Welcome to Gaia! ::

When I was a little kid, my family (My mom, my dad, Grace (little sister), and I) lived in the Austin area. My mom homeschooled us from the start and we had a pretty good life. I rarely saw my dad, and when I did, he was watching television. My childish idea of this was: Hey, he's been at work all week, he can get a break. I was six. I know now that he would go out to bars and hang out with college age girls while my mom stayed at home. She never went out with a church group or anything. Every time she wanted to do something, there was some reason they couldn't go: my dad was drunk, the traffic was too bad, he forgot to call the babysitter, etc. She began changing some things. She gave him more things to do around the house, bought herself a car, insisted they visit a marraige couselor, and so on. One night he borrowed her car, and drove it back, stoned off his a** and snot slinging drunk. She said to never use her car again. About a month later he was drunk again. She went to the car and started to bring my sister and I into the car. We were having a sleepover at Mrs. Lori's house. He flew off the wall. He said if she got us into the car, he would take us and disappear into Mexico. Ouch. I was standing at the front door, crying, but my sister had gone back into her room to get her pillow. She was 3. 6 years later they officially divorced, after several moveouts and way too many fights. I've always loved my mom. Not necessarily more than my dad, but I've had great respect for her for all that she went through. He almost killed her. She would eat and go throw up from the stress, to the point that her weight dropped below 95 lbs. My dad lives in Dallas and we live in the Waco area now, but the damage is still there. He guilt trips everyone he's around, always acts like the fun dad, is completely irresponsible and childish, and I'm just starting to see this. It makes me want to stay as far away from him as possible, but he's still my dad. They other day in one of our fights I phrased it perfectly: he was quoting scripture at me and telling me to respect my parents (I had just told him he was a drunk assmunch...) and I replied
"I have no respect for you as a person, but I have to respect you as my biological father. I don't have much of a choice."

He won't stop hurting us by trying to file claims on the house, refusing to pay child support, and milking us for every penny. I really don't want to be around him much, but he's still my dad and I want to spend fun times with him, which is only possible between titty fits. What am I suppossed to do?

Thanks Nikolita. It's tough, but I do avoid him most of the time.

I'm sorry to hear about that. I don't have a relationship with my dad, though he lives with us, and I can tell you that it's really hard to re-establish one. My dad is kind of like yours, and in my experience, once you start to get closer to him, the tiniest things will push him back about twenty steps.

It's hard, and it's no fun to go through. My personal choice was to avoid him. As for you, that's your own decision. The only thing I can reccommend is to follow your heart, corny as it sounds, and do what you really think you should do, what would be best for you.

Best of luck.