I (21) have been no contact with my father for 1.5 years now. For the majority of my life I have disliked my father, wishing he would leave or divorce or die. For context, since puberty (~9 years old) he has sexualized, degraded and humiliated me because of my body. This would range from casual daily comments on my weight or that I need to put a shirt on even though it would be 30°C and I was wearing a sports bra all the way to the extremes of calling a 12 year old a slut or a whore for whatever reason. No doubt he was also quite conservative and racist— at about the age of 10 he looked me up and down and told me I needed to start wearing a bra so I “don’t end up with saggy pancake tits like those African women on National Geographic”…
There were many times he would turn normal conversations sexual, discussing onlyfans, porn, strippers etc out of nowhere at family dinners, all of us asking him to stop. When I started to go to school for education he told me that I shouldn’t be a pedophile or pervert… (duh) but he often complained about the education system and how teachers are indoctrinating kids and essentially believed them to be these evil forces in society. Fast forward— he follows teacher cosplay porn accounts and is now dating a teacher. Obviously this feels incredibly weird and gross to me but whatever.
For as long as I have been alive this man has been an alcoholic. Funny enough, I didn’t find out until I was around 12 years old and he got found out and went through severe withdrawals— at which point he promised he would sober up. Lies of course. For the next ~7 years he would relapse again and again, be laid off never to find another job and continue his lying and manipulation. While this was happening home life for me was absolute hell. I would lock myself upstairs not to come down until he went to bed. He constantly found problems with anything and everything I did, shitting on my accomplishments or struggles, always comparing his own life to mine. He also became increasingly conservative to the point where I simply couldn’t have a conversation with him without it resulting in some amount of bigotry.
One of the last weeks I saw him he was picking me up and a car in front of us made a small mistake. The average person would perhaps mutter something like “oh you stupid idiot” and move on with their day. This man took it upon himself to honk his horn relentlessly, roll down the window, screaming every swear to come to mind. Unfortunately the driver was heading the same way, so the interaction continued. At this point he would rev the engine and try to almost hit the back of their car. He sped up to then get beside them only to find out it was an Asian woman. This enraged him. He started recording her and calling her slurs and racially motivated comments, all while her school aged child sat in the passengers seat. I yelled and begged this man to stop, threatening to jump out of the car, but to no avail. When we arrived home he asked me why I was mad and not talking to him.
It wasn’t uncommon for me to tell him how he was being rude or inappropriate or ways to better our relationship. However, rather than using these suggestions to improve things he would use it as fuel for further harm and harassment. This would often also end in a similar sentiment of “I don’t understand why you hate me??”
No doubt he was also a raging homophobe and transphobe. Lucky for me I am queer! Staying closeted and having my or my communities identities debated in front of me every night took a severe toll on my mental health. I didn’t have any of my friends come over for about 2 years out of fear of the comments he would make to them or the lectures I would receive for weeks after.
Now that it’s been 1.5 years I am so happy to say I am doing much better. I am working through some deeply repressed emotions and feelings now that I feel safe to do so. Since being out of such a heinous situation I have allowed myself to explore my queerness more than I ever thought possible! I do not miss that man nor do I ever wish to see him again. The hardest part has been coming to accept that I have never had a father and never will. Like grieving this non existent dad I never had. There were no more cycles of manipulation or believing he could change only to be more disappointed. But I prefer that over a toxic man in my life. Anyways, I feel much more free to explore myself and my own life.
This is all to say that things can get better and I don’t regret my choice for one second <3