Surviving the Man Who Raised Me

The Man I Wish I Didn't Know

What do I know about my father?

Honestly, it’s a question I just considered because, in some ways, I don’t know him as well as one might think.

He was born in Curacao. Although he spent the first ten years speaking Dutch, he cannot speak it today. I find that fascinating.

He has ADHD and dyslexia, like me. I got mine from him.

He was depressed. Never satisfied with anything. A philanderer — but I don’t know much about that. I wish I did.

His version of reality—which he imposed on everyone else—sucks.

He has low self-esteem.

He’s very insecure.

He’s very worried about what other people think about him.

He’s riddled with shame.

My father is a coward—violent to his very core—with low empathy. He has no idea what real love is all about and thinks of himself as a failure. Yet, lots of people like him and look up to him.

He inherited land and owns a few apartments.

He’s a little bit racist. Perhaps he’s a lot racist, and I’m underestimating that. He once told my sister not to marry anyone “too dark.” He used to call my mother “broadnose.”

My father is a misogynist.

My love for women stands in direct opposition. He never did any housework—no dishwashing, no cooking, no cleaning—but he constantly pointed out how messy we were.

Every day at five-thirty, he would come home and yell about the messy house.

Everything was always everyone else’s fault. It still is. I’ve rarely heard him say, “I’m sorry” about anything. He was so hard to live with. Disgusting and loathsome.

He treated his children like possessions. I remember a time when he used to call us stupid, and it took several arguments and confrontations from my mother to get him to stop. “Sometimes people just are stupid,” he said. “We can be honest about that.” That’s how I remember that fight going. He always defended himself.

He blamed me for everything. Everything was under the sun, even when it was apparent that I was not the culprit.

He was sadistic.

He liked causing me strife and seeing me suffer. He would make a whole show of it—parading me around from place to place, talking at me like a dog. Even strangers would show sympathy in their eyes. My head would slump as I went from place to place, looking for this or that for the umpteenth time. My rage grew and grew with each step.

Something was always off about him. My mother took years to figure him out. She once told him, “You have no values.” I think she meant he was unscrupulous and unethical. My sister, in the present day, makes many allegations about him, but I can’t be sure if it’s her or the schizophrenia talking.

He loved humiliating me.

He would call me a variety of unsavory names. To this day, he still does. However, I wouldn’t know if he changed because I’m uninterested. That one behavior—the name-calling alone—is reason enough to never speak to him again.

I’m not even referring to the full range of his linguistic violence. Not the threats, the rage, or the mind games. Just the name-calling. Just one thing. I think it is enough for any healthy human being to say no to this person for life.

I was constantly afraid that he would indoctrinate more people into the lifelong tradition of making a mockery out of me. Always. For my whole life. From the very beginning.

This man is so incredibly obstinate. He may think I am harsh, but not so. If you ask me, he’s lucky I am not more cold-blooded.

My boundaries are set in stone today because they were chiseled from granite.

To this day, he lives steeped in his lies.

As an adult, I have become sincere. It disarms people and restores faith in humanity. When I can casually be vulnerable around people, their eyes light up. I became like that because he was such a liar.

I became so vulnerable to liars later in life because of all the lies that were told to me as a child growing up. My ex was also a pathological liar. She would lie for any reason or no reason at all. Whatever served her best. Sometimes, I could tell; sometimes, I couldn’t.

I find it strange that I could never acknowledge her as a liar until after I left the relationship.

On some level, I knew it, but I still believed her lies when she said them. I must carry more pain around the lies told to me growing up than I realize.

In my early twenties, I became fascinated with the book Radical Honesty.

It was all about why we lie, why that’s bad for our mental health, and why we’re better off admitting all of the lies.

I almost got to work with Dr. Blanton later in life. I would have loved that. Here was somebody who left a considerable impression.

I think this is another reason I don’t know my father. Who knows what fact, fiction, or something in between is? He is undoubtedly an unreliable narrator. There are so many skeletons in his closet, and I don’t know how he sleeps at night.

Explosive anger. What could make a person so angry? What could make anger so fundamental to a person’s core? My father wanted approval and validation from others. I remember him bragging to his big sister about a “big check” he got paid, showing everything to her.

My father wanted money. He wanted prestige. Were it not for that lifelong quest, he might have to look in the mirror and ask himself why he’s never at ease. Not ever.

Looking back, we had an antagonist in the house—not a parent.

He did almost nothing by way of parenting: no picking anyone up or dropping them off, no homework, no catch, no birds and bees, no PTA meetings, not even Christmas gifts. That was all my mother. He used to boast about it.

To this day, he still treats me like an object. He could devastate you, and then he’s happy-go-lucky with you the next day like nothing happened. He did that to us many times, and I think he convinced himself that nothing happened. It trained me to seek unstable relationships.

