After the last posts about my mom, I can imagine you’re curious about my dad. My dads intentions have always been good, I hope. This unfortunately doesn’t mean it was always pleasant to be around him. When I was little I liked spending time with my dad. My mom was always sleeping or wasn’t around, so my dad always spent time with me in the weekends. We went swimming and went to petting zoos a lot and I loved that. We also sometimes did little trips to the beach or to…arcade halls or to gambling halls on fairs. It was years later I figured out he didn’t take me there for me, but to have an excuse to go.
During my childhood we never had a lot of money. I just thought that my dad didn’t make enough money and my mom didn’t work, so didn’t earn any. I never really got it, though. Cause my dad worked at pretty known/big companies, like Philips and the Ministry of Justice. How can you not earn enough there? There were times where we had to use our money sparingly. A few times we didn’t have electricity, gas or water, because my dad didn’t pay the bill. There were also times when our landline was disconnected and I’m sure I’m missing things we were cut off of, because my dad didn’t pay the bill. I didnt know it at the time, but there are numerous times my dad stole my savings. Yeah okay, it wasn't a lot, but still.
I think the money problems were one of the primary reasons there was a lot of tension in the house. Especially later on, when my mom was really sick and my dad had a lot of overdue payments. There were a lot of fights. We could always sense if my dad was in a bad mood. It was the worst. My brother and sister had sports to escape to. I didn’t. My dad wasn’t really aggressive overall, but there definitely were moments when he was. I remember him pushing my mom a few times. He threw stuff; small stuff mostly, but also flipped the coffee table upside down a few times.
We weren’t really allowed to express negative emotions. It was like he couldn’t deal with any of it. When I was sad, he just yelled at me to stop crying. When I was mad, he got mad back in an intimidating way. I have this very vivid memory of when I was in high school. It was my first year, I was twelve years old and had to do a presentation one day, first hour of that day. Because of my fear of failure I really dreaded that presentation. But I practiced A LOT and I was actually quite confident about the stuff I was going to tell. But…I overslept. When I woke up I was in instant panic mode. Crying and unable to function. My dad just grabbed both my arms and started to shake me heavily and shouted I had to stop crying. I was so afraid. The shaking was so heavy on my body, it hurt.
Another memory I have is from the same year. My mom was disliking something that was very important to me. A Christmas ornament. The night before Christmas she accidentally broke or damaged the ornament and I was pretty mad at her. I was just hurt and expressed that. My dad suddenly got up from the couch and he had this extreme angry and aggressive look in his eyes. I knew I had to get away. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door immediately. My dad ran and kicked or punched a hole in the door. I. Was. So. Scared. My sister took my side and we didn’t spent the first day of Christmas at home. We just went to a museum together and ate somewhere outside, I believe. I didn’t feel safe and I didn’t want to do Christmassy stuff at home if my dad didn’t apologize first. He never really apologized. He kinda said sorry, just to get it over with. But he didn’t even say the actual words.
I know my dad has hit my sister and brother one or two times (maybe more, I really don’t know). My sister has also told me my dad kicked my mom once. She says I must have seen it, but I can’t recall. Maybe I was too little or maybe I just really wanted to forget it. I didn’t really see it at the time, but I think we lived in fear a lot at home. We were always trying to keep things nice and calm. We didn’t want to be a burden and we were afraid to trigger my dad’s anger.
It was 2004 or 2005, I was thirteen, when we wanted to make some changes to the house. My mom had recovered and everything at home was different. We didn’t want to live in that rundown house anymore. So we did a lot of cleaning and we threw some stuff away. We bought new flooring and my dad planned to take some days off from work. I never forget what happened next.
One day a guy rang our doorbell and of course we opened the door. The guy stepped inside and said: ‘I just bought your house at a public auction. You have a month to leave’. It turned out my dad hadn’t paid the mortgage for months…maybe years. I don’t even know. He MUST have known the house was put up for auction. Why act like you want to give the house a makeover when you know we have to leave it?
A month is definitely not enough time to find a house, so we stayed at an emergency shelter for five years. FIVE YEARS. My high school years. The emergency shelter was an apartment for the five of us. It had a living room adjacent to a kitchen and between the two spaces was a dining table. The living room had stairs to a small attic. The attic had three beds and three closets. I had to sleep there with my brother and sister (keep in mind that I was thirteen, my sister eighteen and my brother nineteen). My mom and dad had their own bedroom next to the living room and we also had a bathroom. We had to do our laundry at a common laundry room. The apartment was small and we didnt have a lot of storageroom, so we didn’t get to bring any of our stuff. My dad said he kept all our stuff in a storage box, but later we found out there never was a storage box. I don’t have any stuff left from before the eviction.
We lived at the shelter for a while when we suddenly got a delivery. It was a flower bouquet with a card. My mom opened the card and found out my dad got fired. He already stopped working for a week, I think, when the flowers and card arrived. He just didn’t tell us and pretended to go to work every day. It turned out he had stolen money from the safety box at work to go gambling. As you might have guessed by now: my dad is a gambling addict. My mom immediately took measures to make sure my dad couldn’t gamble anymore. She went to the casino’s to get him a gambling ban. She took my dad to a gambling anonymous group and went to the family and friendsgroup at the same time for a while. Just to make sure my dad really went. She asked me and my sister to help her understand online banking and made sure my dad couldn’t access the money in any way.
After a while my dad found work again and a few years ago he started his own business with an old colleague of him who knows about the situation. My dad is now a sponsor or some kind of supervisor at the gambling anonymous group. My mom and dad are still in debt. I think my dad quit gambling in 2005 or 2006 and is paying off his debts since then. And he still has to pay them off for quite a while. It was a LOT.
My dad never really talks about what he did to us. He is avoiding the subject. And really…I get that. But I need him to take some kind of responsibility. To show some kind of remorse. But I guess that will never happen. He is doing better now, though. The aggressive vibe is gone. Sometimes there can still be a bit of tension, but I don’t know if that’s really tension or just a little trauma response of mine.
