letter to dad thread (now defunct)

edit 10/2/17
MISSION COMPLETE I AM PEACEFULLY MOVED AWAY FROM DAD AS OF TWO NIGHTS AGO

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Spoilerdisclaimer: i probably won't actually write a letter to my dad, so have fun.

i hate living with him, i hate talking to him, i want to get out of this house and possibly move to another state, and once i'm not tied to him any more, i want him to know exactly why.

suggested talking points:

regarding relatives

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• talks about my fat cousin behind her back, shaming her for being poor and fat
  
• also shames my aunt behind her back for being poor because she tries to make money with at-home hobbies
  
• instead of getting a college education and working some REAL JOBS, like he did
  
• also complains about her when she posts on facebook about how bad she feels because of her chronic illnesses
  
• literally, when her daughter fundraised some money to get her some plane tickets to visit her other child across the country, dad mocked this by saying "i miss hawaii, i've never been there! maybe i should fundraise for some tickets to hawaii."
  

regarding vaccination

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• says he's not an anti-vaxxer
  
• he is though
  
• he absolutely believes there's a link between vaccines and autism
  
• "dad why do you seem to think that... autism, is worse, than dying of measels?" "......because it is."
  
• he has pretended, and continues to pretend, that I am neurotypical
  
• I'm pretty sure I'm not, but I probably won't get an official diagnosis while I live with him
  
• he'd shame me for seeing a psychiatrist or getting medication for adhd or depression, even if i did get diagnosed
  
• wait i'm not done with the vaccine part yet
  
• he's an anti-vaxxer because he thinks pharm companies are making vaccines mandatory for Profit, Not Because They Care About The People
  
• i brought up the herd immunity thing and he basically said that it doesn't matter, people should still have a choice to get vaccinated or not
  
• i got him to literally say "you should still have a CHOICE, it should be your CHOICE, and if someone else gets sick, oh well"
  

regarding the time he tried to hurt someone else's pet

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• he found out a neighborhood cat has been pooping in the wine barrel we have a small tree planted in, so his obvious course of action was to put a mousetrap in the barrel
  
• the only reason he reconsidered this plan is because it hurt a wild bird instead
  
• i brought up that, even if his plan worked the way he wanted it to, the neighbors might find out it was him and could take him to court
  
• his response was that he didn't care if he hurt someone else's pet, it shouldn't have been on his property
  

regarding emotional abuse

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• also a believer in the "hit your kids to make them respect you" method of parenting
  
• almost all of my nightmares just end with him screaming at me
  
• i wonder if those last two points have any correlation at all
  
• he also demands that i never lock my bedroom doors, i can't explain why
  
• screamed at me while i was having a shutdown (because he was getting angry) while practicing driving, because i wasn't Making Decisions Fast Enough. then screamed some more when i eventually lightly hit a curb because i couldn't process what was happening, and then accused me of doing it on purpose
  
• directly afterwards, asked why i was still so upset. i asked him if he thought i looked like i was in a state of mind to be driving. he said "yes, that's normal"
  

regarding anti-semitism

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• i told him about how ghandi was actually a huge racist towards jews and dad literally said "maybe he's onto something. all jews are criminals!"
  
• the ghandi thing had context tied to the holocaust and dad willfully ignored that to say that he thought ghandi was talking about the israeli jews of today
  
• he's one of those people who think jews run the government, too, by the way
  
• he tried to tell me conspiracy theory was based on true events and is proof that jews run the government???
  
• 
  
• he kind of only hides his anti-semitism when we're around other family members, but otherwise, he's very open about it to me. it's disgusting.
  
• as an extra note, a large part of his beliefs on jewish people is probably formed by the fact that he absolutely refuses to believe that israeli people are not the same as all the other kinds of jewish people. he keeps saying "(the israelis) should know better, they've been through a genocide before! why are they enacting it on other people?!" as if that's not completely tone-deaf. i don't really understand politics at all and even i get that.
  

regarding ableism and distrust of doctors

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• i mean this plays into the anti-vaxxer stuff i mentioned before, but his distrust of Big Pharma also extends to just, a distrust of EVERY DOCTOR EVER
  
• he had a couple bad experiences with some therapists/psychiatrists who seemed to just want to get his money asap, so he's convinced all mental health specialists are con artists.
  
• which leads to a fun story i have, about how this affected me! I'm going to tell this in chronological order of how i realized it.
  
• when I was around 9 years old, my mom took me to a psychiatrist because i had really really bad social behaviors in school- actually, I ALWAYS did, up until 11th grade- so mom tried to do something about it. However, for some reason, we only went to this psychiatrist 2 or 3 times. This is all I remember about the experience.
  
• At some point in the middle of 2015, I was having lunch with dad, and I was wondering about that old psychiatrist visit. I asked him if he remembered anything about it, and if there was any diagnosis. He said he didn't know anything about it, but, if they didn't medicate me (which they didn't), then there must be nothing wrong with me- and even if there was, ~medication would just be taking away what makes me unique~
  
• later, i realized mom would know more than dad, since she was the one who took me to the psych in the first place- so I called her and asked her about it... and she had a different story to tell. She told me that the reason we stopped going to that psych was because they said they needed to run me through some IQ tests, and those tests cost more money than my mom could afford. She tried asking my dad for help, since he always had a lot more money than mom- and he refused, saying that it was a scam and a waste of time and money. He outright prevented me and mom from figuring out what my problem was.
  
