I'm not writing this for pity....I know there is those that had it worse than me.....but I've been asked several times this week about my father cause I never talk about him and ignore the very subject....well, here's why.
My childhood seemed pretty good till as I got a little older I realized my dad was a drunk and a woman beater. He gambled and or drank all the time. Don't get me wrong,we never went without for the essential things. I was forced to do things that I did not want to do ..not because I was a spoiled brat but rather he enjoyed making me and watching me do those things as he set back getting drunk and making rude hateful jokes about me. My mom was quite the church goer and faithful. But my dad was the total opposite. He would beat her simply for going to church just about every time she came home. I can remember several times he would be waiting in the driveway as we were pulling up. I finally had enough one night when I walked out onto my grandpas porch and saw him dragging her thru the gravel face first. I went out as a 12 year old kid and laid a 2x4 across the back of his neck. Well, from that point my mom finally left him for good and I was hated by him and dis-owned. I would later go back to visit with my grandfather and grandmother before they died.....my father would show up and he would immediately start something. Later in years I tried to reconcile with him after my daughter was born. I took her to see him and we wasn't there 5 minutes and he started again being argumentative and saying that my daughter was probably some other mans kid. I walked away that day for good, not just from his place but his life also. It was a couple years later he passed away due to pneumonia...but he went the way he said he wanted to go....beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. So you see I had no father to look up to or confide in.
Now I did choose to let his life influence me in many ways daily!! His influence was that I would never live my life or my fatherhood mistreating and hating people, especially children. Instead,today, I long to reach out to those and show them.......that just because you come from an abusive home you don't have to turn out that way......but you can choose to be a person that rises above and help hurting kids as I try to do.
My childhood seemed pretty good till as I got a little older I realized my dad was a drunk and a woman beater. He gambled and or drank all the time. Don't get me wrong,we never went without for the essential things. I was forced to do things that I did not want to do ..not because I was a spoiled brat but rather he enjoyed making me and watching me do those things as he set back getting drunk and making rude hateful jokes about me. My mom was quite the church goer and faithful. But my dad was the total opposite. He would beat her simply for going to church just about every time she came home. I can remember several times he would be waiting in the driveway as we were pulling up. I finally had enough one night when I walked out onto my grandpas porch and saw him dragging her thru the gravel face first. I went out as a 12 year old kid and laid a 2x4 across the back of his neck. Well, from that point my mom finally left him for good and I was hated by him and dis-owned. I would later go back to visit with my grandfather and grandmother before they died.....my father would show up and he would immediately start something. Later in years I tried to reconcile with him after my daughter was born. I took her to see him and we wasn't there 5 minutes and he started again being argumentative and saying that my daughter was probably some other mans kid. I walked away that day for good, not just from his place but his life also. It was a couple years later he passed away due to pneumonia...but he went the way he said he wanted to go....beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. So you see I had no father to look up to or confide in.
Now I did choose to let his life influence me in many ways daily!! His influence was that I would never live my life or my fatherhood mistreating and hating people, especially children. Instead,today, I long to reach out to those and show them.......that just because you come from an abusive home you don't have to turn out that way......but you can choose to be a person that rises above and help hurting kids as I try to do.
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