JoJo said 10 years, 7 months ago:

…to me. I’m turning 22 years old today.

I have gotten 2 birthday cards, one from my grandparents and one from my State Farm agent, but that doesn’t bother me any actually. I don’t have a facebook or I’m sure my day would be full of insincere, oh-crap-it’s-Jojo’s-birthday-HAPPY BIRTHDAY posts. Nope, the people that matter to me at all have already wished me a happy birthday (mom, dad, grandparents and the like) and I’m fine with it not being a whole lot of people.

No, I think what bothers me the most about today is the fact that it has been six years since my biological father has been around. I had just turned 16 when he decided to stop being a father. Let me clarify that the “dad” I mentioned in the above paragraph is not my biological father, but he is now whom I call “dad”. He is a good man, his name is Roy. From this point forward, to avoid confusion, dad = sperm donor/biological father and Roy = dad now.

This is a long story, but I need to get this all out so you guys can understand the story a bit and maybe understand why I need to vent today…
_______________________________

I loved my daddy when I was growing up. I was very much a daddy’s little girl, always wanting to see him and be around him and do everything he did. And I thought he loved me back just as much if not more. I was his “whole world,” as he’d often tell me, and I believed him. Stupid, stupid girl.

Sure, I didn’t get to see dad a whole lot. He lived about half an hour away from my mom and worked a lot. About 60-80hrs a week most of the time. And when I was still little he ended up taking a job out of State, so what little I used to get to see him was reduced to a week or two in the summer and every other holiday. But I still loved to see him when I got the chance and loved him as much as a daughter could ever love her father. His wife, my step-mom, and my step-brother and sisters were all happy to have me and I loved them all like they were my real blood-siblings and mother. My mom didn’t mind; I was the kid that loved everyone I met and didn’t believe there was anything bad in the world. (Stupid, stupid girl…)

He moved back when I was about 9 or 10. Shortly after, about a year later, he divorced my step-mom of 11 years – she’d been married to him when I’d been an infant, about three months old, and now all of a sudden I wasn’t allowed to see her or my step-siblings anymore. That was a big blow, but daddy was right: Roxy (step-mom) was always mean to him and they fought a lot and he didn’t want me to see that anymore. But she wasn’t allowed to talk to me, nor I to her. He didn’t want Roxy to be mean to me like she’d been to him. And I believed him.

About two years later – I was about 12/13 – he married his girlfriend of a few months. They seemed like a match made in a Disney movie. Literally perfect. But then after they got married she changed and was mean to him like Roxy was. He didn’t want me to see the fighting anymore and he wasn’t going to wait as long as he did last time to remove that situation for me. They were only married about 3 months and had it annulled. But it was her fault for changing and being mean, not his. He did what was best for me by breaking up with her when he realized she wasn’t who he thought she was. And I believed him, like a good daughter.

Fast-forward a few more years. He’d married again, this time to his high school sweetheart when she’d moved back into town. It was like a Hallmark or Lifetime movie ending. They, once again, seemed like a match made in heaven. I was happy, they were happy, life was good at dad’s. I was 14 and butting heads with my mom constantly. I asked dad if I could move in with him. He eventually said yes, and I moved the summer between my last year of middle school and my freshman year of high school. I thrived that fall, getting straight A’s and enjoying my new-found freedom within my dad’s household.

Things were great until that winter. Dad and Michelle (his newest wife) went on their honeymoon when he had to go out of the country on business. He took her and took a week of vacation starting the day after his training seminars and they stayed in Germany to have some time to themselves.

They came home accusing one another of cheating on each other while on their honeymoon. The marriage lasted 5 months, during which Michelle tried desperately to save it. I would hear them fighting about the stupidest things and just tried to tune it out. Dad would have none of it. I came home from school one day to find him and her screaming over the dishwasher. He said she’d loaded it wrong, she was upset that he was cussing her out over something so small… and then he turned to me and asked me how I normally loaded it. I told him, adding at the end that it didn’t matter what way the bowls and plates faced because the pegs in the shelves were straight up and down and they’d all get cleaned the same by the jets on top and bottom. He called me a stupid b*tch, called me worthless, and told me to get out of his sight.

From then on, I was dragged into every fight and if I didn’t take his side immediately and totally, I was a stupid piece of dog sh*t on his shoe; I was fat and ugly and worthless, I couldn’t do anything right; no man would ever want me when I grew up so maybe I should think about trying to be a lesbian… that kind of thing. Anything and everything he could think of to insult me with, he did. And I didn’t know why.

