Alright, I'm gonna get a little personal on you all. Considering there are people reading this that know nothing about me or my past, I'm going to tell you all a little story.
I'll just start from the beginning. One of my first memories of being a child: I'm sitting at the dinner table in the kitchen with my mom and sister, I'm 4 years old, just had a birthday. I have my tiny legs squeezed through the bars in the chair, so I can sit in it backwards and watch what is happening behind me. What I see is my dad continuously bringing suitcases out of my parents room and putting them in his car. I'm confused. I ask my mom, "Where's daddy going?" and she responds, "He's just going on vacation, sweetie". Me being the observant child I was, notices how many things he's bringing with him, I ask, "For how long?" and mom says, "A while". That was all I was getting from her. I hugged my dad goodbye and watched him walk out of our kitchen for the last time. I didn't know it would be the last time he walked out that door, but I soon realized it was. About 2 weeks pass, my mom takes my sister and I out in the middle of nowhere to a trailer park where we visit our dad, living with a friend, in a dirty trailer. That's when we realized he wouldn't be coming back home. My mom took us to those stupid divorce counseling sessions where they try to help you understand what is happening, but those places are bullshit. Eventually, my dad moved to Lexington (a city 2 hours away from where we lived) because he couldn't bear being in the same city as my mom; he still loved her. That's how it all began, my mom would drive us half way to Lexington every other weekend and we'd meet my dad at this run down gas station in the middle of nowhere off the highway. He lived with his brother for the first 5 or so years after the divorce. Christmas changed; Santa came to my mom's house on Christmas Eve morning and my dad's house on Christmas Day morning. I thought we were special because Santa came a day early just for us. Apparently, my mom called him and told him the details. (I didn't find out Santa wasn't real until I was 10, actually on my 10th birthday while my mom was driving us to meet my dad). About a year after my parents divorced, my mom wanted to sell our house because it was too big for just the 3 of us. The guy who bought it ended up asking my mom on a date and they've been dating ever since (like 16 years or some shit). He still lives in that house and now my mom does, too. She didn't move until after I left for college, thank god because I protested that shit so much. I hated going there, it was so weird, being in the house where I once lived with my mom and dad. It made me feel uncomfortable. I'm kind of over it at this point, but it's still weird. My mom moved what was left of my stuff to my old room that I had when I was a kid. Luckily, I only have to stay there once or twice a year. Ok, so that's the back story; my parents are divorced, my dad lived 2 hours away, and my sister and I would visit him every other weekend. So, as you can imagine, this set up caused many problems once my sister and I became teenagers. All of a sudden, there were school dances, cheer-leading competitions (yes I was a cheerleader lol), parties, football games, etc. We were teenagers, we wanted to hang out with our friends on the weekend. It would have been a lot different if our dad didn't live two hours away where we had no friends, but he did and we tried to convince him to move back to Louisville, but he said he couldn't because "his family lived in Lexington". Like seriously, what kind of bullshit is that? I'm pretty sure your 2 daughters are more important than your brother and sister. Oh and he would always get so mad because we never asked him to help us with homework or sign our report cards or come to school shit. But like dude you chose to live 2 hours away from us because of your "family". We would invite him to school shit, but he would never show up because it was too far. When my sister started to drive, it got even worse because it was up to us on when we wanted to go see him. It sucked being in middle school or high school and saying you couldn't go to this epic party that everyone was going to because it was your "dad's weekend". Eventually, we barely went there because we were both in high school and we had social lives on the weekend. He told us to just call him whenever we wanted to come over, so we would about once a month, but he'd have something going on that weekend that we couldn't be there for. It got to the point where we stopped calling because he was always busy. We stopped talking for about 4 months, I was 15, a sophomore in high school, going through a real rough time. He never called because he wanted us to call him but like what teenager do you know actually sits down and goes oh yeah I'm gonna call my dad, like that's the parents responsibility. It was April, we hadn't seen or heard from him since Christmas. I started cutting myself and burning myself. One of my best friends noticed and told my mom. My mom freaked out, of course and tried to submit me to a mental hospital, but I was like ah hell nah, so she just got me a counselor (who was a fucking Christian counselor and always tried to end the meetings with a prayer no matter how many times I told him I wasn't religious!!). Like a good mother, she called my dad and told him what I was going through. Oh side note: my sister was a senior in high school, so she was about to go to college and my dad was furious with her because she wanted to go to school in Alabama instead of Kentucky. He had this theory that he would buy us a house by the campus in Lexington and we'd all live together while we were in college?? So, they weren't on speaking terms at the moment. After my mom called my dad, he called me (finally) and of course was like why didn't you call? Like oh maybe cause I'm a high schooler that barely even wants to talk to my mom, like I'm an angsty teenager dude. He wanted to see me, so I begged my sister to go with me and at the time, he was living with my uncle again. We drove up there on Friday after school. My