My Dad is a Poison to our family

Well, he's still your dad in spite of all his shortcomings. Imagine him dead. Write his obituary. You'll have to find something good to say about him, as that is what obituaries are for.

He does have some good qualities, but read what he did to me as a child. Taking me away from everything I enjoyed in life and the fights and insults, bringing me down, discouraging me. Never standing up for me when I had problems. He did the same to my mom. My mom is now alcoholic and bipolar. This morning I woke up to her yelling at my dad again.

Dear Queen Beauty,

My oh my. Yes, I commiserate with how you feel. Your Father is definitely no Father of the Year. But let me talk to you as an old man who once had a father myself. And I am a father who has made some mistakes also…. With a daughter.

Life is rough. They do not teach parenting skills in school and what the Churches teach is often too idealistic to apply to the real world and actually causes more harm than good. People used to live by Traditional Values but with the onset of the Modern World, well, ‘tradition’ has evaporated away and everybody is stuck with trying to ‘reinvent the wheel’ all on their own.

Yes, if the Children are perfect and bright and ambitious and well behaved then it all is quite easy, isn’t it. But how often does that occur. Most children have problems, and then what is a parent to do? Really? There are the pleasant and mostly aesthetically appealing solutions – be supportive of the child through everything that you think is troublesome until the child finds its own way through some infallibly innate wisdom… but Adults simply do not believe in That anymore. Adults have been shocked and shaken out of the Dreams of Youth. Yes, a parent should be understanding and patient with the delusions of youth that they actually think are useless, damaging and silly, but, remember, as you described, parents are often up to their ears in REAL PROBLEMS. Money. Holding their own relationships together. Sometimes they just wish that the children would just listen and do what they are told. It would make everything so much easier if the children did not add their own problems to everything else that is piling up.

Your father is human. Your mother is human. You have no problem with your mother because you blame your father, but really? A strong woman makes a man’s job far easier. Now, I am not blaming your mother for anything, but you do seem to expect your father to be everything… to be some all powerful god that knows all and sees all and can do everything that needs to be done all by his lonesome. What kind of expectations are those. Do you expect the same from yourself? You are old enough to realize how Youthful Hopes can be let down by the Actual Facts of Life. Are you well on the Way to being a Rich and Famous PHD by the time you are 33 years old? I hope so, but probably not. The World is extremely competitive and we all have been put in our place, haven’t we, at some time or another. We can’t always get what we want. Parents know that. It is seared on their souls, with untold pains and regrets. I’m sure they wish they cold save their children from the same turmoil and anxieties, but there is so little chance of that. Weren’t you thinking of making your living playing soccer? Really? Maybe yes, you may have been good enough for a full scholarship somewhere, but your father simply saw it as a losing toss of the dice… you know, he could see how you played and he could see how the other girls played…. He might be mean and short tempered and impatient, but so far we have not established that he is stupid. He made a decision. Men… Fathers… need to do that sometimes.

Anyway, I will again say that Life is Hard. Please cut the poor old man some slack. Yes, you are not the center of his World. He may even find you annoying and troublesome and may wish to avoid you. But how much of that is because you have become this ‘Dark Cloud’ on his horizon? Is he to love somebody who obviously has so many negative judgements about him. Wouldn’t that weight him down. Wouldn’t it weigh you down? Live life and make some mistakes of your own and then see how you feel about people who will never let up and just rub your nose in those past mistakes forever. I’m pretty sure you would take it the same way as your father is taking it – he avoids what causes him pain. Who wouldn’t?

Now, I was young myself once, and my father was no father of the year either. But now that I am older than he was when he died, well, I can look back and honestly say that the guy scrambled and did the best he could with what little he had. Who can ask for more?