My dad is a self-made man who is pretty rich. I have never lived with him since he divorced my mother (leaving us with absolutely NOTHING despite the fact that she was pregnant and had a five-year-old) before I was born and he didn’t come to the hospital to see me when I was born or take much interest. However, he has slowly developed a mental illness (I don’t personally know what it is since my mum doesn’t know and I’m not up for asking him or my step-mum) which I only really knew about after he tried to commit suicide on Christmas day when I was twelve. I wasn’t there, I don’t know the details and I’m not going to claim I’m particularly ‘messed up’ from it (not to sound harsh or anything).
Ever since then he has been pretty weird with me. When I was younger I would go round his house every other weekend and we’d barely talk or even see each other. I’ve known him all of my life but neither of us knows each other at all- he never particularly cared. He knows that he is ill but he takes his medication until he decides that he feels better and then comes off of it straight away, which obviously leads to another decline until he does something weird again like disappearing to France for a week without telling anyone, or locking himself away.
He has five children- my older sister and I by my mother and three young children by his wife now- but he has told me to my face that he didn’t want any of us, particularly me. In front of old friends he called my younger brother his ‘first child’. I suffered from severe depression over several years in my early teens and he thought it appropriate to tell me that I was going to be locked away and that everyone was laughing behind my back (obviously not true). He told me he hated me when I accidentally put a virus on his computer. He calls my sister up whenever he likes and is verbally abusive. This is a very small selection of nasty things that he has come out with- I know he is ill but it does get to the point where you just stop caring.
Occasionally he makes contact with me for no reason to promise me something. Like several hundred pounds for my GCSE results, like he gave my sister, or a car for passing my test, or a guitar for Christmas, none of which, might I add, have been promised when he’s been particularly ‘crazy’. I don’t personally ask him for anything, he just decides that at that time he wants to do it. Then he just never goes through with it and I’m tired of being let down. In fact, last Christmas my mum and her husband went away (to see my step-dad's’s family- I chose not to go) and I sat in the living room with all of my dad’s family opening their large stacks of presents and I didn’t receive a single thing- he didn’t set me a place at the table. In the end I went home and spent it alone. Since then I haven’t called or spoken to him, and he hasn’t bothered phoning once.
Please don’t think this is a case of ‘poor little rich girl’. I don’t need a car or money or a guitar, and I think that he offers me far too much. However, what I don’t want is someone promising me things and then just deciding not to do it and jumping in and out of my life.
My grandfather has been like a father figure to me all my life, has truly been there for me, and has done it without flashing money around. I love and respect him far more than I ever will my real father.
All I want to know is whether you think I should bother with him at all any more? Is it worth keeping contact with someone just because they are your father, no matter what? As I have said, I know he is ill but he has his medication and I have no respect for him because by stopping taking it he’s pretty much choosing to put everyone through this.
Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to give everyone a full picture.
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