sister wouldn't talk to him, but he kept trying. They ended up fighting on our way to dinner that night and I had to play the parent. He takes us to dinner and halfway through, he's like "oh you see that hotel over there? That's where you were conceived, Maddie". COOOOLLL DAD. Did not need to know that, why would you tell me that?? He's very inappropriate, he's always talking about how he still loves my mom so much and how he hooks up with all these girls and it's just weird. My sister and him barely spoke the whole weekend, she was just being a bitch to him because he had been an asshole to her about the whole college thing and he would still ask her are you sure you want to go to school in Alabama, not Kentucky and it would make her furious. On Sunday before we were about to go home, my dad sat me down and looked at the burns on my arm and asked why I did it and blah blah told me not to do it again. Then we left and the last thing my sister said to him was I hate you and the last thing I said to him was I love you. A few months later in July, my mom and sister both went out of town, so my mom sent me to my dads for the week. I have to mention that this was a week before the last Harry Potter movie came out in theaters and I had already bought a ticket for the midnight movie premiere with a bunch of my friends and I was also reading all the books. I told my dad this in the beginning, so he would know that I needed to leave a day or two early and he'd have to drive me all the way back to Louisville. Also, I need to mention that my dad is a construction worker and at this time, he lived in a really dirty, run down house in a bad neighborhood of Lexington. He never had internet at any of the places he lived and usually not cable either, just like the basic channels. So, he would go to work from 6 am to 6-7 pm and sometimes he'd come home for lunch to make sure I ate. Basically, I was alone all day and I couldn't go anywhere because the neighborhood was sketch and I was a 15 year old girl (actually I'd just turned 16 but couldn't drive by myself yet nor did I have a car). So, you can imagine how fucking bored I was. The night before I was leaving to go back home, I was up late reading Harry Potter because I needed to finish before the movie premiere the next day, and I heard my dogs (he bought us 2 yellow labs a few years back) open his door to go lay down in there. I guess they were being too loud for his liking, so he screamed at them and kicked them out of his room and slammed the door on them. They started to cry from this, so he got back up and yelled at them some more, let them outside, then weirdly started putting dishes away, but he was like slamming the dishes like angrily putting them away. I was scared, so I locked my door and turned out my light. He let the dogs back in, stopped being weird with the dishes, yelled at them some more, then went back to bed. Also, I must mention that when they were puppies, he threw them down a set of stairs because they drank from another dogs water bowl. I'm rereading this and I can't believe I forgot to mention this, my dad is an alcoholic, he drinks all the time. When I was little, he would drink and drive with me in the car like that is so beyond fucked up. Anyway, the next morning he's driving me home and he's like so I guess you heard me last night and I'm like yuuup. Then he starts going on about how much he still loves my mother, but he hates her at the same time and it just really upsets him. I'm like dude it's been like over 10 years and why the hell are you talking to your daughter about this?? (I didn't say that, but I was thinking it). What I actually said was, have you ever thought about talking to someone about this and getting professional help? HE GOT SO MAD. He didn't speak to me the rest of the way home. Then I told him the wrong exit to get off, so he got even more mad. When he finally dropped me off, I was like thanks Dad, love you. HE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, he just looked at me with a disappointing look and drove away. A month later, he pulls a muscle in his shoulder or something and guess who he fucking calls? MY SISTER. If you remember, the last words my sister said to him were I hate you. He called her and asked her if she could come over to his house and help take care of him. She was like a week away from moving to Alabama for school, also. So, she's like wtf no. And I'm sitting there like WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T HE CALL ME??? That was a low blow. He never called me. Christmas rolls around and my mom forces my sister and I to go to Lexington to see him even though we really didn't want to. I hadn't talked to him since July and my sister hadn't talked to him since August when he called her. So, you can imagine how awkward this shit was about to be. Also, I was a junior in high school, so I had been looking at schools and I knew ever since I was 11 years old that I wanted to go to school in California. I think this came up while we were eating dinner. That's when shit hit the fan. My sister and I wanted to leave because it was getting late and he was being mean. He walks us outside, we're standing in the driveway and he starts yelling at us, asking why we didn't call, why we never drove to Lexington to see him, why we won't go to school in Lexington. The next words that came out of his mouth will forever be burned into my mind. "You're not my daughters anymore". I will never forget that moment. He said it with such hatred and disgust. My sister and I got in the car both with tears running down our faces. We were so hurt, so heartbroken, so lost. The reason why I'm telling you this is because when I tell people why I don't speak to my dad, I usually say it's because he told me I wasn't his daughter anymore and the usual response I get from people is "why would he say that? What did you do??". So, this is why, I didn't do anything besides follow my dreams. He is a selfish, mean man. The last time I saw him after that was when he unexpectedly showed up to my high school graduation a year and a half later. I was walking down the aisle