My dad is 42, I’m 22f. My husband and I are quarantining with him. Long story short, my dad has pretty much always been single despite always wanting to find a life partner. He’s had several girlfriends, one lasted almost 4 years, but he always found a way to hurt them and drive them away, which then destroyed him, but most of the time he can’t even manage to get a date. He’s a good looking guy, good intentions, he‘s been asked why he’s still single many times - it’s because he’s said and done some really stupid things, he’s an over-sharer (including online, this has caused a lot of problems but he’s calmed down a bit now, just goes on random rants on Facebook that aren’t too revealing), when he was younger he’d have girls throwing themselves at him until he opened his mouth. At this point he just has a bad reputation when it comes to dating.
Tonight the three of us got into a really deep conversation about life and stuff. He was going on about how he’ll never have what we and most couples have, even if he met someone perfect tomorrow they’d be starting at the point where most people are completely settled down and there won’t be enough time to have that young love. He lives in his imagination a lot, rambles and talks about nonsense and has these creative but unusual ideas and thoughts, loads of metaphors and figurative speech, verbose, stream of consciousness-type, goes off on tangents type of thing, self-conscious, kinda egotistical but feels everything very deeply. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had mild Aspergers or something. I’m pretty similar, but the problem is when I get into my head like that and I’m alone and there’s nobody there to share these thoughts it’s dark, and I can’t help but think he goes through the same thing.
Things started getting a little darker...We haven’t always had the best relationship. It was great for the first 10 years, I was unaware of his reputation, I didn’t live with him full time, all the time we had together was awesome quality time. When I was in 6th grade he got full custody, we lived in a relatively small city, I know he’d had ended things really badly with a mom in town, I went to school with her son who was also in my grade. When I showed up and they realized I was his kid I started getting a lot of crap. In 8th grade the first of two big online oversharing incidents occurred, it was humiliating for me but I wound up forgiving him after a few months of therapy together. It happened again when I was in 11th grade, because we were older kids weren’t as mean about it but it again was absolutely mortifying and I couldn’t forgive him after that. We kind of just coexisted until I graduated, literally the day after my husband (then boyfriend) and I moved half way across the country where he was going to college and I got a job. We talked once over the next 2 years when his ex called him about my engagement that he didn’t know about, he called me to congratulate me and we rekindled things and eventually were able to build up to the point where we have a great relationship again, it’s been 5 years since my engagement. He was talking about all this tonight too, said those couple years he could hardly see why life was worth living, he was living for me for 16 years and then I up and left him and he was completely alone. He said he destroys everything good in his life, that maybe he was meant to be alone: one kid, no siblings, divorced parents, can’t get a date. He said this quarantine has been the best because he’s got to spend it with the two people he loves most and he wishes he always had someone that he loves with him.
I know that there’s pretty much nothing I can do for him being his daughter, I’m not normally the type to feel this deeply, or especially acknowledge these deep feelings, I’m in no way an empath, but man this feeling sucks. He was seriously the best dad, even with all the shit he did, he deserves to be happy. I’ve never worried about him when he was alone but after this is all over and my husband and I go home I think I will be.
TL;DR - my dad is lonely, I’m worried that it’s taking a toll. I have no idea how to help him or even if I can help him at all.
Submitted April 24, 2020 at 03:32AM by ashuppet https://ift.tt/2yE9agD
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