I haven’t spoken to my father in almost ten years, and it was entirely my decision.
Bad parents seem to be a common enough problem – the internet is full of stories about people who can’t stand certain members of their family, and anecdotally, I know a handful of people with massively negative relationships with one or both of their parents.
But apparently, actually cutting off contact is a big deal.
“But why?” people ask, like it’s a simple question. It means: “What did he do?” It means: “Give me something I deem worthy.” Everyone’s so obsessed with reasons when it comes to broken-down family relationships you’re supposed to be able to pinpoint a single one and flaunt it; like that’s how it works.
Maybe that’s the case for some people, I don’t know, but in my experience, it’s little things on top of little things. It’s broken promises you can barely remember. It’s the collection of things so small that they sound irrelevant, insignificant. Things that everyone’s parents do. And my brothers both live with him. One, I think, mostly out of a sense of obligation; because it would be bad if two-thirds of someone’s offspring cut them off. The other, the youngest, seemed to miss the finer details of childhood events.
And honestly – I barely remember any of it. My childhood memories are largely focused on things that happened at school and within my friendship groups; the details of my familial relationships are generally much more blurred and inconsistent. Besides, as a teen, I was much more interested in personal identity issues than in the particulars of a divorce that I’d been hoping for anyway. Early teenage life is often self-centered and inward-looking to an incredible degree, but with just enough self-awareness to want to seem cool. And thus, you update your LiveJournal to discuss how much you’re looking forward to the upcoming Christmas episode of Doctor Who, while appearing pleasingly blasé about your actual life.
It’s not quite socially acceptable to barely remember the details of your family life, though. At fourteen, when you’re specifically making the decision that you don’t want to see somebody anymore … it seems like a big thing. It seems like something you ought to remember pretty clearly. If it’s a massively traumatic moment, it might seem more understandable in its blankness, but what I do recall is that it felt as casual as choosing what to have for breakfast. And people find that utterly incomprehensible.
My lack of relationship with my father in and of itself has been nothing but good for me; I’ve saved myself a whole lot of negativity in the nine years since I last saw him. Socially, though, it causes nothing but problems. It’s not something I would particularly care about people knowing, if it wasn’t for the reactions. It’s just an everyday part of my life that I don’t particularly think about most of the time. But it’s the everyday nature of it that makes it so difficult to keep quiet – even in adulthood, people are constantly asking about your parents.
I’d been at university a term when somebody asked me why I talked about my mum but not my dad. Around six months into working at my current job, somebody asked me what my parents did, and pushed the question when I only mentioned my mum.
There’s no answer that will satisfy people. They crave a big, dramatic story, something irredeemable, something they can be faintly horrified by. They think it’s information they have a right to, and are always willing to provide judgement if you avoid the question, or give a reason not sufficiently awful. You’re a curiosity, and that makes people entitled to your knowledge and your reason, without consideration for the fact that you might not be interested in discussing the topic.
And honestly? I’m not. Not at all. It’s a repetitive, boring topic that turns a conversation into an interview. There’s been one person I’ve enjoyed talking about it with: because, after the initial “Oh? How long have you not spoken to him for?”, he high-fived me and told me I’d beaten his record of five years without speaking to his father.
Obviously other people will feel differently about this, and obviously it’s fine to be curious! I think it’s a matter of conversational etiquette: like with any topic, if you do end up broaching it, just be careful of pushing too hard; and if you must be judgmental, do try to keep it to yourself.
