he was CRITICIZING ME for! GEEZ!