Fuck Father's Day

I can barely articulate how much I hate Father’s Day. Getting on FaceBook today was a horrid mistake. Given that my current headspace was already in the negative, seeing post after post after post on how awesome everyone else’s father is just drove home how not having a father sucks ass.

It’s not even like he’s dead, but that I have all these wonderful memories. No.
My dad just opted out.
Opted out of my life.
Opted out of being involved.
Opted out of getting to know me.
Opted out of giving a shit.

And what make shit hurt even more is that he didn’t do this in the beginning, or even the first few years. No. He started opting out of my life when I hit the 6th grade. That’s when the time between visits noticeably started increasing. That’s when it started becoming very hit and miss if I’d even get a birthday card.

I finally told him to fuck off after I hadn’t seen him in years. He could keep his stupid checks and his very sporadic birthday and Christmas cards. To me, those holidays utterly sucked because I was playing the waiting game. Would I hear from him this year? Did he just not send the card on time? Or did he simply just not send a card period. Fuck that. I didn’t need the money that bad, so I told him to keep it all – to completely erase me from his life – that I was erasing him.

Most of the time, I don’t even notice his absence. It’s became the norm for most of my life. Most of the time, I have so many things going on in my life that I don’t even spare a thought towards him for months on end.

But today just really hit me hard. I wished my brother a great 1st Father’s Day and told him I think he’s doing an utterly amazing job, and I truly mean that from the bottom of my heart. My brother is beyond smitten with Lil Nephew and I truly, truly doubt Lil Nephew will ever go through the absentee-dad shit that Bro and I have.

I just see how easy it comes to my brother to be a good father. I see now natural he is at it. And it just makes my father’s neglect even more unfathomable.

I am glad at least now that I can turn this outward instead of asking what I could have done better. I was a fucking kid and he was the adult. The lack of communication and seeing my brother and I falls squarely on his shoulders. I’m just sad and oh-so-angry that he failed us like this.

I could say it’s not fair.
Yet I know the “life’s not fair” quip would be tossed around. Or the “oh, so-and-so has it soo much worse”.

To that, I say a resounding FUCK YOU.
Don’t trivialize my experience or my feelings just because that make you uncomfortable.