siamese dream
Verified
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2002
- Messages
- 882
- Points
- 0
I don't even really know why I'm writing this here. I guess I just need to let it out somewhere, and it's hard for me to talk to anyone. I think whenever I talk with people about this, they all have this reaction like "I don't know what to say", which I don't blame them... there's nothing they could say anyway, and nothing that's really going to help anything. But maybe writing it all out would help me feel better.
My parents were married until I was eight yrs old. They divorced and then my dad remarried when I was 10. I lived with my mom but would visit my dad and stepmom every month or two. When I was 18, my dad dropped his second wife off for work one day, and never came back. He had been having an affair for some time with a woman he met off the internet, and left his second wife that day to be with her.
When he left, I got this e-mail from him to me and my brother (one yr younger than me) explaining that he's "happy" and that he can't tell us where he is right now because we're probably angry at him, and would tell us soon. I wrote a few angry e-mails back and he would write back with the same bullshit, still not telling us where he was. Well, soon after that he stopped writing or speaking to my brother and me at all, and got a divorce from his second wife. He still owed my brother around 5,000 dollars in child support at this time, and had left his second wife with a lot of debts she didn't know about before he left. But money isn't anything that really matters to me, I was just mad because he stopped speaking to us, all I really knew was that he had moved to Nebraska, but I hadn't heard a word from him.
Well, I was kind of determined that I wouldn't speak to him again unless he chose to speak to me...after all, he's the friggin' father, I'm his daughter, and if he wanted to talk to me he should be man enough to call me. But he never did. A few times, I started thinking about trying to get a hold of him... maybe tell him I'm still mad but I want to still have a relationship with him etc. I never did call him though, and in March, he died of a heart attack at age 55. Here's the really fucked-up part: I didn't know, nor did my brother, that he was dead until a week later, after his funeral was already over. Me and my brother were his only children. It turned out that he had married this woman he had the affair with...her name is Adelle, his THIRD wife, but I don't know much about her other than that. The way we found out about his death was Adelle's fucking LAWYER called my mom and told her. Later Adelle told my mom in a phone conversation that my dad had spoken with her about what he wanted in case of his death; she said that he had said he didn't want his "other family" to know about it until after the funeral. So it was apparently my dad's choice that his only children weren't there for his funeral.
Now I'm getting all these letters in the mail from the 3rd wife's lawyer about my dad's estate, wanting me to sign these legal documents that I don't know what they mean and I don't want to deal with. All it does is just remind me of hurt and anger I'd rather not be reminded of. I don't even know how to feel about it...it's like I can't forgive him, I can't move past it, because of the way I found out about his death. He shunned us, in like a permanent way. Basically told us that we weren't his family anymore. It's so weird and just sickening, and I don't know if I should feel sad, pissed, indifferent...I feel this weird combination of all three. My brother and I had a father for 18 years, and then he had a mid-life crisis or something and completely blew us off for three years, and then he died and his own children didn't know he was dead. It just blows my mind, and it's so unreal, like it didn't really happen.
I don't know why I did this, glutton for punishment I guess...but I did an internet search on my dad's name. Click here if you want to see the biggest load of bullshit ever written. http://specialed.about.com/library/weekly/aa032102a.htm
This and several other similar memorial type things were written by his third wife on several websites. Apparently, after he ran away, my dad became active in this online autism community during the last few years of his life. I couldn't believe it when I read that my dad had an interest in autism because he had an 'autistic son'. My brother was my dad's ONLY son, and he's not autistic. Adelle has a son who's autistic, NOT my dad's child but a child from a previous relationship of hers. I read several of these articles about him that she wrote, one of them even stated that he left behind "A son, Jonathan, and two daughters, Laura and [some other girl I can't remember her name]"... No where did I see one mention of my name or my brother's. These children she speaks of are HER children, not my dad's.
My dad was one of those people that was smart and manipulative, he could tell people what they wanted to hear and get them going. When he was with my mom, I watched him manipulate her and use me and my brother to take sides in their arguements... when he divorced her and married his second wife, he left my mom with a lot of debts she didn't know about. When he married his second wife, for the first few years they were seemingly very happy, and then I again witnessed them fighting a lot and his manipulation of her, until finally he left her and again, she was left with a lot of debts she didn't know about. I'm guessing, had he had the time, he would have left Adelle the same way. But he was only with Adelle for three years...from the time he left when I was 18, till he died, when I was 21.