I kept score, though. I held out for a very long time before we became entirely estranged.

He taught me to believe blatant lies.

He taught me to tolerate unlimited amounts of abuse.

He taught me to be loyal to disloyal people.

He taught me to hate myself and accept blame for things that were not my fault.

Even with all that I do know about my father… There’s still so much about him I don’t know.

He often recounted his days at work, which sounded like a horrible environment to be stuck in for twenty-five-plus years. He had a tyrannical boss, the direct descendant of a notorious enslaver. All of the blood money he had inherited afforded him several hotels. He was so rich and white that most people treated him as if he were European, and he certainly acted as such.

My father’s jealousy of his boss was palpable. I think somewhere along the way, I got it in my head since he envied this man so much. This boss was such an object of admiration… I needed to become like his boss to be worthy of love and affirmation.

This is another classic example of someone who is attracted to toxicity.

He’s not interested in kind, compassionate, or humble people but seething with envy over his tyrannical boss. When you arrive at any of his boss’s hotels, you feel like you're stepping into an oasis.

Most people on the island would never experience such luxury in their lifetime. In stark contrast to almost everywhere else in St. Lucia, this place was a pristine, 5-star resort filled with rich white people. I always wondered how these people could be so wealthy when we were not.

My father had one of the best jobs in the hotel. He was the head accountant. But, unlike all the tourists who were always drunk and happy, all of the staff lived in crippling fear of losing their jobs. There was no justice in this workplace. It sounded like his boss was Gordon Gecko in Wall Street. If a light were on at 10 am, somebody would get fired that day. I heard whispers about people getting physically assaulted. The direct descendant of slave masters — chip off the old block.

My father worked long hours, and for as long as I’ve known him, he worked on Saturdays.

He was a workaholic, for sure.

I don’t think he was particularly gifted at his job, though.

My aunt told me that his father tied him to a tree for an entire day when he was six. He comes from a severely dysfunctional home. My mother once pointed out that his mother, who lived decades longer than her spouse, never spoke about him. I took that to mean my grandmother didn’t miss him. Perhaps for good reason.

I never met my grandfather, but for some reason, he was a notoriously lousy parent. Honestly, I think, in retrospect, I’m so glad I never did meet him, as I believe I would have found him disgusting enough to put him to death.

He watches TV endlessly and never reads, except for the newspaper. He’s a relic of yesteryear—his heyday—a long time ago.

I know that when he went to England, he struggled and did not like it. It sounded like he had trouble making ends meet. I don’t even know what university he went to. I know he had an older white girlfriend while he was there. At least seven years older. Another unsettling thing I have in common with him. Spooky.

My father makes me cringe.

I remember a time when he lusted after his cousin’s daughter. Some St. Lucians are very funny about what is inappropriate with cousins. I honestly don’t understand it. I would have been a boy witnessing him harass a 19-year-old when he was 40.

Today, I see a child in an adult’s body. He’s so juvenile and childish. Today, he looks to me for advice, not vice versa.

I spent many years wishing my father was someone he isn’t. It’s a colossal waste of time that I can’t get back. The legacy of his neglect lives within me. It’s sad—when I discover signs of neglect in me that are still alive and well. He damaged us so much. But he refuses to see it.

Frankly, sometimes I think my mother would be alive today if she were not so busy trying to manage the unmanageable. It stands to reason she would have been putting more time into self-care, which would have included more frequent cancer screenings.

This is just one of many resentments festering in me about him. I might have let it go by now if he would ever hear me.

No. I take it back.

I don’t try to get my father to hear me anymore. Those days are long gone.

I look back, and my father mistreated me from as far back as I can remember. He constantly abused me, and he always will. Even if he wants to do better… He’s like the scorpion who asks the frog for a ride across the pond, promising he won’t sting… And he always does. It’s his nature. Too deeply set.

My task today is figuring out how to sever whatever bonds are left.

Believing in this farce of a human being is bad for my well-being. I still attract emotionally unavailable people aggressively. Being almost forty and unable to be in a healthy relationship without professional supervision is demoralizing. I thought I would be a father by now. And, even considering all the ways my ex-wife also mistreated me… I still sit in pits of despair over her loss. There’s a hole in my heart. I carry her loss like the loss of my mother.

I often wonder what it’s like to make it to the end of your life after having lived in the wrong way. He must live with the consequences of his actions, no matter how much he wants to deny he ever did anything wrong. He became estranged from all of his children all by himself. A problem my mother could have never dreamed of having.

Just this weekend, I gave a lady I had just met a ride to the airport. In 15 minutes, she knew enough about me to say I would be a phenomenal parent.

I’m starting to doubt I will ever have that honor.

Until next time,

Anton

Dancer, Writer, Buddhist

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