Reasons You Shouldn’t Fuck Kids

My father doesn’t take no for an answer. While this doesn’t surprise me, I find all conversations with him to be upsetting. It’s like in every conversation we have to both repress the fact that he was a weird father who was violent and broke all the possible boundaries with my brother and I. He called me tonight.

When my parents’ marriage started going south, he started treating me like his emotional wife. He would want me to ask him how his day was, cook for him, etc. He had a wife (my mother), but she hated him. Now that I am an adult, I can see why. Anyway, the more I refused, the more he would push me. He kept asking me to hug him. I kept saying no. By the time I was 15, I had been refusing to hug him for a while. I can’t remember if it was a period of weeks or months. He kept asking and asking and demanding and demanding. I kept saying no and no and no and no. ‘No’ was never enough of a fucking answer for him for any question where he wanted the answer to be yes.

Now he says he wants to be closer to me. And again this is me saying no. Except now I live far away from him. On purpose. I am afraid of him. Very afraid of him.

He wants us to be closer, he told me tonight. I said “What does that mean to you?” He said “I’d like to come see you.” Me: “No.” He said “Do you think there will ever be a time when we will be closer?” Me: “No. I think we’re close enough right now.” Then I said “Dad, I didn’t talk to you for 15 years. Now we’re talking. That’s as close as I want to get. Maybe you can learn to live with what I am willing to give, and this is all that I am willing to give.”

And in this whole conversation, it was like we were ignoring the big elephant in the room.

The thing is, I have done the brave thing many times with him. I have told him in person in a therapist’s office why I am upset with him, exactly why I am upset with him. I have written him snail mail letters about it. I have written him e-mails about it. I have told him he violated me, and was violent with me. I have told him and told him and told him. He then chooses to forget about it and say shit like “I want to be closer to you”

Like I don’t want that? Like I wouldn’t rather have a normal father who I can be close to? I hear the words “Daddy’s girl” all the time, my whole life, and I have never understood what the fuck that means. Does it mean that these daughters and fathers are close the way that normal daughters and fathers are? I am pretty sure it means these fathers are in no way fucking their daughters and forcing a life of shit on them, which by the way is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

I mean, he puts it on me, like it’s my ‘craziness’ that forces us to not be close. I’d like to be close too, but in order for that to happen, I would need him to be normal and not keep pushing for some definition of closeness that only appears in his sick dictionary. So I am forced to keep not only an emotional distance but also a physical one.

I am afraid of him, and no matter how many times I tell myself that I am an adult and he doesn’t have the kind of power he had over me as a child, I guess I don’t believe it.