Continuing my thread here because it feels more like home than the ranting/venting forum, so here we go.
I last saw my father when I as 21 (I'm now 32). Other than birthday/xmas cards (sometimes) and the (very) occasional email, I've not really had any contact with him (or my half brother) during that time. Yesterday, I got a letter from him saying that he doesn't know why we lost contact and that he would like to build bridges, blah, blah, etc.
He has a history of depression and anger management issues, and it sounds like he's back in counselling. (He has been before but always gave up.) The letter he sent me (and a very similar one to my sister) sound like something he is doing as part of his therapy, rather than a genuine heartfelt wish to repair the relationship.
I have no wish to see him. I put him on a pedestal when my mum took us away from him, because I was young and depressed and felt that us leaving was the utmost injustice. But I was also young and naive and didn't really understand the way he had acted, and therefore the reasons that my mum wanted to leave. I felt that he had been abandoned because I felt abandoned. I felt that I understood him because I too was depressed.
Anyway, mum always arranged the meet ups and made sure we saw him on a regular basis - even as we got to our late teens and I went to uni, it was mum who organised the meetings.
I finally saw the light at age 21, when I asked (after psyching myself up to ask, because I was always nervous around him) if he wanted to come to my graduation and he said he was busy before I'd even given him the date. It was like a curtain dropped and everything that should have been so apparent before was suddenly there in HD for me to see. I suddenly appreciated my mum a lot more. I realised that probably the only thing my father and I had in common were out mental health issues, and that the 'relationship' we'd had for the past 16 years (I was 5 when we left) hadn't been helping me at all.
But enough of the daddy issues (I won't bore you with more right now), maybe I'll work through some of those when I finally get the courage to speak to a doctor about how I'm feeling.
The point of this long and rambling post is that I don't want to see him. I have no interest in rebuilding a relationship that was never really there in the first place. (It was always our fault when he stopped writing to us - "If they wanted to talk to me, they'd get in touch.") Does that make me a horrible person? I feel like I should have some compassion because he's working through his issues and I don't want to hamper his recovery, but I really do not want to put the time, energy, and emotional resources into this when all it will do is appease his guilt.
I feel like I should try, because depression ****ing sucks. But I'm really struggling myself at the moment and as selfish as it sounds, I do not need this and I do not want this.
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