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Friday, June 26, 2009.
........Today, my dad picked me up to go to his house. He has visitation still, since I'm not eighteen.
........While we were waiting in the car for my friend's mother to come home, (So I could get my laptop charger cord... I left it in my friend's mother's car...) my dad and I weren't really talking... We never really talk about anything together... I remembered how it was father's day about a week ago, and I remembered how my brother went to go visit him; my brother, Matt, was the only one who went to visit dad for father's day out of me, My brother Josh, and Matt. Now, before I go on with my day, I have to say that my brother Matt has confided in me once that if he ever went to visit our dad alone, dad was going to "get what was coming to him". Now, since me and my father weren't talking about anything, and haven't been for the past hour or so, I asked him, "Dad, what did Matt say to you on Father's day?"
........My dad told me. "Well, your brother said he's afraid of me. He said he's afraid of me because he doesn't know who I am. Says he never has. He says since he was a teenager, he always looked at me and was bewildered because I was never open enough to him, never talked to him..." My father went on to say how he divorced my mom because we didn't have enough family dinners, how he didn't get to explain the things he needed to explain at the dinner table because again, we didn't have enough family dinners (now, let me tell you -- we either had a family dinner every night or we didn't get to because my dad was at work). He said he left because our family didn't like all the things he liked, like sailing in the boat he had -- which my family loved, by the way. He also said that when my brother talked to my father on father's day, my brother cried -- I knew my dad was lying; I knew my dad was the one crying, and not Matt, because the last time I saw Matt cry was never; not even when he shattered his arm playing basketball. My dad said everyone tries to pull a fast one on him, stealing his money, not paying him back. He says my mom had trouble spending money and didn't invest it right -- how can you invest right or wrong, and how can you judge a person on that; people aren't clairvoyant, they can't magically tell which investments will be good or not. You can't blame my mom for something she couldn't prevent. My dad then talked about his one memory he holds near and dear to him, apparently, because the last time I lashed out at my father, it was because of this memory: he said at our old house, a two-story house, my brother and him were fighting at the top of the stairs. (He didn't say what about, obviously, he was trying to waver my opinion of my brother Matt because whatever my father wasn't mentioning was an important variable in the story). My brother pushed my father and my father fell backwards, not completely down the stairs, but far enough. My father marched back up and back-handed my brother. As soon as that had happened, my mother came rushing over and "pushed me back", as my father said, and yelled, "Don't you dare touch my child!". My dad said to me, "Now, I don't know what she expected me to do to defend myself against Matt, what else could I do? I didn't understand why she was so mad at me." Hey, dad, let me tell you why. One: you didn't have to ******** smack my brother for "self-defense" as you called it. All you had to do was back away and finish walking down those stairs. Two: don't ever mess with a mother's child; not only, if you don't recall, did my mother's father beat my mother every night, Matt was already, if you will, a "fagile" human being, meaning, he already ******** hated you and you didn't make it any ******** better.
........The thing that got to me the most; forget my dad's assholery, forget him bringing up his "near-and-dear" memory of Matt "almost pushing him down the stairs and breaking his neck", forget his ignorance, forget it all. The thing that got to me the most was when he said, "I always thought about what it would be like if I stayed with your mom. Matt would have turned out different. Without me, you turned out all right, Josh turned out all right, but Matt... He would have been better." Let me get this straight. You can treat your family like a slightly burned loaf of bread; you can pick off the burned parts and share your award winning bread, without the burned pieces, with your friends and family whenever you chose to. And who was the burned parts thrown in the trash by Mr. Father Chef? My brother Matt.
........I didn't talk to him the whole hour-half ride home.
........When I got back to his house, my stepmom was already home. Whatever, I didn't care about that. I went in my room and set my stuff up. I had to say "hello" to my stepmom, because the last time I didn't say "hello" to her after she came right home from work and totally walked straight into her room, locking the door before I could even think of saying "hello", she sent my stepsister on me and my stepsister said what a horrible person I was to not say "hello" to my stepmom. So today I said hello and walked back into my room. Maybe an hour later, we needed to decide what we wanted for dinner. I went outside with my dad and stepmom because that's what I had to do. Somehow, we ended up talking about math, summerschool, all that jazz. I said how the math I was taking would send me into "business math", and not "geometry"; I didn't need to take geometry because it didn't pertain to my career choices. "And what exactly are your career choices?" My stepmom asked me. "Well," I said, "I really want to do something in the art department." She raised an eyebrow. "And what's your fall-back?" She asked. "You know art is really hard to get in to, you need talent for that." I thought, what? She is the first person in my life to have ever said that to me; even my art teacher who has seen great artists in his time told me that I was going to be famous, my art was beaufitul. I'm not trying to brag, I'm simply stating what other people have said about my art, in contrast to what my stepmother had said, who has never even seen one of my scrap drawings. I smiled, said "yeah", and left the room.
........Over dinner, my stepmom kept trying to push me for my career-fall back, kept implying how nice it would be if I worked in a factory like those nice people on the food network channel. I left the room after she said how bad smoothies are for you.
........And now I'm writing this. I have to tell you, I'm not an angry person at heart, I only get angry if I'm provoked. And oh man have I been provoked. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write a nice little tidy poem, leave it for my dad tomorrow and he'll see it after I leave. You know what it's going to say? It's going to say what a ******** loser my dad is.