How to deal with my dad
Growing up I was a daddy’s girl and had always gotten along with him way more than my mother. Neither one of my parents are mentally stable however, dad couldn’t stop cheating on my mom and it took them 7 years to finish their divorce it was that bad. Lot of abuse and neglect blah blah blah. I ended up running away at 20 to a different country and married my online boyfriend. We’ve been married for over 10 years now and have our first baby due next month.
During these 10 years my mom has made significant efforts to reestablish a relationship with me and while not perfect her efforts show a lot of love. With my dad however, he’s barely talked to me, can only talk about politics,says outlandish things to me. For example when I told him i was moving to a different state due to (xyz) and wanted to just update him, all he could said was to not ask for money and that he hoped abortions were legal where I lived. When I told him of my pregnancy, he was very dry response and added ‘just in time for the civil war’..
Since telling him of my pregnancy he’s reached out to me more times in the last 5 months than the last 10 years. While still pertaining to politics, I’ve gotten a few moments that felt like genuine father/daughter stuff.
Now this is where my heart (and my brain frankly) are being torn. Since the election, the political talk has been upped to almost daily links to this and that. He’s made comments like ‘when are you moving back?’ ‘Your brother bought a multi million dollar home with a basement suite, he’d probably love to have you as a tenant’ ‘climate change is real and you have a dependent depending on you now, once you leave (state) I can watch the hurricane hit people in peace’ ‘I don’t know why you bother to stay there to begin with’
He hasn’t been around in my life and has no idea of just, so much. He doesn’t know I’m disabled, he doesn’t know I live in a double wide trailer, he doesn’t know I’m on food stamps. He doesn’t know my car barely runs, he doesn’t know anything about me or my life or anything really???
He also has a grand daughter who’s 3 who he’s interacted with less than 4 times since she’s been born. He doesn’t talk to my disabled brother and barely my ‘successful’ brother.. which might be because of unrelated religious reasons.
I feel like I’m crazy, I feel a mass amount of guilt and shame. What do I say? What do I do? I don’t even know why he suddenly cares so much now ???
Posted Nov 12, 2024, 8:08 PM UTC