Happy Father's Day?

Yeah, I know I’m a day late, but I don’t generally blog on the weekends (unless drunken debauchery occurs with photographic evidence), so my Father’s day blog will be today.

That said….
How does one go about celebrating Father’s day when one’s father kind of…sucks?

Here’s the deal with my dad:
He and I never really got along. To me, he always seemed like a bull-shitter, a “drama queen” who spent the majority of his time complaining about his life to hide the fact that he really didn’t do all that much. It seemed to me that his false bravado and snobbish, better-than-thou attitude was masking some deeply-rooted insecurity. I saw right through it, and I think he knew that. As a result, we fought.
Constantly.

Surprise, surprise, 30 years into his marriage and 23 years into fatherhood, he decided that he was gay. His “coming out” totally validated my spidey-sense that something about him was definitely awry. It also initiated several years of total communication melt-down between him and me. He thought I stopped talking to him because he was gay, when in fact, I stopped talking to him simply because he was an asshole.

However, this silence gave him a platform for the “victim” role he then and still today loves to play. No matter that he lied to his wife for 30 years about his sexual orientation. No matter that he fathered two children while knowing that he was assuming a false identity. No matter that he met his new partner while still being married to my mother. No matter that he just up and left one day, robbing my mother of retirement security (among a vast number of other things), to start a new life.

No, according to him, I wasn’t speaking to him “because he was gay.”

Give me a break.

He and I have since started communicating again. 2 years after vowing to never speak to him again, I realized that he was not going to fight for a relationship with his youngest daughter. He was not going to show up at my doorstep and ask to be let back into my life. As far as I could tell, when he walked away from my mother, he walked away from all parts of that life, including his children. He did not miss me enough to try to make things right.

The truth definitely hurts sometimes.

In the end, after several years of deafening silence, I was the one who had to be the adult. I was the one who had to go to him, let bygones be bygones, and try to move forward with a relationship, albeit one that was entirely superficial. By all accounts, we have a pleasant-enough rapport. He asks me (a little) about my life, and is more than happy to go on at length about his own.

But this about as deep as my relationship with my father gets. We discuss our goings-on, and are left with an awkward silence. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t really care. He’s talking to me because I’m his daughter, and I’m talking to him because he’s my father. And to be honest, it takes a lot less energy to get along than it does to stay angry.

So, happy Father’s Day, dad.

I owe half of my DNA to you.

My childhood was happy enough, although it turns out that the whole thing was a sham to hide the fact that you weren’t strong enough to be yourself from the very start.

We had a few good times, but most of the time we fought.

I share a lot of your characteristics, which I strive every day to utilize in a positive, productive, straightforward manner.

And I am happy to report that despite sharing your DNA and a handful of your characteristics, despite finding out that my entire childhood was your personal experiment, despite learning that, if I walk away, you will let me go without a fight…

I’m okay.

So, thanks, dad, for leading by example.
You've shown me exactly how NOT to behave, and how NOT to treat others.
For this, at least, I'm grateful.