Story by k
How did I not see it
Posted on by K.
When I was a child, there was one person that I looked up to. He was strong and smart and was always there for me. Can you guess who it was? If you guessed my dad then you are correct. I was always hanging out with my dad. We worked on cars and went fishing and hunting. And anything else you could think of. I wasn’t into the girly girl stuff, I wanted to work on cars and get dirty. My mom was an alcoholic and a drug addict so she was usually just passed out somewhere. So I hung out with my dad. I had looked up to him my entire life, up until this past year. I could never believe what anyone had told me about my dad. Basically I thought he could do no wrong. My dad was the disabled, he had an accident many years ago. He could walk, which was miraculous cause he shattered both legs from the hip down. He had problems walking sometimes but more recently he had another accident and broke his hips again but still managed to walk again after that as well. To me, it was like he was Superman or something. Indestructible. But he had called me and told me he had cancer and was not going to fight it. I was mad. How could he just give up after everything he had been through? I convinced him to come live with me (we lived several states away) and I would help him get the treatment he needed and he would get better. So he came to live with me and my husband and our kids. About a month after he had moved in, he wasn’t trying to find any doctors or anything and didn’t seem as sick as he said said he was. But family members had told me some really awful things that he “supposedly” done. But like always, I just blew it off. He wouldn’t do any of that bs they said he did. So I started to ask him about some things and turned out they were true. But I heard it a little differently from him. So I believed him. Well, things started to get kinda bad. Some of my husbands stuff had gone missing and my dad was acting weird. Well he had started telling me stories from my childhood, and I remembered most of them, but some details that he threw in didn’t make any sense until I actually sat and thought about it. But one day he was drunk and decided was mad that I didn’t want to be “social” at 10 o’clock at night when I was trying to go to bed. He threw something and it almost hit me in the head. So I kicked him out. It was only gonna be for the night until what I had discovered the next day. He had been using drugs in my house. And had left some dangerous things in a place where my kids could have gotten to them. And not to mention many other things like being a slob. So I told him he wasn’t allowed there anymore. Then, turns out, he was telling my family that they were my drugs and he wouldn’t ever do anything like that. But I guess my whole point is, the person I thought my dad was is not even close to who he actually is. He is a narcissist and a pathological liar and a thief. But somehow I am the bad person because I kicked him out of my house. How can a parent do that to their child? Blame them for everything that was wrong in their life? He wants me to just forgive him and act like nothing happened. I’m sorry but I can’t do it. Maybe that does make me a bad person. I don’t know what to think anymore. The man I grew up idolizing is a completely different person. I don’t even know how to process that.