• so, he either forgot entirely about it, or he lied because he's in denial about me being neurodivergent.
  
• mom always knew i was neurodivergent since i was a toddler, and dad knows she's tried other things to help me out- but the way he phrases it is "your mom tried to put you in a special ed school, but the teachers there realized you were smart and didn't belong there :)"
  

regarding what i will refer to as a "lack of parental responsibility"

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• I never really talk about this in public chats, mostly just private chats with closer friends, but, uh... did you guys know my dad has been building homemade fireworks since like, 2010?
  
• I was around 16 at the time and I tried very hard to dissuade him from starting this new hobby (after all, if he got in trouble, what would happen to me?) but he didn't really care.
  
• somehow he hasn't had any major accidents yet, which is probably a major factor in why he's still doing it
  
• sometime in 2016, i was panicking because dad was looking up resources on how to grow weed in the master bedroom shower he doesn't use. I expressed that I was worried that the weed would be really easy to detect, and since I'm technically an adult, we'd probably both get in trouble (not to mention, a short inspection of our garage would reveal a much more dangerous hobby) but he dismissed me as worrying too much, because he'd take precautions to make sure he wouldn't get caught. okay.
  
• the reason he wants to grow weed is to sell it on "the grey market", by the way.
  
• thankfully, he eventually realized this wasn't a great idea, since the peripherals he'd need to buy would cost a lot, and he doesn't really know anything about the "grey market".
  
• he's still going strong on that pyrotechnics hobby though.
  
• we live across the street from a fire department
  
• and because we're so close to it, we get charged an extra fee for being in a convenient zone in case our house ever catches fire
  
• dad HATES this. i think he chewed out the fire department and successfully didn't pay the fee last time.
  

other ridiculous things

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• he cannot pick a good time or place to tell someone else that 9/11 was an inside job
  
• prides himself on being a "rebel" in the most useless white-guy sense of the term
  
• he thinks that drunk driving isn't a problem, hasn't hurt anyone, and shouldn't be punished
  
• this is despite having gotten in a drunk driving accident once years ago when he wrapped his car around a pole, but he swears it wasn't because he'd been drinking and he wouldn't have crashed if the pole wasn't there (??????)
  
• he's also very strongly against gun control
  
• "we don't need to punish EVERYONE for what a few crazy people do with their guns, we just need to get better control of the crazies"
  
• there's more but this is wildly out-of-order as it is, and i can't remember what else.
  

other family members

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• gonna keep this short: all of my siblings, on both sides of my family, are various degrees of grossly transphobic + racist + homophobic. I don't feel comfortable talking to any of them about my plans or my relationship.
  

edit 1-31-17: The "getting out of here" checklist, revised

• for reference, i'm absolutely trying to move in with gen.
  
• One or two new luggages. (I have some at this house already but for reasons, I can't really use them)
  
• I've packed up stuff I don't want to take with me, separating it into "just leave it at home" and "try to sell this during the next neighborhood yard sale, if possible"
  
• I've already started shipping some stuff to gen ahead of time, trying to keep it subtle (using small boxes i can sneak out in a backpack, shipping things my dad wont immediately notice are gone)
  
• eventually, i need to tell dad that i want to move out. this is going to 100% be the hardest part of this entire ordeal. I'm currently waiting until after I've had more job experience (1.5 months is absolutely not enough) before I tell him I want to leave, and if possible, I may have to try to convince him that it will be a temporary leave.
  
• I'm trying to keep my relationship with my dad intact JUST in case things don't work out after I've moved and I need to go back. I'll hate it, it'll be painful, but I need to have that option.
  
• If I absolutely need it, my neighbor agreed to help me. I also have some friends in socal who offered their help, though, they're not in a position where they CAN help, right now.
  

i probably should have made the list of talking points more concise, but, there's a lot.............. just, a lot.....................................

"the"

Hey,

fuck you!

No love, KittenEater.

i should write a really fancy "the" on a post-it note and just leave it on his desk

i wonder how he'd feel about that

Hey,

fuck you!

No love, KittenEater.

this is perfect*, keep 'em coming

*perfect except i don't swear, for some reason? whatever

Hey,

you are bad!

No love, KittenEater.

To Dad,

If you are reading this letter, it means I have at long last fled to a place where you will no longer cast your shitty awful shit trash terrible shadow fuck you over me.

This is the part where the fatherly figure of the soon-to-be physically-divorced relationship is supposed to exclaim how proud they are of my accomplishment, but you are far too wrapped up in your own shit so I'll do it myself.

I am so very proud of myself.

I dunno I feel like this could be shored up with some of the examples you listed but this is a start?

here you sit
so broken hearted
tried to dad
but only farted

make sure to rev up a motorcycle and go flying down the road right after he finishes the last line

Dad,

You aren't that good.

