Comment on So you grew up with a dad who didn’t know how to express love? Here’s how it could be affecting you today by Tom.
I should probably have signed up. I’m from Ireland and my ex moved back to Brazil when she found she was pregnant. She told me the day she left on plane. I supported her, she had Agatha, I wasn’t there for her birth, I asked for DNA proof. She was 3 months old when I saw her in Brazil in February, 6 mths old in June, 9 months now and nearly ready to walk. She is growing up too fast. She has such sad eyes sometimes. 3 times a year I plan to see her while I finish a college degree.
I was polluted by my fathers bitterness and anger with the way he was treated by his distant father, my grandfather whose parents died when he was 16 and had to look after the homestead. My father was the only son with 5 sisters, he was spoilt but he is a very needy man and was tyrannically suppressive as we all grew up. I remember he turned the bed over on mam and we had to lift it off her. I remember her locking us all in the bedroom as he tried to knock down the door. Pulled my sister up the hall by the hair and smacked her across the other side of her bed. Luckily she got the door closed.
Too much discipline, but involvement all the same. I’m not having enough involvement in Agatha’s life. Her mother’s parents split up when she was 8, her father was an alcoholic but only verbally abused his mother, her and her father are close now.
We got the belt and the sally rod and silent treatment and manipulative blackmail and being played off against each other. Me and the brothers reckoned we were only born to help or slave for him on the farm and he treated the cattle better. It was just keeping tradition though. He laughed how he broke me at 16, like a horse. He used to work a lot in England when we were small to send money over. Mam has always been a very loving woman, she’d wipe his ass and care for him, sometimes us children may have been seen as a threat. He’s a workaholic, he loves work.
But Agatha, my daughter has her grandfather and step grandfather, and maybe I should see her more. I noticed she needs to be held, picked up. Brazilian culture much different than Irish. Agatha’s aunt just separated with her husband and I ask how their daughter is, she’s OK, it’s cool, says Agatha’s mother. They all look after each other’s kids, or adopt or take in one those whose parents didn’t care. I ended up letting her mother into my life. Maybe it was more than just because I have low opinion of myself, she’s just herself. At times I thought I was used as a sperm donor, tricked. Life goes on, I continue 2 years with my degree and see Agatha three or four times a year.