There was another night she was home and it was pouring down rain outside. She’d left the back door open a crack so she could stand under the eaves of the house and smoke a cigarette. It was in the middle of the night; dad came back and woke me up, asking me if I wanted Michelle smoking in our house. Still 90% asleep, I muttered “No” without thinking. He stomped out of my bedroom screaming at her and I jumped out of bed, adrenaline flowing as I ran after him. I watched as he went across the room to the back door where she was standing, barely a crack open, and he body-slammed the door and sent her flying onto the wet brick patio.

I began to open up to my mom about what was happening only after I’d had a brief spell of anorexia – and when I say brief, I mean it only lasted a few months and I never needed therapy or counseling to begin eating again. It wasn’t truly anorexia, but being called fat every day by my father made me stop eating for a while. He’d even go so far as to make me get on the treadmill when he did his daily workout and make me jog/run for a mile or two. I think a gnat had a better sense of self-worth that I did at that point.

I came home from school on my last day to find that my key no longer worked in the front door’s lock. Dad had taken the day off work and had the locks changed so Michelle couldn’t get in when she got off work that night from the hospital. I was given a new key and told not to let her in what had been our home.

I went along with it meekly, knowing if I asked questions or said anything other than “Ok, I won’t. Thanks dad.” I’d get verbally assaulted.

[[Most of my time with him is a blur now when I think of it. These events stick out from an otherwise unclear year of my life.]]

I remember one night they were fighting again, and I was sick of it, so I took off up the road to my friend Zack’s house. It was about 10pm, he was in bed, but I was soaking wet and sobbing by the time I’d gotten there. His mom let me in, freaked out when she saw the state I was in, and got him up. He ended up getting permission to walk me home and stay the night if need be to make me safe. We left the house once and I saw flashing red and blue lights coming from my driveway and Zack just took me back inside and let me bawl for a few hours until the police left. He took me home and we met Michelle on the back patio, smoking and shaking. She told us that my dad had started shoving her around and had even spit in her face after I left, so she’d called the police. She told me that the only reason my dad wasn’t in jail that night was because she didn’t want to do that to me, so after he’d calmed down the cops left and she hadn’t pressed charges. Zack and I slept on the couches in the living room that night.

Finally, another incident that happened when I wasn’t at home occurred and dad spent the night in jail for domestic violence. I was taken to my ex-stepmom Roxy’s house to stay, which was just up the road from my mom’s house, after six years of not being able to speak to her. I was forbidden from going to see my mom while I was there. It was messed up but I was too emotionally fried to care at that point. I went with it to avoid the wrath of my father. I was terrified of him.

Things kept getting worse and finally my mom was able to get through to my dad through their lawyers that I needed to go home. Dad was beginning to tire of Michelle and had filed for divorce; he convinced everyone that Michelle had brainwashed me into hating him and now he was losing his daughter because of her. He made himself a martyr by letting me move back to where I was safe. I had never been more relieved to be home than I was the day my mom came to pack up my stuff.

I got home, got settled, and then got a phonecall: it was my dad. It was supposed to be his weekend for visitation (my mom was trying not to force me into not seeing my father – that had to be my choice) and he was talking to me as if the past year of bullying and torment hadn’t just happened. “Hey, kiddo! I was thinking you and I could head up to Cedar Point this weekend! Doesn’t that sound fun? I’m on call this weekend but we should be able to take a few hours and go ride our coaster! (So-and-so; new gf) and her kids want to come along and I think it’d be a great way for you to meet them. You’ll love them, they’re great people!” I sat there on the couch, my mouth hanging open. Who the hell was I on the phone with? Was Ashton Kutcher about to burst into my living room and yell at me that I’d been Punk’d? This was not the same man that had been treating me like dirt on his shoe for a year.

Finally feeling an emotion after almost a year of not feeling anything… I felt angry. I told him in so many words that I wasn’t going to go anywhere with him, he was nuts if he thought otherwise after everything he’d done to me. He then threatened to show up with the sheriff and force me to come with him. I laughed and said “I dare you. No law enforcement official in their right mind would make me go with you. Not after what you’ve said and done. Not if I tell them ‘no.’” He got pissed and hung up on me after cussing me out and making me bawl like an infant. Roy felt bad and took me out to eat and we ended up at the pet store at some point that day. I got a puppy, so that’s one good thing to come of the whole mess my dad had made.

Anyway…Two weeks went by and he called again. Again acting like nothing had happened. And again I told him to go to hell. This cycle continued for several more weeks… he even had Roxy, who hadn’t talked to me on my birthdays after they’d been divorced, call me on my 16th birthday. He called me right after, asking if I’d “heard from anyone special” that day other than him of course. I said “No.” to which he sounded surprised. I told him Roxy called, but she only called because you’d told her to – I’m not that stupid, dad. She hadn’t called me on the other five birthdays she’d missed between the divorce and today, so why else would she have called? He got upset, asking if I was ever going to come see him anymore. I told him maybe someday, but it wouldn’t be anytime soon. He asked if I wanted to meet his new/current gf and her kids. I said no. He asked why. I said “Because I don’t. It won’t matter a few weeks from now when you guys break up, so I don’t even want to waste my time pretending to like them. I don’t want to waste the brain space on memorizing their names because it won’t matter in the end – it never does.” — he began cussing me out and then hung up on me.