Of course, she thinks he was a saint and writes all this crap about him on the internet making him out to be a great noble wonderful person etc etc. But the people who knew him in his previous life know the truth. I don't know. Reading that stuff online just pissed me off even more, but there's no real point. I don't know how you can be angry with someone who's dead, but I feel like I may never stop being angry with him. It was just like the nastiest thing he could have possibly done, to tell his third wife he didn't want his only children at his funeral. I don't know what to think anymore and I wish he was still alive, if only for me to rip him a new one face-to-face. But now I'll never get to do that, I'll never get to see him again at all, and so I guess if he never wanted to see me and my brother again then he fucking got what he wanted.
It's hard for me to talk about this with my family. I'm still close to his second wife...she was my stepmom for eight years, after all. But if I try to talk to her about it she takes over the conversation and gets all weepy and stuff, and I just don't feel comfortable talking with her about it, plus she's not very good at listening...just one of those people who likes to talk more. My mom I can talk to, but...I don't know. I just don't know what to say to her about all this. We've talked about it before and it just goes nowhere...I don't think any amount of talking will help, anyway. It's just a messed up situation and there's nothing anyone can do.
My brother is the one who worries me the most. I've never had a real conversation with him about all this, and I want to. My brother is a really private person, he doesn't like to talk about his personal feelings and he'll get angry and change the subject or tell me he doesn't want to talk about it if I try to talk with him about our dad. He keeps everything bottled up inside and I've seen him have really bad emotional outbursts before. I'm not even sure what he would do if he knew about the stuff on the internet, to me it just made me mad, but I think it would hurt him really, really deeply to know that my dad considered Adelle's children to be 'his children', especially that Adelle's son was acknowledged as "his son", and my brother, his REAL son, wasn't acknowledged at all. I hope my brother hasn't already seen those articles. I don't know if it would help for him to talk about it or not, but I worry that it's tearing him up inside sometimes because of the way he doesn't let anything out.
I don't know. I need to smoke some weed or get tickled or something. Just thinking about this has ruined any possibility of a good mood. He died back in March and it still doesn't feel 'real', it still feels like some bizarre sad story that isn't true. I just don't know. I guess all I can do is promise myself to never, ever be like him, and to do good with my life and be true to myself and the ones I love.
If you got this far, thanks for reading this, I know it's a downer but it made me feel a little better to write it.
My parents were married until I was eight yrs old. They divorced and then my dad remarried when I was 10. I lived with my mom but would visit my dad and stepmom every month or two. When I was 18, my dad dropped his second wife off for work one day, and never came back. He had been having an affair for some time with a woman he met off the internet, and left his second wife that day to be with her.
When he left, I got this e-mail from him to me and my brother (one yr younger than me) explaining that he's "happy" and that he can't tell us where he is right now because we're probably angry at him, and would tell us soon. I wrote a few angry e-mails back and he would write back with the same bullshit, still not telling us where he was. Well, soon after that he stopped writing or speaking to my brother and me at all, and got a divorce from his second wife. He still owed my brother around 5,000 dollars in child support at this time, and had left his second wife with a lot of debts she didn't know about before he left. But money isn't anything that really matters to me, I was just mad because he stopped speaking to us, all I really knew was that he had moved to Nebraska, but I hadn't heard a word from him.
Well, I was kind of determined that I wouldn't speak to him again unless he chose to speak to me...after all, he's the friggin' father, I'm his daughter, and if he wanted to talk to me he should be man enough to call me. But he never did. A few times, I started thinking about trying to get a hold of him... maybe tell him I'm still mad but I want to still have a relationship with him etc. I never did call him though, and in March, he died of a heart attack at age 55. Here's the really fucked-up part: I didn't know, nor did my brother, that he was dead until a week later, after his funeral was already over. Me and my brother were his only children. It turned out that he had married this woman he had the affair with...her name is Adelle, his THIRD wife, but I don't know much about her other than that. The way we found out about his death was Adelle's fucking LAWYER called my mom and told her. Later Adelle told my mom in a phone conversation that my dad had spoken with her about what he wanted in case of his death; she said that he had said he didn't want his "other family" to know about it until after the funeral. So it was apparently my dad's choice that his only children weren't there for his funeral.
