Monsters and Men

I know I say a lot on here about my "dads", implying that I have two fathers. I think its time I talk to you about those men. Its something I need to talk about so others will be able to heal. I do have two fathers. Both of them really great men in my eyes. Even with their flaws. But both of them had their dark secrets. My dad who passed away dealt with addictions and other problems on a daily. For him those demons were always just there. But he was a very good father to me and my brother. He adopted us. I was actually 17 when I signed the papers to allow him to adopt me because I was barely a few months away from aging out.

However, there is a darker part of my life. My other dad.



He was a very loving father to me. When I would get a chance to visit I would have fun. He taught me how to draw, and would read the stories I would write without calling them weird, retarded, or deranged. (All things my mom would tell me). He was very artistic. I sometimes question if he's my dad or not. My mother would get pissed off and tell me my dad was really "Peanut" or "Charlie", and coming from her there is a question as to the validity of her using truth to cause pain.

We would go to the parks. I don't mean play ground parks either, he would find the most amazing places where there were huge castles and lakes with geese and ducks. We would go fishing and he didn't call me stupid for crying over the worms being impaled on the hook. He would teach me how to make snares to catch rabbits and how to hunt squirrels. I know that sounds weird but I'm a girl and he's a dad. I'm not his only child, but I am the only one he got to have anything to do with. I think that is for the better though that my brothers didn't.

He was a pretty damn good race car driver too. He taught me more about cars them most of my guy friends know. I can take apart any older model Chevy and put it back together better than new. I think he makes a pretty damn good grandfather too. I have mostly boys and the things he taught me how to do have come in handy as a mother of boys who want to get in the mud and get dirty! But I wouldn't want him to be alone with them. He has a very dark side of him.

I don't think that's really anything I have to worry about though. He's in prison because of his dark side. He's probably going to die there too. You see he has two sides. There's a side of him I've only caught a glimpse of. I've seen my dad beat one of my stepmoms till her face was bleeding and she was curled into a ball begging him to stop as he held a knife to her pregnant belly telling her he was going to "cut the little nigger bastard from her guts" because she had been nice to their neighbors and said hello as they walked by each other.

Often times his breath during these glimpses reeked of Jack Daniels. He would get so drunk and then say some of the most awful things about things he had done to others or things that had happened to him when he was younger. Things that had fucked him up mentally beyond any help. The things he told me he had done made me question if they were true or not. He was a very sick man. My dad's drunken confessions of the things he had done to his family members made me see that sometimes monsters don't have snarling teeth and claws. Sometimes they are the people you love most. That there is a side to everyone that is not so pretty.

The people he did the horrible things to have all told me about them. I know they must be true because they told me the same things he did when he was drunk off his ass. I don't know why they tell me them. Whether it is to protect me and my children from him or to damage his image in my view but they do. I don't think they mean to hurt me. I think maybe for them being able to protect someone else from him is their intentions. My dad is a monster.

But there are those people who know what he did and it makes them look at me like I am a monster too, or at the very least like I am something to pity because I am the child of a monster. Their ignorance makes them want to see me as no better than him. Because in their eyes everything he's done has to be nasty and tainted. That surely he was just as horrible to me. When I tell them he wasn't they insist that maybe I just don't remember it and that he was; I was just too young to remember. Like me telling them I saw a different man than they did is offensive. I sometimes think they wish he had done those horrible things to me too because it makes it easier to see him as a monster.

He didn't, I'm not blocking anything out, there is no secret I am holding on to and hiding. He was just different with me. I got peeks at the monster everyone else saw. My mom likes to tell a lie about him blacking my eye when I was little and even tries to tell me I blocked it out. She lies and says that he slammed my head into a sink when I was 4. I remember what happened very clearly. They were fighting, my dad had broken into our house while he was drunk and caught my mom in bed with another man. I heard the noise and came running to see what was going on. I ran into the room at the same time one of them shoved the other backwards and got between them and a dresser. My head hit the dresser and blacked my eye. My dad stopped when he saw I was hurt but my mother kept attacking him. I think 90% of their fights were mutual. My mother isn't much better than him.

But she made me lie to a judge and say he had hit me too. She told me if I didn't lie the judge was going to make me and my newborn brother go live in an orphanage and I would never see him and they would make me be a slave and clean all day. She was always like that when I was growing up. Using threats like that to make me lie for her. She's not winning mother of the year anytime soon.

I feel like a lot of times she blames me for him and sometimes even blames me for them not being together still. She's a sick woman too. When I was little she would always tell me in detail, much I wonder if it was made up or embellished to make it worse, the bad things she knew he did. Many times she would get into a tale of the things he did and really get into it with glee and drama like she enjoyed it. She would devour the tales like a lion on a thick fresh kill. So I knew the things he did even when he wasn't making his drunken confessions. She used them to hurt me and to make me feel like I wasn't worthy of life because my dad was a monster.

I'm not trying to defend him at all, or make anyone see him in a different light. I am just trying to show that monsters aren't always big growling scary boogeymen. Sometimes they are fathers who can love their child. Sometimes they are fucked up men who had shitty childhoods that made them into monsters that do terrible things. Sometimes they are just mean people for no reason. My dad was never mean to me or intentionally hurtful. He took care of me when he could, he showed me the side of him most people didn't see. The person he could have been if he had a normal childhood. The man that is hidden under an ugly evil soul that rotted very early on in life.

Sometimes we are the monsters. Sometimes they are the people we trust the most. They look just like us and the walk around with us. You can't tell who they are until you are in their claws. Unfortunately for me I am the one person he didn't damage directly, I just have to deal with the people who know my dad is a monster and judge me by it. Society looks at you differently than they do the victims of the monsters. Like they are waiting to see if you will do it too, if you are really a monster in hiding. They question everything you do. Like if you did do something bad they could sit back and sigh with relief that they were right and their idea of how you should be wasn't wrong. Victims are pitied, but me, I'm looked at as a monster too.

As for the victims of my dad's dark side, I hope you can find comfort and peace in life. I'm not telling you to get over it, let it go, or even to forgive him. I just hope you can find peace for your own sanity. That you can heal and not be forced into a dark place by it. I don't think he has any remorse for the things he did, I think he's incapable of it. But you need to find peace within yourself. I hope one day you can find that. I'm not going to make excuses for him or make an apology to you for him. His actions are not mine and I refuse to allow that guilt to be mine. I just wish others would see that. Don't take your anger out on me for what he did to you. I am not him. But he is a part of me. You keep looking for the monster in me but I know its already there and its something I had to make peace with in my own mind. You need to find that peace yourself before you become the monster too. Don't let it consume you. Please,

Love
Mom

This is not what a monster looks like!
(Photo credit- "Demon DAD" By The Gurch)