The Day My Dad Left

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

When I was twelve, my dad left home.

On that heart-shattering day, my sisters and I were called into the living room. I can still see our old off-white couch stitched with pastel pink and green flowers. The doors to the playroom open wide. The big boxed TV was nestled in the corner taunting us for a family movie night. The only catch was the film was horror and we were the stars—no one to witness the pain that would inevitably consume the next part of my life.

My mom and dad stood in front of us, both looking guilty. My mom is strong. I mean incredibly strong. I don’t remember if she was crying at the moment. Maybe she was, but maybe she was standing strong for us because she already knew. She had already been let in on the secret she wished she hadn’t discovered.

So we sat there, staring at them waiting for the news and wondering if we were getting another surprise trip to Disney World. Some intuitive part of me knew it couldn’t have been that though because this felt heavy before the words even left their lips. This felt sad. This felt like my world was going to be blown up before it was.

My dad cast his gaze away from us, afraid to look us in the eyes, telling us he was leaving. I think my soul left my body. I watched his words float past me.

‘I’m leaving’/‘Not happy’/‘I still love you’

He cried.

And in the span of a few moments, I was sucked back into my body, consumed with anger and confusion and hurt. Misconstrued logic was consuming my undeveloped mind, filling it with thoughts like ‘I wasn’t good enough’. ‘I wasn’t a good enough reason to stick around’. ‘He didn’t want to be near me’ and more that I couldn’t quite comprehend.

As his words settled, I felt myself on the verge of an explosion. Tears resting on the brink of a damn I hadn’t had time to properly build. I didn’t understand.

I stood up, stared at him, and with every ounce of gusto I had yelled, “I hope you have a great life with that bitch!” I stormed off to my room where I could lock myself in and cry in peace.

That was the first time I ever swore in front of my parents. I watched more pain break across my dad’s face in that second, but what right did he have? He had just destroyed me. I never even had a chance. If that was his decision, then he would have to live with the consequences.

This was the day my dad left but this isn’t the whole story.

When I was eleven my best friend's dad passed away from a rare form of cancer. The devastation in this loss wasn’t just in Greg’s passing. Greg was like a second father to me. His wife was like a second mother. Their kids were like my sisters. Beyond me, our families were best friends. We lived around the corner from each other, went to the same school for some time, and all went to the same church. Our lives were entwined.

The day Greg passed away, I remember Sara calling and how badly I wanted to go be there with her. I wanted to comfort my best friend and also be comforted because it hurt me too. My dad told me no. They had to remove Greg’s body from the house and it wasn’t where he thought I should be.

As the years have passed and conversations with my mom have filled in more detail, I learned the affair started not long after Greg’s passing. My opinion? 100% a trauma bond.

The day my dad walked out the door, I realized I hadn’t just lost Greg, a man who was a father figure in my life, but I was also losing THE father figure in my life. Two dads in one year. That’s a lot of loss for a twelve-year-old girl.

It’s safe to say my relationship with my dad didn’t hold up very well after that. Because of his choices and actions, I lost my best friend too. Seeing her became a painful reminder that she got him and I had nothing.

Suddenly life went from blissfully complicated to just pain. I had to grow up…fast.

I refused to see my dad most weekends he had us, which honestly didn’t matter because he would often bring my sisters home early anyway. He tried. He really did. He didn’t always know what to do but that's a part of being human, we cant possibly. He had opened a box that he didn’t know how to close instead leaving the rest of us to figure it out.

Sometimes I thought about the pain I was causing myself by excommunicating him from my life. But my mind thought it was only fair to punish him for what he had done. Punish him for how he had hurt me, my mom, and my sisters. Eventually I took it upon myself to go into my mind and play a game of operation to remove every good memory I had with him. This would keep me safe. Every time I was carefully tweezing one out, it would catch on a nerve and I felt it sting while I erased our entire relationship. I laid all those memories in a mental box somewhere deep in my mind and brushed them under the rug. Now and then I find them resurfacing, faded in color, but full of feeling.

Over the last seventeen years, my dad and I have been through countless ups and downs. It took me at least thirteen of those years to be able to forgive him. Our relationship is still a work in progress.

The day my dad left altered everything for me. I had to go from being a kid to holding the emotional weight in our family. I watched my mom struggle to hold herself together. I watched my dad come and go on multiple occasions, sometimes sober and sometimes not. I watched my sisters slowly come to understand what had happened.

I was placed in the role of protector and emotional caretaker and so I did everything I thought I needed to, to keep my family safe. No one was there to tell me any different. To explain it wasn’t my responsibility and beyond that, that it wasn’t my fault.

I want to be clear: I love my dad. Complicated as our relationship may be, I am nothing but grateful for him and the life I have been privileged to have.

This is only one piece of my greatest love story. A beginning if you will to the rest of my life and my infatuation with love itself.

I promote love and I love hearing about the depth other people have in their lives – what their greatest love stories are. And yet, I haven’t been able to share my own. Maybe it’s because I’m still writing it. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous. Maybe it’s because if I put it on paper and if I share it with you, there will be judgment. I’m human. I’m not embarrassed of my experiences but sometimes I’m nervous to share them.

As I have so carefully coined this year though, it is my year of doing. Taking action, relishing in the chances, and putting forth everything to risk it all. This year I do. This year I share. This year I create more and build connections with people I never thought possible. I’m stoked for the projects that are coming and I can’t wait to share them with you!

This is the first of many excerpts of my greatest love story. Join me as I dive back into my past and reveal all the darkness that has become my muse for a much lighter and brighter life. Maybe you’ll learn a thing or two, or maybe you’ll be able to relate. Maybe it’ll be just what you need to hear or maybe it’ll be a story for you to indulge in when you need a little more hope in your life.

With every piece I’ve learned something about myself and life and this is where I get to give it back to you. My dad may not have known how to handle his situation and may not have had the words to get me through it, but today I can wholeheartedly give them back to myself.

I’ll leave you with this lesson:

The beginning always leads to something greater. Stop looking and start living.

Love Always,

Riss