She will be loved
Sunday, Feb. 16, 2003
4-3-94 (Dad)
Ah, what the hell, here's another one.Oh yeah, in case I haven't made it clear in the past, my family is fucked.
A) Any family member
I guess that I'll explore my relationship w/my father. Although I'm not sure that I want to because things are pretty calm and mellow right now and I don't want to bring back any bad feelings to destroy the "mellowness." I like living in oblivian, I'm pretty good at it. Okay, here goes. My father has had a pretty unusual life. He used to be real intelligent. He got a free ride to Harvard, there he was president of the pre-law society. After he graduated, he got full scholarships and attended, in some order, Northwestern's Kellog Business School, University of Chicago Medical School, and Loyola Law School. But his father died when he was 17 so while attending these schools, he also had to help support my grandmother and [my aunt]. I don't know whether it was because of that, but he never graduated from Loyola or University of Chicago. I also don't know if this was when he began drinking. He married my mother in 1963 when he was 25 and she was 21 and they had my brother a year later. It wasn't until after they were married that my mother discovered that he had a problem w/his drinking and even then there was no way she [could] foretell how bad it would become. In 1967, after 2 miscarriages, my sister was born. Sometime in the early 70's, my father got fired from his job w/the state and they sent him to work in Springfield. I guess he went through a couple of jobs there because there was a time when my family was on food stamps. I was born in 1976 and in 1977 they sent us back to Chicago. He's always had the same job, as far as I know, since we've been in [our town]. I guess that he never made that much money because my mom has always had to hold one sometimes two jobs. I think that I had a good relationship w/him when I was real little and i don't remember my parents fighting too much. But I never remember my parents sharing the same bedroom. I'm sure his drunkin' outrages have always existed, but I remember them from grade school on. At that time it was just me, [my sister], and my parents, [my brother] moved out at 17. My father would scream and [my sister] would hide me in the living room, cover my ears, cry, and tell me not to listen to him. His abuse was never physical, only once, but he would scream, say disgusting things, call us bitches and cunts and say that while we were sleeping, he was going to kill us. When he wasn't looking, we would sneak out of the house and drive around until he was asleep then one of us would sneak in the house while the other two parked the car, on another street so that he wouldn't know we were home, and let us into the basement. We would turn off all the lights and sleep on the floor. When we woke up, he would be asleep, sometimes he would sleep for days. When [my sister] left for college, my parents seperated. Only to get back together a few months later. It was then the drinking got really bad he would throw beer at my mom, call us harsher names. The night drives changed from 15 minutes to hours. Sometimes we would come home and find little fires where he tried to burn the house down. When he threatened to kill us, he became more graphic and detailed. The only time he did hit was once, I was in junior high, he started throwing my mom against the refrigerator, I tried to pull him away, he slapped me and called me a bitch then went back to beating my mom. Twice, I was fairly young both times, we came home to find him unconscious, he had attempted suicide. Once, he's diabetic, he over injected himself w/insulin. I'm not sure how he did it the other time. Because of this, he was institutionalized, but the insurance ran out and he was sent back home. I didn't find out until recently that the reason he tried to kill himself was so that we would get the insurance money because he felt he couldn't provide for us. There's not much positive about him, he's smart, he can be nice when he's sober, and I guess that he cares about us. You can hear someone tell you that while you sleep, they're gonna slice you from your cunt to your throat only so many times and still believe that they care about you. It makes it pretty hard to care about them. And it is really hard to care about yourself and think that you're a good person when your own father says that they are going to do that to you. In grade school and junior high, I wanted to kill him, in high school I wanted to kill myself, now I just want to get away from it all and live like a normal person. I don't know what I can do to improve our relationship. Every time I try to, he starts drinking again. I've now discovered that any attempt is futile. The relationship can't improve, I can only hope for it to stay the same. To maintain this, I'll speak to him occasionally, ignore him when he's an asshole and spend most of my time hiding down here in my basement dungeon.
There are a lot of issues I didn't touch on, his own abusive childhood, his sexuality issues, and his issues with his parents. There's lots more shit to explore.
Don't think I don't have issues with my mother, too.
Less than a year after I wrote this, he succeeded in lighting the house on fire. Because it was brick, it didn't burn down, but much of it had to be gutted and rebuilt. I guess this was some kind of awakening for him, he pretty much stopped his heavy drinking after this. The only time that he drinks now is before he has major surgeries, like losing a toe. He'll drink a six-pack the night before the surgery. As far as I know, he doesn't get violent at these times.
Watching/Hearing/Listening to: Barenaked Ladies - Call and Answer
Drinking: diet pepsi twist
Wearing: