I've wanted to vent for a while. I've realised this is a massive wall of text so I don't expect many to see it through, but it's better off my chest than in my head.

Growing up, my Dad was literally my hero. I thought he was the smartest man in the world, he was funny and I could always go to him for help or for fun and games. My mum was fine but she didn't seem to have the interest in doing things that bored her or took up her time, so she always sent me to my Dad. By my early teens I reached a point that I had complete trust in him for help and support with everything from school work to personal issues, despite his occasional temper and annoying traits that I was beginning to pick up on.

By my mid-teens I was becoming highly aware of traits in him that I didn't like and it was beginning to put me off. I didn't like how quickly he was to raise his voice or how his quick response to wanting things done was a threat such as items left about being thrown in the bin if they weren't tidied. But the turning point was when he drew attention to an issue I had which was crippling my esteem and making me suicidal. He took that issue and threw it in my face as an insult. And that broke me. I barely spoke to him after that and wouldn't stay in the same room as him if I didn't have to. I also think this opened my eyes. I begun to realise that I hated a lot of his behaviour. One of those things (of many) was that I was big enough to hit, and he took full advantage of that (it was very infrequent, but even once is one time too many). I had glossed over the shit he did because he was my Dad, but I was mature enough to realise that all these things weren't acceptable. It made him fall even further in my eyes.

About two years later he was caught having an affair. He was arrogant enough to think that my mum didn't know how to use a computer or how to check emails, so all his back and forths with this lady were plainly visible to be found by anybody. He left about a month later, sneaking out when my mum had gone to the shop and leaving his wedding ring on the table.

He would come to visit me and my sister on occasion. I still hadn't been talking to him, but I felt like I had to be around for it as an obligation. Like, if he is going to "put the effort" into turning up then I "had" to put the effort into being there. It was awkward for everyone. The second time he visited he broke down in tears apologising for all the things he had put me through over the years. It was the closest I've ever come to pitying him. I cared enough to try to give him comfort, but offered no acceptance of his apology.

After a while he started offering to take me to visit my grandparents of a weekend. They live far away and I didn't get to see them much so this was something I couldn't really turn down. Things very gradually got the slightest bit better, but I was never comfortable around him and never able to trust him. But this pattern kept up for a few years so we had regular-ish contact. The day before my 23rd birthday he married the woman he had been caught having an affair with (brilliant date to pick). I was invited, but I declined. I hadn't met her and had no desire to do so. From that point onward his contact slowly decreased. This didn't matter so much to me, but the lack of weekend visits to my grandparents did. But my own life had gotten busier (especially with university) as I'd entered my 20s so I had my own things to deal with.

Sadly my mum and my grandmother (his mum) passed away within 3 weeks of each other when I was 26. My mum had a terminal illness but her death was sudden and very unexpected. She had no will which caused a bunch of headaches. After some digging around it was found that my Dad had never taken his name off the mortgage of the house we had shared when he lived with us. He claims that his lawyer advised him not to and gave an explanation for why, but I think that is a load of rubbish. I believe he hoped that we wouldn't keep the house, would sell it and he would get his split. But he certainly hadn't been expecting this. He was now responsible for two mortgages at once now and it was agreed by everyone relevant (including myself) that we would have to sell the house. But because his name was on the mortgage and the type of mortgage that was signed, 100% of the profits would go to him. This is relevant. As part of chasing down my mum's probate to access her pension, we needed to know the type of mortgage to ascertain her assets. He claimed to not know, but he also refused to give up this information. He never flat out said no, it was always a "I'll get around to it" type of response. I needed the pension money to finance a move for myself and my little sister as well as to pay for the headstone for our mum's grave. At least once per week for several months I politely asked him to find the information. At least four months passed though and in the end my Aunty got sick of waiting and funded the headstone herself without consulting me. She also wouldn't let me pay her back. I resent that I never got a hand in my mum's headstone and my dad was massively responsible for that (my older sister too but that story isn't relevant to this post). I believe he didn't want to find out this information just incase he had to give up 50% rather than get 100%. We still needed the pension money though, especially me as I was still paying all the bills and was quickly going broke. In the end I had to phone his bank myself and get them to send him the details himself. In the second week of October he forwarded me a picture of the letter. It was dated from the third week of September. He had that letter for 3 weeks before giving me the information. He didn't deny it when I confronted him. As a sidenote, he did get 100% of the money (which wasn't a lot) but he was good enough to split it 33% with me and my little sister. He had no legal obligation to do that.