He began trying to prove my mother unfit and to take me back from her. He made great money and could afford amazing lawyers and I was terrified he would win and I’d have to go back there. Thankfully, my mom and her lawyer played it smart and tangled up the eventual “No” he got from the courts.

He called me again one day, asking me if I hated him. I told him no, I loved him more than he could ever comprehend, but that I couldn’t take the verbal assaults and threats of physical violence.

I had asked Roy earlier that day if he would adopt me so my father would have no legal rights to me anymore. My dad was the kind that he would have dragged everything out, saying no to anything I may have needed medically or otherwise just to spite my mother and I. So I told my dad as much, asked him to sign the papers that my mom was going to have drawn up by her lawyer and sent to him. He asked me if that’s what I really wanted and I said yes. I didn’t hear from him again except once after that conversation.

He signed off on me without a fight. As an adult, I found out the truth: after I had moved back, he refused to pay child support and had gotten to the point of facing jail time for missing payments. My mother and her lawyer said if he signed the papers they’d forgive the arrearages. He didn’t hesitate.

The very last conversation I had with him was on December 21st, 2007, about two months after he agreed to sign off on me. Mom and I had been on our way into Wal-Mart when she stopped cold and then yanked me down behind the security scanner panel things by the doors. Dad had just walked around the corner but was talking over his shoulder to his new gf and her kid. He hadn’t seen us so mom hid me and I stood there shaking for several minutes before I straightened up and decided I wasn’t going to cower in fear every time he walked by. I called him on his cellphone and wished him a merry Christmas. We chatted pleasantly enough, which surprised me… until he asked me who it was he was speaking to. He hadn’t recognized the voice or the phone number calling him. I told him, and it got real quiet (I could hear his woman and her kids in the background, but he was silent) I hurried up and got off the phone, telling him I loved him and maybe I’d see him around sometime. That was it. I was alienated from my father’s side of the family after that; people that had been my blood family and in my life for sixteen years were gone in an instant. I still can’t understand how you can stop loving someone just like that (insert finger snap here).

And now here I am, nearly six years after all of this… and I still find myself missing him. I wonder if he’s ever thought about me once since then. If he ever feels bad about what he did. If he’s ever done like I have, entered in the number on the phone ready to dial but choosing not to in the end. I wonder if he’s as hurt as I am, if he misses me or if he ever loved me at all. It’s hard to believe that he ever did when I look back at his words, actions… and the several times he’d told me my mother had tried to trap him in their marriage by stopping her birth control and getting pregnant on purpose when he’d never wanted kids of his own (I have an older brother that he was helping her raise a long, long time ago)… I just don’t think he ever really cared about me at all. And I think that is worse – thinking all the good times were a lie… that’s worse than having to relive all of that again and again.

I have nightmares about him. It’s not often anymore, but I still wake up out of a sound sleep screaming at the top of my lungs. He never laid a hand on me, not once, but my nightmares feature him killing me (or attempting to) in numerous ways. I will actually wake up in pain from where he’d hit me in my dreams.

So on a day that everyone expects me to be happy and want to celebrate… I feel slightly bummed to say the least. I have to force a smile on a day that is a reminder of all that I left behind – yes, for the better – but I still lost my father that day as well as my entire paternal family. Most of the time I can just shrug it off, but last year was the hardest for me other than that first year because it was five years… now it’s six and I’m more sad than anything else that it has been so long. And it will be longer. I know if I reach out to him it won’t end well; I know he’d die before admitting fault and seeking out my forgiveness.

To date – the last time I’d spoken to him – he’d been married and divorced a total of five times. My mother was #2 and I am his only biological child out of all the wives and girlfriends in between. He’s not a good man and I sometimes wonder if any of the new females in his life have even heard about me. If they know he had a daughter once. If maybe he tells them I died in an accident or just denies my existence outright. I wonder what pieces he had to pick up and put away, so to speak.

And it irritates me because I just want the thoughts out of my head entirely. But we all know how that goes; you can throw a sheet over the elephant in the middle of the room, but it’s still there. The harder you try to ignore it, the more you can’t. I’ve spent the past six years of my life healing, making peace with it, and yet I can’t seem to forget about all of it.

Anyhow… thanks for reading this if you made it through the whole thing. Thanks for letting me vent about it.