my dad

i dont really think anyone is going to read this but its more for me than anyone else.

    my dad wasnt the best dad. he was a pretty selfish person, and self-destructive as hell. he had addiction problems, and had to be on suboxone for his opiod abuse. my stepmom was bipolar schizophrenic, and had grand hallucinations that would lead her to end up hurting herself sometimes. he'd sleep by the door to make sure she couldn't get past him without waking him up.
    he cheated on my mom with this lady when i was very young, and then stayed with her until she passed from breast cancer in 2022. his brother (my uncle jay who i also miss a lot) passed away a year later.
then in april 2024 my mom messaged my partner that my dad had died. i lost it.
    id heard from other relatives that he had stolen my uncle's pain meds after he'd had a bypass surgery done a few years before he'd passed from cancer, and yeah unfortunately my dad's been the type of person in and out of the mental health clinics and addiction clinics for the stupid shit he'd done to his family.
    they had grown tired of him, and honestly so had i. id finally gotten to a point in my own life i wanted to start living for myself instead of in spite of myself (being trans and coming to terms with some things does that), and hearing that he was still doing the shit he's always been doing i just cut everyone out at that point (my mothers family was already trashed a couple years before this for being transphobic assholes who made their choice and i was done with trying to be understood and loved by assholes) and moved on.
    people who have someone they love that has severe addiction issues know what its like to just be so exhausted with the person because you want the best and happiness for them, but sometimes it doesn't really happen. it seemed like after my stepmom passed that unfortunately he could focus more on himself and his behaviors and really try for himself for once. and then someone had found him, dead from pancreatitis.
    i don't condone or excuse his abhorrent behavior. i know why he did it. he did helicopter crew in the marines. he did maintenance and god knows what else it takes, but he also did crash sites. i cannot imagine the things he saw, but i do know him being the empathetic and laid back guy i knew my dad as that fucked him up so immensely, and its why i will never join any sort of military anything. knowing him having to navigate the draconian and abusive mental health system we have here in the US, yeah what he did was fucked, but i understand why. it took me a really long time to fully understand why but at least i have and i have peace about it now.

    i have a lot of my dad in me. im emotional. i cry kind of easy at the silliest things. im short and stout like his side of the family. i too like to enjoy recreational drug use, and drink too much alcohol sometimes (he actually quit booze quite a long time ago, and only drank o'douls non-alc when my sister and i were around). i enjoy video games. (he loved playing them and would never talk down at me about them, he was always as excited as i was when we figured things out in games we played. its still hard for me to play spyro or SMB 3). i love all sorts of music thanks to his always changing music tastes (he liked just about everything as long as it had a great beat and cool instruments). i love the ocean so incredibly much thanks to him (he loved fishing, surfing (trying, to anyway), swimming, just looking at tidepools with me).

    he was incredibly funny, very warm, always lending a helping hand to his neighbors and strangers, liked tinkering and fixing stuff, always jamming along to a tune, and saying stuff like "cool beans dude!" and "radical, man!" in that new england accent. he never made me feel stupid for feeling what i felt, he never yelled or said shit he'd regret to my face. he just wasn't there a lot, and he had his selfish and stupid reasons for it that suck ass and make me mad when i think about them sometimes. but at least i can understand why now.

    he had his bad things about him, of course as all humans do. selfish, self-abusive tendencies, had a hard time with jobs sometimes. but he never took it out on me. he never yelled, belittled, or blamed me for anything he did. he never beat me or starved me. he tried to care for us as best he could with the fucked up brain he had to navigate the world with. i will always regret not breaking that silence to tell him "i'm your son".

    despite all the stupid fucked up shit he did in his life, i still feel blessed i had such a kind and empathetic dad that shone through the times i did get to spend with him even if they were very few and far between moments. i wish things had been different for him. i wish i could have told him im trans. i wish i could play super mario odyssey with him. i wish i could tell him im still drawing. i wish i could tell him i have more friends than i know what to do with sometimes.

    i can only hope that i can carry forward with me the best qualities he had, and do them justice. i hope i am as kind, funny, warm, helpful and as gracious as the glimpses i got of the man who helped give me life.

i'm sorry i never told you, dad. i hope you can hear me now. i hope wherever we go after this life is done, i get to tell you about everything.

rest easy, dad.