Sigh…  So I had a pretty big fight with my father, this was something that was on the horizon for a long time already and I guess was going to blow up sooner or later.  Anyway as I’ve mentioned I haven’t really talked about why my parents broke up but it was because of my father’s infidelity.  Even though I was angry when I found out, I forgave him quickly because he was suppose to come live with me and I didn’t want there to be any conflict in my home.  That didn’t end up happening, instead he stored his stuff here while he went to live with his new girl friend.  It doesn’t bother me that he has a gf, I mean my parents are split up and I want the both of them to be happy so if that’s how he’s moving on with his life so be it.

The reason I’m mad at him is because he’s never around for Brandon, it feels like he’s rejected his grandson and it hurts.  Unfortunately I think my father has a bit of a narcissistic personality and even as I was growing up, he lacked empathy and it has gotten worse as he’s gotten older.  Anyway when Brandon was around 1 1/2, I asked him why he never spent any time with my son (not looking for babysitting, just spend some time playing with my kid) and he remarked that he will when Brandon was older.  Anyway the boy is now 5 and my dad’s still not around and I guess the tipping point was when he bailed on the family birthday event I planned for Brandon.  I wrote about it a bit in my furious post and yeah it pissed me off a lot that he skipped out.

I didn’t talk to him for about 20 days so I decided to reach out through email thinking it may be a better medium to talk through and boy was I wrong.  I wrote what I feel (and others who’ve read the email) was a calm and rational email stating things from my point of view; I carefully edited it to remove as much emotion as I could and didn’t use any foul language but unfortunately it still wasn’t well received.  I mean I understand it’s hard to get an email like that but still I would have hoped that he would put some effort in trying to repair things like I was trying, instead the amount of vitriol that he spewed surprised me.

While I have a temper, Maggie and my sisters know that when I’m really mad I’m actually quiet and logical so I replied the best I could with the facts as I see it again trying to remove emotion and I chose my words carefully but man it didn’t work.  Foul language, calling me names, anything mean spirited he could throw at me he did and it bothered me that he brought up things I did as a kid.

I can concede that point and admit I feel I wasn’t the best child growing up but  judging someone when they’re young vs an adult is wrong.  Frankly I’d say throw out the stupid things someone does in their first quarter century because kids (and young adults) do a lot of dumb and short sighted things!  I don’t feel that’s how you judge one’s character and since I’ve become an adult I’ve tried to make amends by reaching out to both my parents to keep them involved with my life, building an excellent relationship with my sisters and just trying to “good” lifestyle.  It doesn’t excuse my behaviour obviously but I have qualms when I look back at his parenting style too when I was young and I learnt not to do the same with Brandon.  Throughout my childhood my father has always made me feel like a failure and it’s stuck with me till this day, something that still haunts me and my sisters (I’ve spoken to them about it).

I was a kid for much of his life but he’s been an adult in all of mine and I can now see all the lies and deceit from the past…  I remember clearly he would speak about how important loyalty, honour, integrity & fidelity was but he didn’t live that lifestyle.  I guess I owe him my thanks that it did instill those qualities in me and I try to live my life with those values but it sucks to find out that one’s father is a fraud.  I’m sad to say that the latest affair (he blamed my mom for it when we talked before but denies saying it now) is at least the second that we know of, who knows how many more times it’s occurred…

As I mentioned earlier he has NPD (anyone who knows my dad, please read the wiki link that’s him in a nutshell) and it’s gotten worse because he lacks empathy completely now, at one point he asked what I wanted and I replied with this…

What I wanted was simple, I wanted you to understand that you were important to me and that’s why I felt so hurt when you bailed on Brandon’s birthday and why I’m continually hurt with the way you deal with my son.  All I wanted was for you to have empathy, see things through my eyes if spending a couple of hours a month with him is too much, at least you could have had the courage to explain it to me in a rational manner.

It wasn’t well received and after more cursing and victim blaming (when we talked about my mom), I decided I’ve had enough.  I’ve been so supportive of him in this whole situation but no more, if he’s willing to say such mean spirited and vindictive things then I want nothing to do with him.  I told him to move his stuff out of my house in 30 days (he said he would move the stuff out already) to which he replied…

Thank you for the utimatum, it shows the real bastard that you are. I’ll be fowarding this mail to mom.

To be honest I just want the garage cleared for the winter but I know my father, if I don’t give him a deadline he’ll just drag it on and on.  Also I went along with the threat with this reply.

You said you were done with me so I wanted to make the wrap things up quickly that’s all and please by all means forward this mail to mom.  In fact maybe I will too so she sees everything, wouldn’t want something to be taken out of context.

If there’s one thing about my dad, he loves to play the victim and I knew he would take spin it or shape things out of context, in his next email he asked me to keep my mom and his new gf out of it so fine but low and behold do I find out that he did forward that single email to my mom!  That single email while not mean spirited like his was full of sarcasm because by that time we had agreed to end any remaining relationship we may have had.  Fine I did him one better and gave her the whole email string, after she read it she remarked that I was so calm and non confrontational lol!

I’m sure he’ll be spinning this to my relatives saying I’m the devil incarnate but it doesn’t bother me, in fact now that I’ve decided to live the rest of my life without him I actually feel relieved like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders.  I guess I got the last word in the communique when I said…

Look let’s stop antagonizing each other as it does us no good.  We both said hurtful things but we’ve agreed on the path forward so let’s just go with that.

There hasn’t been anything else since Monday.  Anyway with him forwarding bits and pieces of our conversation to my mom (and god knows who else), I forwarded it to a few friends and they were all surprised at my demeanor but then again they’ve never seen me at my angriest.  LOL one even remarked…

I don’t know what’s worse, having no dad or having your dad

He lost his at an early age and said mine writes like a teenager who can’t control their temper.  My reasons for forwarding the emails is to ask my friends to see if I handled the situation well and if I could have done something else to improve things.

I know my dad will be badmouthing me to all the relatives (that’s his thing, seen him do it many times previously) so to any relatives reading this, I have the whole email string and will gladly send it over so you can see I’m not insane.  I was definitely the adult in the conversation but with his narcissism, he doesn’t even think he’s 1% at fault.  I’m not the little boy that he can beat up anymore, I can stand him being a lousy father but I can’t stand him rejecting my son, that’s too much to bear.

So long dad after you remove your belongings from my house I never want to see you again and as sad as this sounds I know my family and I will be better off.