Father Father Let Me Down

To say the least, this part of my life story is very painful. it describe described the very turbulent strained, but almost beautiful relationship that I had with my birth father. I was born January 20, 1972 James and Betty Jo Hendrick. Doctors told my parents the following. “ Your son has the characteristics of a mongoloid child and will not live long.” Bring on flavor and eye doctor diagnose me as legally blind. when my mother came home to my father to tell him the news, he bluntly told her that he could not handle it.. For years, at least my first 25 years of life I’ve blamed myself for the dissolution of my parents divorce when I was a baby simply because I honestly believed that my father walked away because he was blind. My maternal grandmother, grandma Sawyer told me the truth that dad suffered from severe mental illness. Some of it, based on some trauma he had, and that was part of the reason behind the divorce which he filed.. The first time I remember, seeing him was when I was four years old he was talking to my mother about some strange idea he had about trimming his eyebrows. I thought that was rather strange and exotic.. The time I saw him, I was six years old and I had strep throat. my mother had to work so she asked my dad to take me to the pediatrician.. In the car, my dad turned to me and said “ no I know you don’t like shots and needles but if you have to take one, I’ll be right there, but you have to be the big little man and take it and I promise you I’ll take you somewhere nice to eat and then get you some candy before I drop you off at your grandmas. He walked me into the pediatricians office and true to form. I had to take a shot. . We were escorted into a smaller examining room where the shot was given all that first I screamed and cried my father held and hugged me, hushing me calmly. . When it was over, he told me that I was his little big man and he would take me to get some lunch and some treats.. he didn’t take me to the parents of my mother second husband, a man who I will call my godfather because I do not like the word stepfather. My first bad memory of him was. The next time I saw him was in the spring of 1977. It was a Saturday afternoon and he took me and my two year-old brother to a local park. We were having a fun at first but then being legally blind I found him leaving me somewhere where I wasn’t sure with the right place for me to go. He took me to a short but tall, spiraling staircase to a slide that I wasn’t familiar about. I commonly just followed the instructions in my father until we got to the very top.. he didn’t ordered me to go down the slide, but being blind, and afraid of heights, I didn’t want to do it. My little brother was yelling with glee as he slid down and then I heard my father scream. “ why can’t you be more like your brother! I said get down the slide now!” When I got back to the house, I was glad to see my mother and stepfather, and even though I was mortified, I wouldn’t tell a soul about the verbal abuse and the trauma I suffered. I was expecting him being a good father to catch me when I fell. He was nowhere in sight.. From then, on when school was not in session, I was afraid of leaving my mothers sight. except of course to visit on weekends with my maternal grandparents.. I shared with absolute fear when a family friend suggested that I attend summer camp. The trauma stayed with me for a long time. Despite that a few months after the trauma, my godfather asked that my dad go with us to watch the first Star Wars movie . He welcomed our father into our home because he knew that my dad had issues and I could never understand it until after his death earlier this year.. The next summer, in her hasty excitement, my mother informed my father that I have been taking swimming lessons, regardless of the fact that I was still afraid of water. Regardless, my dad still picked me up and took me to his apartment expecting me to swim before length of the pool.. when I told him that I was not that advanced and swimming, he turned me at curse of blue streak the main message I got from him that evening was “ you can’t do anything right” I didn’t see him until the next year. Easter 1979. My father picked me up and took me to the Lutheran Church that he been going to ever since he was a child and we sat with my great aunt.. we had a lovely lunch together and watched TV then dad put me in what was his truck and took me to a candy store near our house in Midland county Texas, where we had been living since November 1978 “ Your mom tells me that your favorite candy is starburst.” Dad said “ Yes sir I love Stardust.” I said “ You have been such a good boy quiet in church well mannered at lunch I’m gonna get you some starburst.” Not everything was a bed of roses at that time my father was pulling for my mother and godfather to put me in the school for the blind, but my mother and vision resource teacher read, rejected the idea. I saw him again the next spring and 1980 when Mama took my brother and I swimming at his apartment. My brother was having the time of his life swimming in the water being five years old, but I was still mortified of being under the water and my father was not that patient with me on that count. I was mortified and afraid and happy when my mother finally took us home.. I tried to forget that part of the trauma, but then a few days after he died, my brother who was born five years younger than me, called me and reminded me and the memory just came crashing back in writing. This has been painful, and I have to admit, sometimes the trauma still keeps coming back.. I saw him around Christmas time a year later and Mama was discussing with him. My financial future dad strongly suggested that she get the state help me get on some security income where I could be.”set for life”. After his death and going through his things, I discovered that my father was a hard shell Democrat with an entitlement mentality thinking that the government knew best thing about what was going on in our lives I beg to differ.. Two years later, not long after my 13th birthday I came home from school. We’re not other set me down. My father was badly injured in a motorcycle wreck.. it was strange. It didn’t even register to me as he hasn’t hadn’t visited me in a while.. of course a few months before I was seeing a specialist in Dallas dealing with my birth effects when the topic of my Mediterranean anemia came up and the doctor wanted to interview my father. My mother told him plainly good luck.. A year and a half later, I was listening to music in my room when my other Besty and saying that my father had invited me to a picnic and fun at waterpark near my house. I felt excited about it.. And when the day came. August 27, 1984. My father took me to the park and we changed into our bathing suits. . At first it was fun, but then my father put me through some equally frightening rides a roller coaster two roller rafting rides.. At the end of that day, I was picked on at the picnic dinner buddy some kids related to my father‘s colleagues. Then we went to the big rampage, which was several feet down at least 30 feet or more.. I had to carry this big seat of the slide and not get a few people going down and it was like a roller coaster. I was mortified!. “ get on the slide.” Dad said “Dad I don’t know about this .” “ What to know son you’re holding up the line get down the slide!” The lady, running the slide, said that we were holding up the line. Then my father turned to me and began yelling. “ You got cement in your ears! I said get down the slide now!” It took me 16 years, almost forgiven, and even then the trauma from the enforced down a slide of great Heights once again still hits me. I was still lucky that a friend of my family at church was one of the lifeguards that helped me out of the pool where the slide went down into.. I went home and told her neighbor who told my mother that I didn’t want to see my father again.. My anger stay with me offered on for 15 1/2 years. I wondered the father he could understand me, despite my disabilities and limitations not a father who wanted an exact carbon copy of him. He wasn’t at my graduation, but thanks to an uncle on my dad side. I was able to get over that when I graduate from high school.. he wasn’t at my wedding on June 14, 1997 and at that point my anger just screw along beyond belief.. by the time, my marriage was feeling, I swore in my raft that I would find someway to make him suffer. He had died.. It’s something how the adversity of divorce can make you be humbled and learn to forgive certain people who had hurt you or traumatized you. There have been people strong authority, people in my life professors a neighbor they have reminded me of my father and a part of me will need to latch under them thinking they could be a father figure, and if it turned out there, their personality was much much match to my own father and because of that I grew to despise my father even more.. Shortly after Christmas, I got a call from my uncle. My father had struggled with lung problems and was supposedly near death door.. I prayed earnestly to know what to do and God commanded me to go to the VA hospital in big Spring Texas to reconcile with my father. I can't say my relationship with my father was a bed of roses, far from it. He was right about leaving behind some of the friends I had. But I felt often he treated me like a child. He was always trying to overcompensate for the years lost, and although I said nothing I wanted to say. "Thanks a lot, Dad! You could've been there for me when I was in high school and college when I really need to know how to be a man