The Depths of Cruelty (Father Reconnect)

I wanted to talk about my father, a lot of things happened around the holidays and with everything settling I feel now is a good time. It's going to be a long post, but heartbreaking stories usually are. So hold on to your butts!

A little history, I didn't meet my father until I was eleven years old. It was an awkward and strange little meeting that last about an hour or so at a park. When you're eleven you don't know how to act in that type of situation, and the adults didn't help. Though, I need to give credit to my stepmom, Paula, she did amazing. Bright, inviting, and very open. She's a true delight.

After that first meeting my father was still not really in my life. Living a few states away can make it hard, but then I was told by my mom that he wanted nothing to do with me. He never called or sent me letters, or anything like that for about a year. Really, when you're that age it falls into the back of your mind. I mean, I had other things I was worrying about. Like junior high. I did, however, hear stories about my dad from my mom. She would often tell me how they met while she was working at Denny's as a waitress.

She was nineteen, he was thirty-two (or so she says). He came in with his buddies from work in suits, and Dani flirted with them like she did with everyone. Things happened, they ended up dating. Boom! She's pregnant with me. The standard young love story, but here is where things take a left turn.

According to Dani, my father's family hated her. Thought she was a loser because she came from a broken home (my grandparents were divorced for some time at this point, and my mom was emancipated at 16). While they should have been preparing for a baby Jeff, my dad, was busy taking advice from his judgmental family. He started getting distant and even asked my mom to get an abortion. (Yes, these are things my mom told me even before I was 11. In fact she told me this story at age six/seven when I asked about abortion protesters outside a hospital).

Refusing to have an abortion and bullied by my dad's family, my mom moved back to California and had me. In the way she puts it, “she gave up on the man she deeply loved because she would never do anything to harm an innocent child. Her words,” not mine.

How twisted. . . right?

I can not tell you how many times I wished Dani had got an abortion with me. Those were thoughts I had as far back as age 12. How awful is a child's life that they think about never being born?

Every chance she had, my mom would tell me how much Jeff's family hated her and hated me. I never understood why. . . I take that back. I knew why they hated me, it was the same reason they hated my mom. I came from a broken home, I was low class compared to them. Dani would tell me stories about how rich and well off they were. How my father never wanted for anything, and how they looked down on me and her. My father was a prince and I was a gutter rat, that's how my mother made it sound to me.

Dani often said nasty things about my dad. About how he wanted me dead before I was even born, and that after meeting me that day he denied I was his. I had to take a DNA test to prove I was his daughter. Which I found strange, considering Dani also liked to tell the story how Jeff named me.

I guess in his family everyone's first name starts with a “J” and my name had to start with one as well. BUT, he didn't want a standard “J” name. So he came up with, “Jacqulene” which is pronounced: Jack-Leen. It's different, I'll give him that and over the years I grew to hate the name. Because he gave it to me, and I would never be good enough for him. (Again, this all comes from my mother).

Plus, no one can say my first name right right.

(Don't get me started on my middle name.)

After the DNA test came back I was 99.9999% his, my father started sending me cards randomly throughout the years. Maybe something for Christmas, certainly something for my birthday (When I would get a card for my birthday she would kill my excitement with this comment, “of course he's sending you a birthday card. He knows just how old you are because he's counting down to 18 so he won't have to pay child-support anymore).

I didn't always believe her when she said things like that, and held out hope it wouldn't happen, but the cards stopped after I graduated high school. I was eighteen.

I grew to hate the man over the years. Well, that really isn't right. How can you really feel deep hate for someone you don't even know. The concept of a father was a shadowed thought in the depths of my mind. Besides I was a college student. I had important things going on.

Like three am coffee with the guys watching the drunk grandmas are Denny's. Real important stuff. LOL

Besides, I knew how for sure how my father felt about me.

Sometime before I turned eighteen I had sent my dad a letter, I wanted to spend a week in the summer with him. I wanted to be around my other brother, Kevin, and feel apart of his life. With the letter finished I gave it to my mom to send off, and in a few weeks I got a reply.

It was a letter that ripped my heart out. It said, in summary, that I was a dark mark on his life. That he never asked nor wanted me. I was not his daughter and to never contact him again.

