Kids Are Not Meant To Be Adults I think, sometimes, parents forget that their kids are just kids. And, that kids, are really not ready to deal with some of the emotional weights that are involved with being an adult. My parents are divorced. The main reason that they are divorced mainly has to do with the fact that my father is bi- polar and that my mom couldn't stand the way that he treated her and how he acted around the house. That is the main reason for most of our problems, and the reason for this little piece. Well, it is probably obvious that my mom and my dad can't be in the same room together without it turning into a mess, and my mom has a restraining order against my dad for something he did a few years back that got him arrested (which is none of your business to know what it was.). So anyway, the papers from the divorce and all of that say that my mother is the legal custodian and that my dad has the right to see us every other weekend and every other holiday, five weeks of vacation and so on. That was when we were little. But now that we are older we get the decision to choose whether we want to go over there, when we want to go over there, and for how long. Now, its not like I wouldn't not want to see my dad. Most of the time he can be a good person who is very loveable. But because of the bi-polar, he needs to take medicine to keep him from getting out of hand. After all, LOTS of people are bi-polar, but you can't tell if they take medicine. They act like normal people. But, for a while now, I don't know if my dad has been taking his medicine. Yes, there are a lot of things that add up to the horrible things that I am going to say, and it will take a little while to add all of them up so you have to stay with me here. None of this stuff is the actual topic, it leads up to it. So First of all, there is my dad's girlfriend who he was seeing without our even knowing about her for a few months or so. He didn't even mention that she existed. Then, out of nowhere she shows up and they are all in love and she starts doing everything with us. My brother right off the bat didn't like her, and he still doesn't like her. Of course, I didn't like her at first either but I have gotten to know her better (after dad stopped bringing her to every single freaking thing we did for awhile!) and she seems okay for the most part. But, it was stilled forced on us and we didn't like it. So anyway, its been probably a year and a half since they started going out, and out of nowhere my dad decides to take me ring shopping. For an engagement ring. Hello, does inappropriate ring a bell to you? The color drained from my face when he said 'let's go shopping for an engagement ring, I am going to end up getting married again anyway'. Naturally I pressed him about it, asking him when he was thinking of marrying her and when he was going to propose (I had to know these things, I had to be prepared!) and all he would say was 'soon'. So I imagine that one day the two of them are going to come home together and announce 'WE'RE ENGAGED!' No, not even that, they will have gotten married without telling us. I hate how frustrating my dad can be. So that is one thing that leads up to the whole reason of writing this. Another little subtopic is my brother. My brother is going to be a senior next year in high school, which means he ahs to deal with SATs choosing a college and all of the exams in senior year leading up to everything else. Not to mention that he has a girlfriend that is going to be a junior and she had honor classes and she is very worried and has problems of her own and so she is trying to get emotional support from him. Then, he also has a slew of jobs here and there to get enough money to pay up for his two cars (he has two because one broke but my father insists that my brother pays him for the broken car anyway.) and he works day in and say out. This makes him so stressed out that saying hello to him gets you a slap in the face or a 'SHUT UP!' 'LEAVE ME ALONE!' or 'FUCK OFF!' Add my father into pressing him to do all these other things that he has obligations for and it's not pretty. Now they can't even be in the same room together with out a fistfight ensuing. This all adds up to me, who can't get away from all the fighting, who can't leave whenever dad's girlfriend shows up. Me, who has to listen to everyone else complain about his or her problems. Who has to listen to dad say how ashamed of his son he is because he is not just like him. Who always hear mom cry because my brother and dad can't get along, because dad infuriates her, and twists everything she says so that she is the bad guy and not him. Who has her own problems to deal with. It just adds up to too much stress on me, and I don't think anyone sees it. No one really thinks I have problems until I decided to kill myself (which I had thought about, just so people would pay more attention to me and realize I am upset too, but that's all fixed and I am much, much better even though this new thing is very upsetting to me). So all of this adds up to last weekend in which everything went down the toilet. It was dad's weekend, and he had all of this stuff planned out for us to do. Well actually me, since my brother magically disappeared. He didn't ask us if we wanted to do this, he made us do it. And all of this ended with what Dad thought would be a magical happy time with the family at