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Please Allow Me to Ramble


StormSurge

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My apologies in advance for this post. You may think this is a strange place for this but I can't think of another outlet for it and I can make an Atari connection. ;)

 

My stepfather is dying. Quickly. I'm not even sure if he's technically my stepfather, but he might as well be.

 

Growing up, I hated him. I realize hate is a strong word but I HATED him.

 

Now, I'm pretty devastated by this.

 

My parents divorced in 1979, when I was six. My mother remarried a true a-hole a year or two later. I'm not certain of the exact date but it was in my 2600 heyday. Those were not good times for me but that's not even worth sharing. They would be divorced by 1983. That's when she met the subject of this post.

 

She was working for the local newspaper in the classified department and he was the local dog warden. He would place ads for dogs they rounded up and they hit it off.

 

The summer before I started sixth grade (1984), they moved in together. (This would be my fifth different elementary school since kindergarten.) My disdain for him was immediate.

 

He had a son and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter lived with her mom & would visit every other weekend. The son was a year older than me but we didn't get along that great.

 

He was ridiculously strict. It honestly felt like I was in prison. No candy, no soda, being sent to bed super-early, etc. There was one TV in the house & we had to watch whatever he wanted. (A vivid memory is me coming home from school, finding a cartoon to watch or even an afternoon playoff baseball game (Cubs/Padres), him driving in the driveway, eventually sitting down in his chair in front of the TV & snapping his fingers, demanding the cable box. He would promptly change the channel & eventually settle on some horrible kung fu movie.) My Atari, which I used to shuttle back & forth between my father's house & my mother's was no longer to be connected to the TV.

 

I remember him arguing with my Mom about my father. Things like the child support check, or him calling to talk to me, etc. Stuff that made me super uncomfortable.

 

The best times would come from when he would go play cards with his friends. I'd have a few hours with him not in the house but he would come home drunk. If everything would work out, I would be asleep before he came home.

 

My mom never married him but I'm not sure how the common-law marriage thing works in my state. Regardless, they never split up. He was present in my life until I graduated high school.

 

I learned quickly to keep my mouth shut & do whatever he ordered me to do. Chores, eating every last bite of foods I despised (I haven't eaten a pea in 25 years and I never will again.) He never hit me, although there were times I wish he did so I could find a way to leave. I used to fantasize about walking the 85 miles to my father's house, while not being exactly sure how to get there.

 

I do remember blowing up during my senior year of high school. I had a girlfriend (SHOCKING!) and he would limit my time on the phone with her. I don't remember exactly what happened but I remember being in my bedroom with the door shut and hearing him outside complaining about something. I threw a Trapper Keeper (or something similar, it was a notebook/folder) at my dresser, which left a mark. The details are hazy now, but I remember just finally yelling back at him. I knew my days of being under his thumb were almost over.

 

My escape from him was visiting my Dad every other weekend, vacations & summer. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it felt to be picked up on a Friday after school or Saturday morning. And the feeling of dread I had when I had to return...

 

Once I graduated high school, I went to a college close to where my Dad lived and I never looked back. To this day, I hate visiting the town where my Mom lives and I'm pretty certain it all stems from these experiences.

 

Since I left, I would visit my Mom & him on holidays, etc. He would always give me $100 for Christmas and our relationship became amicable. He seemed to love my daughter and she had no problems with him. Things were fine.

 

This past February, my Mom called me during the middle of the day, which was bizarre. I assumed it was bad news about her Mom, my amazing grandmother, who has Alzheimers and isn't in good shape. It wasn't that. Howard has cancer, it's aggressive and the doctors give him six months to live.

 

I was shocked & saddened but I wasn't sure how to respond to that news. As much as I hated him, I certainly didn't want this to happen. And I was heartbroken for my poor Mom, as now she has to deal with this.

 

Since the diagnosis, I've only seen them one time, around my birthday in May. I kept saying that we'd do some things during the summer but it never worked out. :(

 

Just this past weekend, the pain of chemotherapy and everything else became too much for him. He decided to stop fighting and is now in hospice care.
I'm going to visit him tomorrow. I'm not sure if my daughter or wife (not my daughter's mom, that will be a WHOLE other series of blogs :info: ) will join me but I'm going.

 

Again, the feelings I have are so conflicted. How can I be so upset about someone who caused me so much pain? Yet, here I am, extremely upset. Part of it is pain for my Mom, imagining how she must be feeling. When the calendar turned to 2016, everything was fine in her world. Now, before Thanksgiving, completely turned upside down.
As I spend time thinking and reflecting, I'm continuing to remember things that weren't so bad. How he attended my Student of the Month ceremony in seventh grade when no one else could. How he coached my Babe Ruth teams. How he took me fishing & camping.

 

It's so strange, so bizarre and so painful. I apologize if this isn't the proper use of the blog but I consider myself amongst friends here and I don't feel like going back to a therapist. I have no interest sharing something like this on Facebook, so here I am.

 

Thanks for listening to me ramble. :atari_2600_joystick:

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After my dad passed my mother tried to find another father-figure so to speak.  The first guy wasn't too bad.  He was always helping and the main reason I got into Atari and computers in the first place.  The guy she found after that, however, was a complete opposite.  He almost acted like he wanted nothing to do with me and rarely said anything to me or did anything with me.  If he did it was mostly to "correct" me.  He never laid a hand on me but he distanced himself from me and, at times, I felt like he was trying to separate Mom and me.  The only relief I got was the weekends I would visit either of my grandparents.  

 

I ran into him once at a firework stand not long before Mom passed away in '98.  It was strange when I ran into him because I didn't know how to react.  All the fears I had of him simply because he never gave me the time of day started to creep back.  He acted like I was his best friend in the world and we visited for a almost an hour.  It was strange and I still have never figured it out.  So I can somewhat relate to how you are feeling.

 

I would honestly take the time to visit the guy while you can.  Even if you say you hated him in your early years he was there so that might account to why you feel how you feel now.  There is nothing to be sorry for...allow your family the time to get the closure you are going miss if you don't visit him.  Give him a chance, as well, to go in peace if that is his wish.

 

Sharing something like this on Facebook can generate a lot of mixed feelings and responses.  At least here you know you have friends who will be there as much as they can for you.  You have my sympathy and prayers are being sent to your family in your time of need. 

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I can't believe I didn't respond to you both.

Thank you @RickR & @kamakazi20012 for your kinds words. I appreciate it!

And @RickR, I don't think I had a difficult childhood at all! Yeah, my parents divorced & my mother had poor choices in men going forward, but I had two Christmases, two birthdays & my father pretty much gave me anything I could have hoped for. Yes, I wish that the time was reversed (meaning I went to school with my Dad & weekends with my Mom), if only to have more time with all the cool stuff I had at my Dad's. But if that was the case, maybe I wouldn't have had all those cool things and my summers wouldn't have been as awesome as they were. :atari_2600: :nintendo_nes:

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