where all the parents stand to take pictures and I hear "Maddie Jo!", my stomach dropped because I immediately knew it was him, he's the only one that still called me Maddie Jo, no matter how many times I told him not to. He snapped a picture of me and I probably looked terrified. He found me afterwards and he had brought some random new "girlfriend" like why tf would you bring her to my graduation? Oh nice to meet your current fuck buddy, Dad. He acts like everything is completely normal like nothing ever happened and asks me if I want to take a cross country road trip with him so he can move me into my dorm..... I'm like oh sorry I already booked my plane ticket... like wtf there's no way in hell I'd want to do that even if we were on good terms. That's the last time I saw him. I see his brother every now and then and he says they no longer speak because he's mad at him for how he treated my sister and I. He says he's kind of become a loner, lives out on a farm, and never comes out. There's a lot more to the situation between my dad and I, like how I was always the least favorite, he emotionally abused me all the time. And how he drove all the way to Alabama to my sister's dorm to leave her a care package. And how my sister wrote him a letter to apologize and he was a complete asshole in the letter back. He's never tried to contact me. I changed my phone number, but he could get it from my mom. I hate Father's Day. I hate it so much. I always call my mom and thank her because she was more of a dad than my own. I also thank her fiancee because I'm lucky I had him. Also, this year my birthday was on Father's Day, so it really pissed me off because every email I got was about father's day, but it was my damn 21st birthday!!! It's so weird to think that my dad has no idea who I am anymore, he barely did before, but like now he knows nothing, he doesn't know what I've accomplished or that I'm studying abroad right now and living in Europe for the next 7 months. He stole $10,000 from me. It was my college account he set up for me when I was a baby and I would put money in it once a year. I had about $10,000. He fucking stole it. He doesn't pay for any of my school. He has never supported me. He has never been there for me. Sometimes, I think I might regret not picking up the phone and calling him because he's going to die someday and I might feel guilty leaving things on such a bad note, but I know if I picked up the phone and called him right now, he would blame me for everything. I would end up apologizing to him. I know this because it's happened once before. I don't really know why I just shared this with you all, but I think it gives you a good look into the relationship I've had with my dad and a lot of people know it's shitty, but they don't know why. So that's it. I've been through a lot of bad shit in my life, but I look past it and live in the moment. I'm a really positive person. I barely ever complain, I always try to look at the positive in a bad situation. I think everyone should live life the way I do. So many people are so caught up on the negativity now a days. They complain about the stupidest shit all the time, but then they never do anything to fix it. If something is bothering you, fucking change it. If you don't like where you are in life right now, change! A positive mindset will give you a positive life. A negative mindset will give you a negative life. That's just the way it works. If you believe everything is shit and it all sucks and you want to die, then yeah shit's gonna suck. But if you tell yourself that things will get better, they will. It's not going to happen over night, but it will, it just takes time. Patience is key. Everyone is so caught up with what others think about them, too. WHO CARES?? People will judge you no matter what the fuck you are doing, so you might as well just do what you want!! If you do everything with confidence, no one will question you. Live your life to the fullest. Don't let anyone make you feel less than you are. You're worth so much more than what these people make you out to be. I've been treated like absolute shit by multiple people, but I know I'm better than that, so I let it go. The past is the past, so why let it haunt you? This world is so god damn beautiful. There is so much more out there than these shitty people that make you feel bad. You are beautiful. You are loved. You are going to show all these people that doubted you how wrong they were. You just gotta be patient and you have to view your life with kind sight. Stop beating yourself up about things from your past. Your past mistakes are meant to guide you, not define you. I wanted to kill myself once upon a time, but you know what saved my life? NATURE. Look around you, look at how the trees sway in the wind, look at the beautiful flowers that come out of the ground, look at the all the beauty this world has created for us to enjoy. Why would you ever want to leave it? Yes, there is a lot of pain, but there is also so much beauty. Whenever I feel sad, I step outside, breathe in the fresh air and look around at the beautiful nature surrounding me and I feel better. I could never leave this. I have so much more to see, too. Please, please if any of you are ever feeling down and want to hurt yourself, please reach out to me. I will always be here for you. Even if you don't know me, I will help you. I have most likely felt exactly how you are feeling and I can help you, if you want. I love to listen and I love hearing people's stories and I love it when people come to me in their time of need. I will try my best to help you. This world is an ugly place, but you are all so beautiful to me. You are strong, you can get through whatever is bringing you down. It just takes time, loves. If you've managed to continue reading this far, I appreciate you and I thank you for reading my nonsense blabber.
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Maddie Lang
Dreamer. Adventurer. Wallflower. Lover. Fighter. Kentuckian / Californian. Finding my purpose in the world. Archives
February 2020
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