Laughter, Key to My Escape

Divorce. Something some people have to go through and some people don’t. No matter if you are the one getting the divorce or if you are a family member stuck going through it, both situations hurt like crazy. Sometimes a divorce is as easy as one can through due to there isn’t many people involved. Other times a divorce has family members who are trapped in the middle of the mess.  I have been one of the family members who has been hurt by a divorce and laughter has been my only key out of the situation.

My dad was never the greatest person. Although before the divorce I thought he was the greatest man on this planet. During the divorce my father was a complete jerk to my mom. Once the divorce was final and we had moved away from my old school my father started treating me poorly and was spoiling my sister.

My father would use me to find out information about my mother, or for me to relay messages that he knew would hurt her but I didn’t know at the time. He would do things like call my mom’s then fiance, now husband, Forrest and just relay messages that made mom look like a horrible mother. It took me quite some time, and my step dad telling me things that mom would never tell us, to realize what my father was doing to the family.

I didn’t go to my fathers house for almost 3/4 of a year after that. He would try to reach out to me and I would say the bare minimum. Just giving him as much silent treatment my mom would allow me to give. Finally she was starting to make me go to his house again. Even with me over at his house I still gave him the cold shoulder as much as possible. This went on for a few visits before finally I put my foot down and refused to go to his house all together. This went on for about 2-3 years before I started to try to spend more time with him, hoping that he had changed. Sadly, I was proven completely wrong.

The past year my father has only been reaching out to me and my sister if it was convenient for him. He also tried buying me back into his life for my 18th birthday buying me Brantley Gilbert concert tickets. It was obvious to me what he was doing because I had already told him prior to when he offered I was going to purchase them myself and go up with a friend. I even told him about how I quit my Sunday shifts at work to be able to spend more time with him and his new family. I also told his new wife about it due to my biological father does not have the greatest memory all the time. Yet although he didn’t care at all. He only has contacted us when it was convenient for him to have us around so it would look like he had one big, happy, not broken family in front of his parents. The last time we heard from him was Christmas eve party. After he dropped us back off at our house he has not tried to contact me or my sister again.

I have been a person who has given too many second chances. While I know I pushed my father out of my life before, when I was younger and the divorce was still fresh. I have learned that sometimes the best thing to do is allow the people who have hurt you the most out of your life. The only way for me to do that so far has been to laugh at the “father” figure that he has been in my life. All I have done is so far take all the memories of how he has hurt me and turn them into memories to laugh about how he had to treat my family like crap to make himself look stronger. My biological father has shown me exactly what I do not want my future kids father to be like. I have chosen to just laugh away his pain that he has created just to give me some relief.

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