Now I'm getting all these letters in the mail from the 3rd wife's lawyer about my dad's estate, wanting me to sign these legal documents that I don't know what they mean and I don't want to deal with. All it does is just remind me of hurt and anger I'd rather not be reminded of. I don't even know how to feel about it...it's like I can't forgive him, I can't move past it, because of the way I found out about his death. He shunned us, in like a permanent way. Basically told us that we weren't his family anymore. It's so weird and just sickening, and I don't know if I should feel sad, pissed, indifferent...I feel this weird combination of all three. My brother and I had a father for 18 years, and then he had a mid-life crisis or something and completely blew us off for three years, and then he died and his own children didn't know he was dead. It just blows my mind, and it's so unreal, like it didn't really happen.
I don't know why I did this, glutton for punishment I guess...but I did an internet search on my dad's name. Click here if you want to see the biggest load of bullshit ever written. http://specialed.about.com/library/weekly/aa032102a.htm
This and several other similar memorial type things were written by his third wife on several websites. Apparently, after he ran away, my dad became active in this online autism community during the last few years of his life. I couldn't believe it when I read that my dad had an interest in autism because he had an 'autistic son'. My brother was my dad's ONLY son, and he's not autistic. Adelle has a son who's autistic, NOT my dad's child but a child from a previous relationship of hers. I read several of these articles about him that she wrote, one of them even stated that he left behind "A son, Jonathan, and two daughters, Laura and [some other girl I can't remember her name]"... No where did I see one mention of my name or my brother's. These children she speaks of are HER children, not my dad's.
My dad was one of those people that was smart and manipulative, he could tell people what they wanted to hear and get them going. When he was with my mom, I watched him manipulate her and use me and my brother to take sides in their arguements... when he divorced her and married his second wife, he left my mom with a lot of debts she didn't know about. When he married his second wife, for the first few years they were seemingly very happy, and then I again witnessed them fighting a lot and his manipulation of her, until finally he left her and again, she was left with a lot of debts she didn't know about. I'm guessing, had he had the time, he would have left Adelle the same way. But he was only with Adelle for three years...from the time he left when I was 18, till he died, when I was 21.
Of course, she thinks he was a saint and writes all this crap about him on the internet making him out to be a great noble wonderful person etc etc. But the people who knew him in his previous life know the truth. I don't know. Reading that stuff online just pissed me off even more, but there's no real point. I don't know how you can be angry with someone who's dead, but I feel like I may never stop being angry with him. It was just like the nastiest thing he could have possibly done, to tell his third wife he didn't want his only children at his funeral. I don't know what to think anymore and I wish he was still alive, if only for me to rip him a new one face-to-face. But now I'll never get to do that, I'll never get to see him again at all, and so I guess if he never wanted to see me and my brother again then he fucking got what he wanted.
It's hard for me to talk about this with my family. I'm still close to his second wife...she was my stepmom for eight years, after all. But if I try to talk to her about it she takes over the conversation and gets all weepy and stuff, and I just don't feel comfortable talking with her about it, plus she's not very good at listening...just one of those people who likes to talk more. My mom I can talk to, but...I don't know. I just don't know what to say to her about all this. We've talked about it before and it just goes nowhere...I don't think any amount of talking will help, anyway. It's just a messed up situation and there's nothing anyone can do.
My brother is the one who worries me the most. I've never had a real conversation with him about all this, and I want to. My brother is a really private person, he doesn't like to talk about his personal feelings and he'll get angry and change the subject or tell me he doesn't want to talk about it if I try to talk with him about our dad. He keeps everything bottled up inside and I've seen him have really bad emotional outbursts before. I'm not even sure what he would do if he knew about the stuff on the internet, to me it just made me mad, but I think it would hurt him really, really deeply to know that my dad considered Adelle's children to be 'his children', especially that Adelle's son was acknowledged as "his son", and my brother, his REAL son, wasn't acknowledged at all. I hope my brother hasn't already seen those articles. I don't know if it would help for him to talk about it or not, but I worry that it's tearing him up inside sometimes because of the way he doesn't let anything out.
I don't know. I need to smoke some weed or get tickled or something. Just thinking about this has ruined any possibility of a good mood. He died back in March and it still doesn't feel 'real', it still feels like some bizarre sad story that isn't true. I just don't know. I guess all I can do is promise myself to never, ever be like him, and to do good with my life and be true to myself and the ones I love.
If you got this far, thanks for reading this, I know it's a downer but it made me feel a little better to write it.