Whatever hope I had been holding onto for having a father were killed that day. Thinking about what was in that letter still makes me cry to this day, it was. . . awful. My mom made me ribs for dinner that night to make me feel better. Looking back I should have suspected something then, but I didn't. What kid thinks their parents would do anything to intentionally hurt them. I mean, I was considering the strange fact she already had the ribs cooking that morning. Or that she bought them the day before, like she was per-paring for this sealed letter from my father with no return address label on it.

Age twenty, I wrote my father a new letter. A rather nasty one asking for $500 to fix my car so I could restart college. At this point in my life I had dropped out of college, paid off a $1,200 fee to my school, to go back to the college. All on a dishwasher's pay. Oh, and supported my mom and family.

I worked a lot!

But I didn't have enough money to get my car fixed on time, and I was desperate. I figured, that asshole had money and he owes me. This time I sent the letter myself, addressed it and everything because my mom couldn't be bothered to do it.

In a week I got a reply from Jeff with a money order for the money I asked for. I thought it was wonderful, and we started talking back and forth. Sadly, I didn't use the money to get my car fix. Dani talked me into using it for a bill she hadn't been paying. My car never did get fixed, and I ended up having to trade it in for a newer car and a car payment. Yay! (man did it feel good when I paid that car off. Did it all by myself too, but I still miss that car I traded in.)

In-spite of the car not getting fixed, me and my father started exchanging letters back and forth. . . emails. He even invited me to come out and spend Easter that year. He bought me a plane ticket, and I went to stay with them. It was. . . extremely awkward.

Here I was staying with a man, and a family that was—as Dani would say—insanely well off. He had a nice clean house, with nice stuff. A loving family, they all got along. They had stories, and history—memories that were wonderful, and I was the outsider. Even though I knew I was his daughter, and he invited me to be apart of the family I still felt I didn't belong. I wasn't good enough to be among them. They weren't my family, no matter how much I wanted them to be.

This awful string of feelings is something my mom put in me. She nourished these ideas of me not being good enough to my father—that I was beneath him—and wasn't part of his rich world. So while I was in the dark place at the time of my visit, and I wanted to reach out and embrace him as my father. I didn't. . . I couldn't. How could I tell him about all the neglect and abuse, about the sexual stuff without feeling like a whore?

Dirty thing that was so far beneath this perfect family.

At this point in my life I was programmed to be a good little abuse victim. Don't talk about what goes on in the house, and I believed my father to be a man that was simply doing the right thing by having me there. See, my brother, Kevin and I had been chatting a lot online at the time. Kevin always wanted a brother or sister, so he wanted me in his life and this is where my mother stepped in.

Dani explained the reason my father asked me to visit like this, “Kevin wants to know about you and for you to be apart of his life. Paula loves Kevin deeply because it's her only child, and Jeff loves Paula. So he's just trying to keep the rest of his family happy. Once they get board with you, it will stop.”

Ouch, love you too mom.

As my brother got older and moved on with his life we stopped talking. He got busy, and the only time I heard from my father was Christmas and my birthday. Not that I cared. For all I knew I didn't matter to him. So, fuck him.

Fast-forward to this summer. I started therapy, and began facing a lot of hard things. I cut my mother out of my life, and wrote her a letter highlighting the reasons why. She responded as a child, not that it surprised me. I'm doubtful she even read the 20+ page letter I sent her. That's fine, the letter I wrote was more for me than her. I said everything I needed to. The truth and my feelings about it were out there, and that's really all that mattered at the time.

In September I came to realize putting all my hatred on Dani wasn't fair. While my father was never there, he still had some responsibility in the awful things that happened to me. He left me with the woman who neglected me, and who let her boyfriends have their way with me. He needed to know what I had to live through to get to this point in my life. Also, I wanted Jeff to know how much of a fighter his daughter was.

I sat down that day and wrote a gut wrenching letter. I assigned no blame, simply told my life story. Straightforward and to the point. I wanted him to know what happened to me when he wasn't around, and how I felt about it. Even if he never replied to me I knew this was a step in the right direction, I started to heal that day.

I said, “Hey, this messed up stuff happened to me. You and mom left me to this life, but I'm still here and I'm going to keep going.”

