skanthony

Is it normal to be jealous over your significant others ex's and the things they've shared before you? I mean it's stupid but I can't but feel that everything from pet names to group events, because they have been done before, are cheap and silly. Anyways....im in a weird mood tonight so im going to do something i never fucking do and let people read something i wrote...i havent even read this yet. i wrote it one night and saved it and walked away. the only person to read it is mercie.

I guess the title of it would be stepfather or What i do best or something or the easter i cried...i dunno...


I was in my junior or senior year of high school and my parents had just started to let me off the leash and allow me sleep at my girlfriends house whenever I wanted. And of course being a high schooler dating a college girl, I wanted to almost all the time. I noticed their marriage going south and subconsciously knew that was the reason for this new found freedom. So he night before easter I was at my girlfriends house and I called my parents to say I wouldn't be home that night. My stepfather said no. This struck me as weird. We are not a religious family so there was no church service in the morning. I had my mothers car but she did not need it between the hours of 9pm and 11am. So I do what I always did; I fought. I pleaded and I begged and eventually I wore my stepfather down. He said fine. So I happily smiled and put down the receiver. As I lay on the couch with my girlfriend I realized there was something I had missed. Something important was happening and I couldn't figure out what.

Now I recognize as the same feeling I get when I watch movies where a son is whisked away from his father due to a divorce, and the father is left alone in his house to watch tv and eat frozen dinners. The father is relegated to this life of despair due to the lack of the child. Their little boy is being kept from them and they have no power to stop it. I realized that I had helped to cause this same feeling to my biological father. The summers we spent together were so precious to him and me, until I hit a certain age when I wanted summers with my friends. The amusement parks and the beaches of southern california were of no interest to me. I went to these places because I knew my father liked to take me there. I no longer cared though, I was young and wanted time to have a best friend you spent an entire summer with, built forts with and later, got drunk and did drugs with.
The time the courts said I was supposed to get with him was 60 days in the summer and every other christmas break. I did that for about 9 years until the christmas breaks became every 3rd year and eventually stopped altogether. Then the 60 day summer visit became 50 and 40 until I was only coming out for a month or less. This all seemed completely normal to me at the time. I had a life to live and nothing else mattered. Looking back on it, I cannot fathom how I did not comprehend that I had forgotten something. Something very important.
I had forgotten that my father wanted me. He wanted to see me and to be a part of my life. He needed the amusement park more than I did. He needed some connection with me. Unfortunantly the age I was at and the time frame we were given was not conducive to that. It was conducive to him spending money to do things with me, to buy me things, do things my mother would never allow. He was my substitute dad.
He did the things that my mother and stepfather wouldn't allow. He'd take me to the mall and buy me shoes and clothes and video games. He even played the video games so we would have something to talk about and bond over. All the things a part time father is supposed to do. It was as if every summer I had a substitute parent just like in highschool, when you had a substitute teacher, it was common knowledge that you would do nothing school related. He was my summer dad.
But he did not want to be a 'summer' dad. He wanted to be MY dad. I remember one day I said to a friend, 'yeah but my real dad is more than my dad, he's like a friend. We go to six flags and he lets me stay up until whenever I want'. And later I remember saying Yeah he's like my best friend. He lets me drink and doesn't care that I smoke pot. And he bought me this new skateboard!.
I now know that these well meaning proclamations of friendship were shallow. He was not trying to be my friend. He was trying to make me happy. And all my life I had taken and taken the happiness he had to give.
So when one summer I told him I didn't want to come to California to visit I can only imagine the way he felt. The sorrow he had. The plans he had of taking me camping in Lompoc, where we walked miles down the beach, over rocks and through tidepools, were smashed. I wasn't thinking about the same things he was. I was thinking about the fun I could have in Connecticut with all my friends while he was thinking about the one thing he would die for, had just said they didn't want to see him.
I remember is looking back at that visit a few years down the road and realizing what I had done. My father had no wife, no other kids and no one else that he cared about as much as he cared for me. I had essentially slapped him in the face. He worked 10 months out of the year to afford to entertain me for our summer time together. In a few short sentences I had negated all the work he had done, all the hope he had had, and all the joy he would receive from our visit.
I can almost hear the disappointment in his voice as we talked on the phone. I can see the disappointment in his face; the way his eyes deaden and his voice would go flat. Whether they are real or imagined, I can see his eyes welling with tears and his chin rising to form the frown we share. And as we talked about the summer visit that I did not want, he did what I always did. He fought. He pleaded and made promises until he had talked me up to (or I talked him down to) a two week visit.
The moment, albeit too late a moment, where I realized what I had done to my father, is not unlike the moment on the couch when I realized what I had done to my stepfather. I will not forget when the eureka moment came; my eyes welled up with tears, my chin rose to make the frown me and my father share and I began to breath fast. My tongue ran over my lips and my top teeth, chipped from a trip to the amusement park, bit my bottom lip as saliva filled my mouth. Once the first tear had ran over the crest of my cheek and onto my shirt I knew there was no coming back. My girlfriend realized I was crying and asked what's wrong?. I was full on sobbing by then and all I could get out between gasping breaths and cries of remorse was, It's Easter! It's Easter!. Eventually, That's why Paul didn't want me to sleep out, was wrenched from my mouth. My girlfriend still had no idea what I was talking about but once I calmed down, I was able to explain what in the morning I found out to be true. The reason my stepfather didn't want me to sleep out was because he had put together an easter basket for me and by not coming home to accept it, on easter morning, I had deprived him of some deeply emotional, although seemingly trivial, parental moment.
I hate that I cannot remember whether or not I got in my car and drove home. But whether my mind has blocked it out because it doesn't want to hate itself or whether I was just too long ago, I don't know, but I really hope I did.

Side note:
i recently talked to the girl i was dating at the time and she says she cant remember what i did either. i find it funny that something i recognize as an important event, i cant even remember the details of...is that normal?