I am so, so disappointed in you.

thank you schaz, that's a good start definitely! there certainly are some ways to add to it with examples i've provided but i can't think of any right now actually

thank you ashley loather

wheat, the edited point is a good point. I don't totally know if leaving a letter behind when I eventually leave is a good idea; what I do know is that I definitely won't want to say ANYTHING out loud to him, I'm incredibly bad at forming my thoughts and remembering important points when I'm talking, especially to him.
Also, to be honest, I'm not sure how I'd move out without his help. The best idea I've got is that I'd leave to a different state after I've already moved into a small apartment or trailer in the same town, so, he'd have helped me move away from him and then I can get other people to help me leave THAT house, without him knowing. Which is kind of complex and over-wrought.

anyway, um, yeah those are all good points in the spoiler. i can't name any specific points when he got worse, because as far as I can remember, he's always been like this. If anything, he's just gotten more aggressive after I graduated high school, since I wasn't enthusiastic about going into college even after he pressured me into doing it anyway

idk I think college is probably a pretty good thing anyway, but he does sound pretty awful.

college is good for some people, i am not one of those people. i was only ever a good student when my dad was actively pressuring me to be.

i'm not exaggerating when i say that there was a point, in 5th grade, where my report card was straight F's.

(but then halfway through that year is when i moved in with dad, and the change from private school to public school + my dads pressuring made me change that to a report card of straight A's, which is the only time I ever had that.)

(additionally, to above parentheses: the change to a new school also meant i was getting bullied really hard (because i was obviously neurodivergent, in retrospect) and when i asked dad for help about it, his advice was basically "stop making yourself a target". i think he had a parent-teacher conference about it and the teacher basically said "yeah but she's really smart so she'll be fine" and dad has clung to that desperately for years)

tbh maybe you should just stick a mousetrap into an envelope and mail it to him :Y

ᵒᵏᵃʸ ᵈᵒᶰ'ᵗ ʳᵉᵃᶫᶫʸ ᵈᵒ ᵗʰᵃᵗ

*bad stuff*

shit.

fuck school imo??

like yeah there's bullying and on top of that it feels like it's just, set up to crush anyone who's the slightest bit not-neurotypical?

like even the basics of school stuff. homework with expecting kids to work on their own time (and punishing them for not doing it in time), time limits on tests (I DO WORSE WITH A TIME LIMIT EVEN THOUGH I GENERALLY DON'T TAKE THAT LONG?? i, kind of panic), the way there's really only.. One Way you're expected to learn things and if that doesn't work for you you just get left behind to fail

I fucking hate school. I just have such an pathological obsession with learning that I've somehow managed to work through it, and I would have definitely dropped out by now otherwise.

also like

i'm a hands-on learner

but everything is memorizing junk from textbooks? like i have a visual processing disorder that makes deciphering dense blocks of text difficult and ittttt isn't great

and things constantly slip my mind

plus in the ~real world~ i can.. actually just look shit up when i need to, memorization of every little detail isn't as needed as people expect it to be

besides it's a lot easier to pick stuff up when i'm casually looking it up and using it for things instead of, memorizing For a Test.

and tbh i think if you gave anyone a test they passed from Years Ago they would probably fail it today, unless it's either something they're passionate about or elementary grade stuff

can i also say Fuck to the whole "FOR EVERY HOUR OF CLASS YOU NEED TO SPEND 3 HOURS OUTSIDE OF CLASS STUDYING" thing some college professors do because

i'm not a fucking machine that can cram textbook passages into my eyes 24/7

now that i think about it i could probably make a whole nother chunk of the list in the first post for school-related stuff

like how, when i started trying to tell him i wanted to quit college and start looking into jobs instead, his response was "you can take courses and do a part-time job at the same time, just make the job work around your school schedule"
no, dad, i took two courses at once last term and it was really stressful, i couldn't do work and school at the same time
"well, life is stressful and you just need to get used to it. i did school and work when i went through college. i took 5 courses in one term once, and made it work! so there's no reason you can't do it too"
no, listen, two courses at the same time was almost too much for me, any more would be over my limit
"have you done more than two courses at once before? no, you haven't, so you don't know that it would be too much for you."

please reread the last two sentences, multiple times, so you understand what having conversations with him opposing is like

kitet I honestly don't know what the best solution to this situation is. I want to let you know that I think you're totally justified in wanting to leave and I think I speak for everyone when I say we'll all do the best we can to support you.

also I just reread the first post and what the absolute fuck. I support you even more now. get the fuck away, as far as you fucking can.

Thank you.

I don't know what the solution is, either, but I guess I have a couple places I could go if things go sour. One place is with my sisters, about an hour's drive away. The other place, more preferable, is with Gen, in New Mexico... I don't know what the process for moving a couple states over is, though.

That being said, I don't think I'll ever get kicked out... not unless I go out of my way to spew hateful things at dad for a long enough time that he reconsiders his stance on letting me live with him. For all his faults, he also doesn't understand why other people have that "kick the kid out when they turn 18 so they are forced to get a house and job, like the adult they now are" thing.