It was an amazing feeling, but to my surprise a reply letter showed up in my mail box the Friday before Halloween. Oh lord, I have never been so afraid of an envelope in my life. The second I pulled it from the mail box I dropped it. Honestly, it fell onto the ground like it bit me.

After laughing at myself for being stupid over a piece of paper, I came inside and put it on my desk. It was a thin letter, thinner than mine. Couldn't bring myself to open it. Usually I tore open letters right away because mail is fun, (so long as it's not bills). Not this time, it sat there and I thought about not opening it. That Friday was an extremely busy day for me, I didn't need to be upset for it. The thought came to me to wait until I got home later that night when my husband was around to open in. Staring at the thing I came to a decision.

Fuck it, I was opening it.

It's just a letter, and if anything it's probably like the response I got from my mom. That I was prepared for, being told I needed therapy—a mental hospital—and to be drugged. Yeah, I can handle all that none-sense.

I was wrong. . . There as no preparing for what my father's response was. . .

The contents changed everything, and I mean everything. My world went upside down, flipped inside out, and then plunged into the depths of the ocean. . .

Even now. . . I c-can't. . .

. . .I started this entry back at the end of last year. My intentions were to post it on January first, but I had to stop. Somethings are too hard to face, and you need to build up the courage. That's what I've spent my time doing, building up my courage to face this monster of truth. Sadly, it sent me into a depressive spiral which was exaggerated due to my birthday. That's over now, and it's time to move on to the second part of this post. My courage is shaky, but I'm ready.

The easiest way to tell you want the letter said would be to copy and post it, but it's not my letter to post. There are things in it I'm sure my father would like to keep between me and him, so I'll sum it up for you.

The remorse that poured off my father's words hit me the hardest, it bleed from the ink. I could image what he must have looked like reading my twenty page confession, witnessing first-hand what his daughter had suffered. The guilt of a father that was never there hitting deeper knowing he could have ended my anguish. He was honest with me, and that's all I asked of him. That's all I ever asked of anyone, including my mother.

Honesty, it's a simple frail thing. Straightforward. There's no illusions to hide behind, no half truths. That might seem rather black and white of me, but when you've lived through what I have and existence in a world filled with grays. Black and white is the best thing for healing. No excuses, or reasons. No, should of, could of, would ofs. Just cold hard facts mixed with raw emotions. That's all I ask, and he gave me that.

My dad explained his fears about his struggles at the time my mother was doing her thing with me. Told me how much he regretted not being there more, and letting his anger at Dani effect his relationship with me. Then I came across a paragraph, a sentence that destroyed and soothed me all in one.

Jeff, that man I never called by Dad—the first of many men that I thought had abandoned me—hurt me, and left me to a world that is. . . awful. He wanted me. He wanted custody of me, but at the time he worried over the type of life I would have with him if he was struggling. He also didn't want to take a child away from their mother, but if he only knew the type of mother Dani was.

I don't fault him for not trying to get custody, I understand the complexities of life and wanting a good future for your children. I get that, and while we can sit around and say “what if,” it changes nothing.

Instead, what I took away from that confession was, he wanted me. I was wanted. . . He wanted. . . me.

Sitting in my desk chair I broke, but in a good way. I crumbled under the relief of knowing someone out there—my blood family—a parent—wanted me. I was wanted. I was good enough for the first time in my life. For someone that has been told throughout their life that they're a burden, made to feel unwanted, that's. . . Well, earth shattering.

My dad goes on to say he would never turn me away, or not want to hear from me. He even said he was proud of what I've managed to do, and the hardship I've faced. It's awkward to hear those compliments but at the same time it's the first time one of my parents have praised me, and I knew they meant it.

I sat there for a few stunned moments, smiling like a fool. I'll admit, I giggled as happy tears rolled down my cheeks. It felt good—I felt whole for the first time ever, and then it hit me. . . the truth. . . the honest truth of the car-wreck that is my past.

How much can a mother hate her own child?

How far would they go to destroy any hope in innocence?

Apparently, Dani's cruelty had a new level I discovered in that letter. As I said before she often told me how my father abandoned us—that we—I—wasn't good enough for him. I was just a bastard poor child, with a fucked up mom. That was me. I never asked for that life, nor wanted it. I tried like hell to change it, but it never worked. All this time she made me think she was the only one that loved or wanted me. Over and over again I heard the stories about how she gave up college for me, my dad, her husband, boyfriends, even jobs. I was made to think I needed to be grateful for every crumb she threw my way because I had no one else who cared, but that wasn't true.