Fast forward a few months and I have sold the house to a company that rents to students and finally found a place of my own to move. I had agreed with the buyer to be gone by December 31st but he assured me that nothing would be touched until my Dad gave the final say so. I never got out until the 30th. This meant a lot of my things were still at home. As far as I was concerned I wasn't meant to enter the property after the 31st without permission, so I waited for my Dad to let me know he was going to the house.

Two weeks later the buyer phoned me to discuss some things. He casually talked about how work had begun on the house. Turns out my dad had given the okay a week earlier. But before that, he had gone to the house with my little sister, helped himself to all the spare food that I had bought that was in the freezer and cupboards, let my little sister get her things and then told the guy he could do his stuff. Part of the contract was that anything still in the house would be removed. All of my things that I hadn't been able to take with me were still in the house. Books. University texts. Clothes. Photos, mostly older ones involving my mum. Precious items that I treasured, including a letter from a friend who I had let stay with me for three weeks after an extremely poor time that had left her suicidal, thanking me for everything I had done for her. All of that was gone. It would be easy to claim ignorance or carelessness on my dads part, but he took my little sister to get her things (we didn't live together after we left the family house). She assumed that he had or was going to take me so she didn't think it was worth mentioning.

At this point I was angrier than I had ever been in my life. But I kept calm and text him asking him to phone me. A weekend passed and I heard nothing. Monday I phone him, but it immediately cuts off without a single ring. That's weird. Maybe his phone is broken? But he has been on whatsapp. So I send him a message telling him I needed to talk to him. I check a couple of hours later to see if he had read my message and I discover that he had blocked me. I racked my brains trying to think of what the hell I may have done to trigger being blocked with no prompt. I'd spoken to him just about three weeks ago on his birthday on one of the rare phone calls I make to him (the first anniversary of my grandmother, his mother dying so felt obligated) and all was fine. We hadn't spoke since then. Maybe he was acting up because of the anniversary of his mum dying? (and my mum to a lesser extent). I didn't care about him not being in my life because of how little of a presence he currently had in it, but I wasn't happy with the circumstances. If I have done something that justified being cut off then that was fine and I would accept his decision. But I wanted to know what.

I send him a Facebook message with the first sentence being something that he would read on a message preview, essentially stating that this was my final attempt to reach out and if he ignored this then I would ensure that the blocking he has started would be permanent, that I wouldn't allow him to re-enter my life at any point in the future. I also sent a long wall of text calling him out for all of the shit he had pulled over the years and how I believed this behaviour to be totally unjustified. I ended with this:
"And just in case you decide to not reply and I don’t ever get another chance, I’ll tell you something I’ve had in my head for the last few months and never bothered to say. Growing up, the man I wanted to be was the man I first thought that you were. In some ways I’m influenced by those early memories and how high of a pedestal I had you on. That man stopped existing when I became a teenager. I always hoped he would come back. He never did."

He eventually responded with a single sentence (the name of a pub and a time to meet). So I go to the pub. I want answers. He tries to brush his recent behaviour off and treat it like it wasn't a big deal, but I stuck firm. I insisted he explain what I had done to justify him wanting to cut me off. His first response was to tell me that something I had said about how poorly he treated my mum's sisters since the divorce and after her death (which led to nobody bothering to invite him to a birthday party for my niece) had upset him because he didn't believe he was treating them poorly. I remembered that conversation perfectly and told him that this conversation took place in December. That not only had I been calm in this conversation, but I had told him their sentiments, not my own. The grudge should have been with them, not me. We had last spoken on the phone in January. He cut me off in February. The conversation about my Aunts was December. What gives?