a golf tournament. Now, I do enjoy playing golf with my ad sometimes, and I like watching him play golf and going around the field with him, but 5 hours of being out in the sun with a billion other strangers watching strangers play golf, does not, in the least, sound exciting. So I told him I didn't want to go. He got all mad and said I had to go. My brother got out of it by being disrespectful and having a fight with Dad and Dad sold his ticket. But I still didn't have a choice. Then night time comes around (this was the day before the big game or whatever you want to call it.) and my dad forces me to sleep in my room. Let me tell you, my dad's house is disgusting. It reeks of dog pee and my room is big white and empty with excepting of my bed and a few other little things. It also has a door in it and I hate having that glass door there. It scares the living daylights out of me. I told my dad this and he said I was being a baby, and then he forgot about the whole conversation. So I tried to sleep on the couch but no! My brother is sleeping there because his room (the unfinished basement) is cover in dog crap that my dad trained the dog to do and wont clean up. Not to mention that I discovered my blanket was covered in dog pee and reeked horribly. I told dad about this and he didn't even say anything. So I tried to go to sleep. My brother comes into the room saying 'I hate her I hate her' because dad's girlfriend is over there in his bed wearing nothing but what looks to be a giant purple tee shirt ( I wouldn't be surprised if that really was the only thing she was wearing). Then he exclaims the he is leaving and I offered him the option of going out my door but he said he would go through his window. By the time I realized that I wanted to go with him it was too late and he was gone. Dad must have heard him leave because he went storming out side then came back in and started stomping about and then he started to clean the kitchen (I think he threw something but he denied it later). I was very tempted to leave but I didn't since it was way passed curfew and I didn't want to get picked up by the police. The next morning dad came into my room to wake me up, and I just sat as still as I could pretending to be asleep so I wouldn't have to go. I didn't talk to him either and after awhile he decided he was going to try to force me out of my bed. First he tried little things, like pinching my butt and shaking me vigorously. Then he went on to larger tactics like grabbing ankles and dragging, so I kicked out of his grasp (don't take that the wrong way, I didn't kick him, I just kicked out into the air so that I would be free.).After that he kept threatening me with, 'the next time I come in here I am going to pour water on your head'. He kept saying it each time he came in so I didn't think he would really do it. But then, he came in with a glass (it might have been a bucket even, I had my eyes closed shut during this whole fiasco) and started counting to thirty. He would pause every once in awhile to say, 'this is going to be fun if you decided not to go' and 'you are the one making this choice, you are the one who chooses to have water on her head instead of going to the game'. And then my time was up, and I still hadn't said anything or moved, and he poured the entire thing right onto my head. It came slowly at first, the cold water pouring into my right ear (I was laying on my side, not facing my father but the wall) and soaking my hair and then in a whoosh covering my face. I laid there frozen, shocked that he had really poured water on my head as a punishment for refusing to go to his little thing. Then as he and his little girlfriend (who didn't do anything, ANYTHING! About what had just happened) left the house he told me I could sit there all day in his pee ranking house watching the dogs. Right after he left I called my mom in a fit of hysterics begging her to come take me home since I didn't know where my brother was. Luckily he was sitting on the couch when I exited my room and we went straight home. After many calls to various people my mom found out that we can't go over to my dad's house until he cleans up the dog dropping and gets rid of the smell, and that we have the choice of when to see him and if we want to see him. When my mom told my dad this he went into a fit of rage saying that he would never pay her another dime of child support if he didn't get to see us. He doesn't understand the fact that we don't want to see him. I am sick of the way he has been behaving and I refuse to even talk to him until he gets his act together a little more and behave more like a father and take his medicine (if he really has stopped taking it, but I think that he has). So as you can see, things are such a mess right now, and I don't even know what is going to happen, but it's so hard to deal with. It is stressing me out and I am very afraid of my father right now. He said that pouring water on my head would become a regular punishment if I refuse to do things with him that he wants to do. I am very hurt, mad and confused right now and I don't know what to do. But as I said before, I don't think my parents realize this, my mom does a little but she has no idea how much I feel like this. I don't think she knows how fragile I am, and how unready I am to deal with these pressures of being an adult. The End
Copyright © 2003 Veronica R Ewing |