Mon Père

OK, so I said last night that I'd write an entry about how much of an arse my Dad is.
But the truth is he's really not that bad...
Sure, he was a prick to me growing up. Hell the man used to hit me until I was nearly 17.
And yes, he missed pretty much every one of my important moments in life growing up.
My happiest memory of him was the day that he let me stay home from kinder and sit and watch TV with him.
But I've dealt with that long ago and even forgiven him for most of it.

But still, I'll make mention of a few of his less than great moments... I was forced to be the perfect image of a child in his eyes. He was the leader of the local Cub Scouts, so I in turn had to attend and be better than every other kid there.
Nothing I did was ever good enough for him and so he made me feel like crap because I could never quite live up to his expectations. Everything I did was ever quite right.
I'm an academic... exercising my mind is more important to me than flexing my muscles. But this was a waste of time in Dad's eyes...

For years I struggled to be the person he wanted me to be, I played footy because he wanted me to. I did the typical boy things -because he wanted me to.

Eventually, I realised that this was nothing to do with me. But sadly, that he was trying to give me everything that he missed out on as a child.
Even the beatings were a product of his youth, as it turns out my grandfather was worse than he ever was. A quick walk around the house he grew up in was more than enough evidence of this. Patched up plaster from where grandpa had put the boys through walls, the fear that my grandfather had instilled into his 4 boys was incredible.

My uncle once told me a story of how growing up he had been playing with his Dad's (my grandpa) rifle and shooting cans off a fence in the paddock behind their house.
Innocent enough for a teenage boy, but he had accidentally left the gun loaded and my grandfather found this. So what did he do? Any normal person might give their son one hell of a talking to, maybe a bit of a wallop to reinforce the idea that playing with guns is bad.
But no... not grandpa. After taking the bullets out (without my uncle knowing), he made my uncle put the barrel of the gun in his mouth and beat him until he pulled the trigger. My uncle knew that he had left the gun loaded and honestly thought that he was going to die.
What kind of father does that to his child!?

So I guess I've forgiven Dad for his temper because even though it's his choice to lash out at others, he's a product of his own environment.
The manner in which Dad treated my mother was much the same as Grandpa treated my Grandmother.
Her job was to stay at home and raise the children. To cook meals and to live life like a women in the dark ages.

I'm not trying to make excuses for the things that he did. Noone deserves to be made feel how I did.
The feelings of fear and inadequacy were constant. By the time Mum left him and took us 3 kids with her, my bedroom door looked how I felt.
Years of being battered while I was barricaded in on the other side had left it looking worse for wear.



I hated him for years for what he did to my Mother. He had an affair with my sister's friend from Primary School, this went on for 5yrs before Mum finally gave him the flick. What really got me though was the fact that he rang Mum to tell her the day before their Wedding Anniversary (and Mum's Birthday) -Way to be insenstive...

I've stopped speaking to him on two occasions, once when I came out, the other shortly after he told Mum of his extra curricular activities.
I just didn't know what to say to him and it certainly didn't help that he was pressing to explain how I was feeling at the time. So I wrote him a letter... and held nothing back. I put so much into it with the idea that when he finally got the guts to read it he would feel the tears I shed while I was writing it.

These days though, things are different. We're still not ultra close, but it's a start.
He's only ever a phone call away, and I can hold a civil conversation with him without having the urge to punch him.
We can even sit in the same room as one another for longer than 30 seconds without one of us storming out of the room.

Earlier this year, he even uttered the words I've been longing to hear from him my entire life... that he was proud of me.
For years, I'd hear it second hand... he'd tell my sister and she'd tell me (although I get the feeling that a few of those times she told me that just to make it seem better).

Maybe there is hope for him after all...