He stumbled on his words a bit before giving a different explanation. He says that he was sick of getting abusive text messages from me. I asked him to give me an example of an abusive text message. He couldn't remember any. I asked him to show me some. He had a new phone with no text history. Brilliant. But thankfully I'm a technology smart millennial. All the texts I've sent to him are saved and transfer from phone to phone. I showed every message I had sent to him in reverse order and asked him individually if they were abusive. I had no reason to delete any either as I wouldn't have had a reason to suspect he was upset at any as I am always polite and civil (albeit blunt on occasion). The first ten he said no to, and I saw him getting visibly frustrated. I pressed on though. He stopped answering yes or no to the texts and eventually we were up to November (remember he blocked me in February) before he said this was pointless. I told him that he can't claim to be cutting me off for abusive text messages but not being able to tell or show me about any.

So finally he said that when you get to his age you just want to have peace. I should point out that my two sisters are quite the handful, particularly my aforementioned older sister. So this was just as hard to believe as well. And of course he couldn't tell me anything I had done to give him a hard time. At this point I am exasperated. I was conflicted too. I'd had my difficulties with him over the years and he had pushed me further and further away. A part of me wanted to tell him this was the final straw and that I was going to finish his job for him and cut him off. But I still felt that weird obligation of putting up with him since he is my Dad and the only parent I have now. So I told him that I wouldn't tolerate anything this harmful again. He accepted that, and then casually threw out "okay, show me your apartment". He hadn't been to my place yet, despite having lived there for two months. I told him no, that I was still angry. I saw the pain in his eyes as I said that and (internally) rolled my eyes and told him he can come at the weekend. I wasn't sure if he would bother to come, but he did. And that was the beginning of things slowly getting back to "normal" although we communicate less than ever. I still don't trust him and I still feel uncomfortable around him. I don't ask him for support unless he is a literal last resort.

That reaction I had to the sadness I saw in his eyes is basically how I feel about my graduation. I have been at university for 5 years, and it has been extraordinarily difficult, especially with all the deaths and the minor detail of having to sell a house whilst paying all the bills with no income. I was forced to extend my course because I knew I wasn't going to be able to apply myself at the necessary level. My dad made my university experience harder than it needed to be, (not least of all being the loss of all my texts with the house incident). He put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me and made it clear that he was disappointed by me prolonging my studies. Now that on top of all the things I have described in my wall of text (as well as little things not worth mentioning) have led me to where I am right now.

I graduate next month and whilst I normally don't care to draw attention to myself, I feel that I want to acknowledge my accomplishment with university. I'm okay with a very rare day that can be about me. But I only have two guest tickets available. I think now is a good time to mention that I don't believe that my Dad is a bad man. I think overall he is a good person and that he truly cares. I know he has pride in me for the mature, responsible adult I have grown into and my accomplishments, especially university. I don't understand his difficult and inconsistent behaviour and I've spent far too long trying to work it out and understand him. But I can't look past all the bad he has done, so for that reason I have decided that I won't invite him. My two Aunts have been incredibly supportive after my mum died and with me moving home. They both have filled the mum role. It wouldn't be fair to pick just one of them, plus I can only imagine how awkward my Dad would be about having to be in their presence and I don't any negativity about my day.

I haven't told him yet. I know it's going to hurt him. Neither of my sisters have attended university and it is unlikely that they will. This will probably be his only chance to attend a graduation for one of his children. I also know that he isn't going to be able to understand or accept my reasons. I fear that he is going to take it as a personal attack and that he will perceive it as a sign that I don't care about him. I also fear that this will push him back into the idea of cutting off contact or that there will be even less than their currently is.

And I don't know why I care.