Nihilist Cowboy

A Sick Man, A Spiteful Man, An Unattractive Man
2021-06-06 18:56:09 (UTC)

The Day My Parents Divorced.

Have you ever took the time and forced your mind to go into deep thought in order to try to return to the very earliest memory that you can recall? Is it a happy memory or is it something traumatic? My very earliest memory that I have just a tiny glimpse, a snapshot in a sense. The memory in question is a day after I turned 3 years old. I was running around the house while my mom was packing. We were moving to a cheaper renthouse a few towns over due to Mom not being able to be both pay rent and pay for childcare thanks to my dad ditching out. I mentioned a few months ago that the first full memory longer than just a snapshot was my experience with my first Christmas forced visitation with my Dad and the stepdevil. My first memories were not very pleasant, but they are my memories and I cannot change the circumstances of my childhood.

I bring this topic up today because my parents divorced 27 years ago today. Even my earliest memory was after this point. My first memory of my father was being in the abusive household of my stepmother in that rundown trailer park off the interstate 10 miles outside of Dallas. I have no memories of my parents being together except for pickup and dropoff. The concept of having a mother and father that loved each other and loved me is a completely foreign concept to me. For years and years, I blamed this day for being the root of all of my problems. I hated my father for leaving Mom. I would lie down on that bunkbed at my dad's house and think to myself: "If only Dad never left, I would not have to endure this hell."

This feeling was going strong as I was entering adolescence. As discussed before, I was bullied mercilessly in middle school. I had no friends and I attempted suicide due to wanting a girlfriend more than anything and being unable to get one due to being awkward, weird, and poorly dressed. Again I blamed the root of my problems due to my dad leaving. I thought if only he taught me how to defend myself, if only he taught me how to talk to girls, then maybe life would not suck as bad. I created a distortion in my head regarding my parents at this time. I came to the conclusion that if Dad would not have left, then life would have been amazing. I would have had a regular middle class upbringing with two parents and a white picket fence with maybe a sibling. At school I would have had friends, had a girlfriend, and would have actually been able to play sports. Instead, I grew up poor and missed out on so much. My awkwardness and ugliness was amplified by wearing ill fitted hand me downs.

The last vestige of this thought was when I was 18 years old. Both Dad and stepbitch were working as nurses in Arizona. Dad claimed that combined they made a quarter million in 2009. Many people get gifts for their high school graduation, my dad didnt give me shit. I called him after my car was totaled by a drunk driver asking him to help me out with getting my truck (that I still drive today). He laughed and told me no implying that I was nothing but white trash asking for a handout. A month later he spent about 5 thousand on my half sister for summer camp. If only my parents were still together, I wouldnt be so fucking poor.

All of this feeling is nothing but a distortion. My life would not have been better if Dad stayed around. In reality, I would have been the same awkward weirdo that I am in my non hypothetical reality. I would have been miserable just like both of my parents were miserable.

My parents are two people that should have never married and I do not see how they could even stand being around each other, so I certainly have no idea how they tolerated each other enough to marry for a year or so and then have me. Mom came from poverty and had your classic East Texas Baptist upbringing, while Dad grew up in a comfortable, Catholic middle class home with my grandmother being a stay at home mom. I can see why they the arrangement could have worked on paper. Mom told me stories of only dating "cowboys and bikers" that she met at the bars and that did not turn out well. She said she wanted someone who was "nice" and who grew up in a two parent household. Dad on the other hand learned his modus operandi a long time ago and he found someone who he felt better than. Even after coming out as gay, Dad still dates people with whom he gets to feel superior when compared. Usually this is a person who comes from "humbler" beginnings. Even if they did stay together, my parents would hate each other. Dad wouldn't tolerate my moms hoarding behaviors, and I can just see my mother beating the shit out of my dad when he makes his cynical comments trying to be funny. 27 years after their relationship ended, I can still trigger Mom by giving her the exact same condescending smile that he gives and to throw my voice to sound like his.

The philosophies guiding my life have changed drastically in the past few years. Due to the changes in my thinking, I now have reframed this argument that life would have been so much better. Life would have been worse if Dad stayed. I would have endured abuse daily instead of every other weekend. My thoughts have even became so radical that I fully support my dad's decision to leave my mom. This is just the actual leaving that I justify, and not the fact that he condemned his ex wife and son into poverty due to his finances, or the abuse he caused himself and the abuse he condoned his 2nd wife to enact. However, I know that Dad would have been miserable staying. If he stayed, he would have lived an inauthentic miserable life being married to someone whom he did not love. Mom would have been miserable since she is fiercely independent and he like to control.

I have mostly forgiven my father. I know longer believe that he is evil, but believe that he is suffering from a mental illness (that he passed down to me). We did not become close until I was at the age of 23 when I was able to accept him for him. Knowing how different my parents' personlities are, there is no way I could ever wish my parents to still be married. He chose to live a life that he viewed as more authentic.




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