Let's go back to when I was younger. My parents split when I was very young. My mom's two sons moved away to another town with her, and somehow I ended up with my dad. Rumor goes he blackmailed my mom for majority custody of me. I don't know. All I know is that my dad and I ended up moving up in the foothills of Colorado. So my part 3 of my series of letting go has to do with my dad.
This is the man that I grew up with. I went with my mom every other weekend, but my dad raised me. Growing up, he wasn't around a lot. He would leave for work after I went to school, and would stay gone most of the day/night. I found out when I got older that he would go to work and then go to the bar, then drive all the way home. I had too many babysitters to count. I spent a lot of time alone because my babysitters would bail on me a good part of the time. But I wasn't aloud to tell my dad that or else they wouldn't get paid. Most of my childhood before I was 10 with him is kind of a blur. I remember going to the bars with him and sitting by the pool tables watching people drink and have a good time. I remember going to my grandma's a whole lot during the summer. She was sweet but very vindictive. She would always tell me how my mom didn't want me and that's why I ended up with my dad. I knew this wasn't true. I looked forward to the weekends when I went with my mom. My dad was/still is and alcoholic. I remember lots of empty bottles of rum in the cabinets. When I was 10 and we moved to the town I live in now, this is where things got worse. My dad promised me one Christmas that he would quit drinking. And I believed him. At least once a week I would ask him how many days it's been since he's had a drink, and he would tell me some number, and I actually thought he was telling me the truth. Until one night I walked into his room and saw him secretly making a drink with rum and coke he had hidden behind his dresser. I was so let down. And then he told me that he never did quit drinking. When I started puberty, I got fat. Fat in the eyes of him, me, and all the kids at school. My dad would always poke fun at me. I would go to eat something and he told me that I might as well duct tape it to my ass cuz that's where it's going to go anyway. He would say that the furniture was sinking to the ground because I was so big. Logically, there is no way this was true. But that's when it all kind of started. I was being picked on constantly at home, and then at school. I wasn't really that big now that I look back on it. Bigger than some girls, but not the biggest. When I was 11 and he was gone one night, I was watching TV and a documentary came on about eating disorders. That's when it kind of hit me. My dad, kids at school and everyone one else would stop making fun of me if I lost some weight. It started out with Bulimia. I loved food too much to give it up, so instead I would purge it. It was weird being in 6th grade and having an eating disorder. My friends started noticing me losing weight. It was amazing.
Fast forward to when I was 15, after RJ and all the shit he put me through. I was back living at home with my dad and his girlfriend. We didn't get along at all. The summer after I broke up with RJ, I got pregnant, on purpose. I was stupid, I had this guy telling me he loved me and he needed this in his life, blah blah blah. Shortly after I found out I was pregnant, my dad and I got in a huge fight and he kicked me out. I went and stayed with my current boyfriend. Until his parents kicked us out for calling the cops on them fighting. So then it was back to my dad's house for about a month, and then back to my boyfriends. I didn't have a stable enough life for this child that I was carrying. In my eighth month of my pregnancy, I decided to place him up for adoption. Then all of a sudden my dad wanted to be involved with my life. Let me come back home. I stayed there for about a month after my son was born and then in a fight between me and him and eventually his girlfriend, I got kicked out once again. I had just gotten out of the hospital that day for blood clots, and I packed my bags and walked about a mile down to a friends house to use her phone and call my boyfriend. I ended up in the hospital again the next day because my bleeding had gotten worse. This is how my teenage years ended up. Back and forth. I hate you. I love you. I'm proud of you. You disappoint me. Nine months after placing my son up for adoption, I got pregnant with my oldest son. New boyfriend, new life, and I was living with my boyfriend and his family. Haven't talked to my dad much for those 8 months or so. When my oldest was a year and and a half, I finally graduated high school. Something that everyone thought I couldn't do. My dad didn't even show up for my graduation. It broke my heart. Especially because he only lived like 10 minutes away from the church that I was graduating at.
At the end of 2009 after getting arrested for 3rd degree assault and domestic violence (because in the wonderful state of CO, they don't consider it self defense anymore. Both parties get arrested.) my dad's and my relationship changed. We started talking a couple times a week. To visiting each other once a week. When I finally thought I had my life settled down, I even asked him to walk me down the isle at my wedding in August of 2010.
With my dad currently, it's like walking on egg shells with him. I never know if I'm going to say the right or wrong thing. I don't know if I upset him or let him down by something that I couldn't do. Lately, I can't tell him no. If he asks something of me, I will drop what I am doing and take care of it for him. Unfortunately it's not the same with him. He still is an alcoholic, but I'm living my own life and his drinking doesn't affect me or my kids in anyway, so more power to him. We do talk everyday and I must admit that I love him a lot more now than I ever did in the past. But I do believe that is where my eating disorder started was with his absence of being a dad, being an alcoholic, and making fat jokes about me all the time. This is me letting go of that. Because he might have triggered this, but I created Ana. And it's up to me to let go of her as well.
Sorry for such a long post. Hope everyone is doing well. Much love.
XOXO Katie
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