So I have a pretty complicated relationship with my father. On my parents' honeymoon, my mom found him kissing another woman. When caught, he swore that he would never do it again, and thus began his 8 or so year affair.
At the beginning of their marriage, things were seemingly fine as they both had stable incomes and didn't argue all that much. However, a few years in, my dad decided he wanted to make a name for himself. This led to his starting up 3 different business that ultimately failed because of his larger-than-life ambition, and the essentially throwing away of $100,000 of (mostly) my mom's savings.
Once his businesses failed, he became depressed and decided to deal with it with alcohol. Essentially, this consisted of him drinking every night and violently shouting at my mom all the time. Once my brother and I were born, he calmed down for a brief period, but the drinking came back again, and this time with the added benefit of being a chain smoker too (yay!).
Around the time I was 6 and my brother was 2, an uncle of mine was killed by one of his employees. As such, his business was left without a head, and my dad decided to fly out to BC (British Columbia, Canada - across the country) and help the family out (it was his sister's husband). While this may seem nice, in actuality, he was simply going there to freeload and have what would have already been a multi-year affair with another woman (~12 years, assuming it ended back when I was 14, which I doubt). He spent the next 2 or so years in BC, and saw my family and I about twice during that period, meaning that I don't really have any fond memories of him from my childhood.
Once he came back, he had essentially been out of stable work for 6 years or so. This means that my mom was brining in all the income for the family, taking care of the kids, and cleaning/cooking (Indian family stereotypes, I know). The man was a burden to us all, as though he tried to be kind during the day, the drunken rambling in the nights would completely trump that. On a few occasions, he even got to the point where he physically assaulted my mom. Highlights include giving her a lifelong injury in her wrist, and smashing our front door that was made of glass when she locked him out.
At one point my mom decided she had enough and kicked him out, but he then spent the next 4 or so years drifting in and out of our house every time he would get drunk. My mom is super kind so she would let him back every time it seemed like he was about to go off the deep end (I like to think of him as a lost puppy, just not nearly as cute or endearing).
This in and out of the house trend continued for a long while, and at this point he is supposedly gone for good (as in, not living with us). Instead, he has started up another business (begging for money from other family members just as he did when we kicked him out all the other times), and it has been going well the past year. He has been making improvements overall, but still drinks, smokes, is terrible with money, and has a terrible temper. Basically, I don't think it's enough to warrant me trying to make it work.
This has really affected my mom. She is now weak because of having to carry all that burden her whole life. Also, my brother and I were/are both little shits who are selfish. I'm starting to get better now, and my brother is getting worse (typical teen angst, he was a golden child though so he's helped a lot). Also, she is really depressed but doesn't really do anything to address it. Meaning, she often gets sad about being alone once she gets old since both my brother and I want to live independently. Another question - what do I do about this? I want to live alone but have really immense guilt since she's done so much.
Thing is, my mom now wants to invite him over for Christmas dinner and have me talk to him openly about all this, and what's been going on in my life (anxiety/depression led me to drop all my university courses the last 2.5 years, but I'm finally on track - check my post history if you'd like to know more). Honestly, I don't have any desire to rekindle this "relationship" if you can even call it that. I barely know the man, and all of my memories of him are horrid (think being slapped in the face with full force as a child and me berating him after he puked for the thousandth time after a crazy bender - that's pretty recent). What should I do? Do I explain everything and see where it goes, or just ignore him forever (I don't speak to him when he's around, and haven't called him dad for the last 4 years)? No way will I like him again, but I figure I might as well talk about everything since I'm pretty levelheaded (read: jaded) about all this now. Thoughts? Sorry for the rant and probably messed up timeline... feel free to ask anything you'd like, I'm an open book.
tl;dr: Mom wants me to talk to my dad about what I think about him, and what I've been dealing with the last few years. I hate him because of the fact he's been gone most of my life, is an alcoholic and chain smoker, physically and emotionally abusive, and hasn't had a stable job for about 14 years, meaning my mom has done everything. Myself, I've been struggling with anxiety and depression which resulted in me failing the last 2.5 years of university. Recently informed my mom who I've been lying to all this time, and she took it well, but now wants me to tell a man I have only hatred for, even though I've only just told her and my closest friends. I want to just lay it all out on the table and see what happens, but don't know if it's the right thing to do.
Submitted December 24, 2016 at 10:39AM by timetostartisnow http://ift.tt/2hiyrC3
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