My Father

So, I guess I was lucky in the way that my parents never divorced and my father was always physically present, which is more than many others can say about their fathers. Then when I think about it, being physically present doesn't mean squat if the person is emotionally absent, as my father is and has been throughout my life.

When I was younger, my father worked a lot. Every holiday, he worked. After school and at night time, he worked.  I never spent time with him, even as I got older. He never gave me hugs or kisses or showed any affection towards me. The only time he said anything to me was when he was yelling at me or making asinine comments about me or something I did. He was always an angry person, for as long as I can remember. If he said something incorrect and I would correct him, he called me stupid and told me I didn't know anything. When I was 14, I tried out for Varsity soccer. My father told me I was too fat and couldn't play for my life. I stopped going to practice. When I saw the coach at school, he asked me why I stopped coming to practice. I had made the team. In high school, when the guidance counselors called my parents and told them I was depressed, my father sat me in the corner and slapped me across the face, telling me he'd give me something to be depressed about. A few months ago, when I got a third job as a salesperson, my father told me I couldn't sell anything, and that I'd fail. I never went back.

So yes, sometimes I wish my father would have just left. In a way, I sympathize with him because he has had to deal with my mother this whole time, and that it the cause of most of his misery. My mother is even more physically and verbally violent than he is. I guess he just takes out his anger from her on other people, which most of the time is me. That is where my sympathy ends.  He could have taken his anger out on someone else. He could have left my mother. Why didn't he protect me from my mother? He had to know what was happening, yet he didn't say anything. He just added on to the pain, and left me with no family to turn to. As horrible as it sounds, I do hate him. I just don't hate him as much as I hate my mother.