It wasn't fucking true at all. My father loved me, he wanted me. All this time.

This epiphany lead me into the worst panic-attack I have ever had. I couldn't breathe, think, all I felt was intense anger. In that moment I hated Dani, for once I didn't put the anger on myself. I was flooded by emotion, but for once I didn't want to hurt myself. My anger was firmly placed where it should be, I was actually pissed at the person that deserved it.

See, even after I cut Dani out of my life I still felt bad about doing it. I had the idea stuck in my head that I was being a bad daughter, because that's how brainwashed I am. I thought of myself as one of those ungrateful kids that blames all their problems on their parents (I still do at times). I've been trained to think I'm always wrong, but none of that mattered this time. My rage broke the programming.

She had lied to me. . . my whole life! I started to wonderful how much of her stories were true about my father, and other men, other people in our life. The awful things she used to say about them.

It took me an hour to settle down, and when I did the only thing I wanted to do was make the two hour drive to Dani's house and confront her. I wanted answers, I wanted to know what the hell my father was talking about. . . What bullshit had she pulled. . . Did he really order that DNA test when I was 11 or did she?

I wanted to know it all, but because I couldn't trust my judgment I stayed home, and got ready for my event that night. For the next 24 hours I numbed myself. I drifted back and forth on the edge of completely losing it. I knew I was going to crash, and hard when I did allow myself to feel once again, but before then there was one more question I needed answered.

While the truth was written out in a letter right in front of me, I still had a fingertip on the hope it wasn't true. That Dani wasn't the woman this information suggested she was. That those first seven years of my life we spent together, me and her against the world, actually meant something. That she loved me for real. I even overlooked that asinine reply she gave me by email when I asked her about what my dad said in his letter. (It was another three lined childish reply suggesting I needed therapy).

So I message my father, I asked him about the letter I sent him when I was a teenager. The one where I asked him to spend the summer. I didn't tell him that I gave it to my mom to send out for me (teenagers and sending letters, yeah we are not good at that). I asked him outright why he didn't want me to come that summer to stay with him?

He replied back that he never got a letter like that, and he never sent a response. I believed him, he's never given me any reason not to, and he wasn't gaining anything by lying to me. There is nothing I can give him that he doesn't already have, there is no reason to be dishonest. With is reply, I knew.

Cruel, brutal, cold-blooded, heartless, sadistic. . . There are so many words in our language, but none of them. . . Not a single one touch on what my mother did.

She took a child—fresh and new to the world—and crushed their spirit, brainwashed them, psychically hurt them, mental destroyed them. Let her boyfriends and husband kill their soul, and when I thought I was free—when I saw light at the end—hope within reach, she delivered another blow.

My entire life was a lie. . . One of the biggest heartbreaks of my past is not true, and now I'm left to wonder how often she told me lies. How many times was she dishonest? I know she can lie like the best of them, I've seen her do it to others, but to me. . . her daughter?

I would have gone to hell for my mother. I gave her my undying loyalty and bought her anything she wished. I turned my back on my own sexual abuse just so she could continue to have a relationship with those men. I let her use me as a verbal punching bag when she was said, and I watched countless Christmas mornings as my brother and sister opened gifts knowing there was nothing for me because my mom didn't have the money. Still I smiled and made it a good time for everyone.

I cooked, cleaned, washed clothes. . . I—I was a slave to her, and I was rewarded like this.

So here I am entering into 2018 a shattered woman. The fabric of my life left in ruins. Yes, my relationship with my father is going down a wonderful path, but on the flip side I have to deal with this. . . This betrayal that I can't fully grasp without wanting to hurt myself to release the emotion agony.

What do I do now?

Where do I go from here?

How many lies are there?

My mind goes to dark places when I think about it, one of the darkest thoughts is—

Did my mother's boyfriend randomly sexually assault me, or did she give me to him?

I don't know, but one this is for sure. I'll never trust her again.

#FatherlyBond #MotherBetrayal #Lies

~Jax~