Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Seems like it was yesterday when I saw your face

Refound my love for Christina Aguilera's song 'Hurt'. That song along with the music video that makes me cry every single time, make me remember the few good childhood memories I have. All of them with my dad.

My parents divorced when I was 7 months old. My uncle pretty much saw it coming, he didn't see what my dad saw in that woman. Neither do I. Dad was controlled by her. I seriously thought he had enough backbone, but custody shit always favor the mother. She didn't really look after me and some weeks later after moving back to her hometown (forgetting me in my carriage outside the store for a long time) after failing to raise me, she called dad to come and get his brat outta there. My lucky strike. For a while.

They fetched me here, dad and granny, who raised me together, but dad was always distant to me, until I learned the truth of my family. I was in school already, when I probably called him dad for the first time. He worked as a chef in the hotel's restaurant in the town. When I first came into this little village, granny told me I never played, laughed or even smiled. It took a few weeks of me almost laughing and then suddenly growing serious, as if remembering that I was not supposed to do that. Who knows what she did to me when I was a toddler. Granny said that once I started smiling, I never really stopped. Until I came to understand how easy some people had it with their families.

I remember how dad always had time for me. We would play badminton or throw darts, he'd tell jokes or just be there. When he met my stepmother, I was happy. I would have a chance to have a mother. She would treat me nice and play with me too, I befriended her son, who soon became like a big brother to me. I felt like I had a family. Dad moved in with her, when she lived in Viitasaari. Shit just likes to hit the fan hard.

Once summer we were going to go to Sweden, leaving 3am in order to make it to Turku in time. Dad got a call from his friend that he and two others wanted to go bar hopping to Kuortane, if he could drive them there. I had a bad feeling and begged dad not to go. He just petted me and said that it's fine. That was the last day that the father I knew and loved was there.

We had just reached Turku, when my uncle called our family friend who was the only relative with a cell phone, the couple we were traveling with. My dad and his friends had been in an accident, collided with a moose. The owner of the car, a good friend to us all had not worn a seat belt and was tossed out of the car through the broken windshield. He would have survived if the car had not landed in top of his upper body, (on wheels) suffocating him. Dad was hit worst. He was in the ICU for 10 days before he woke up. That hospital was already painstakingly familiar for the sickly me, now even more so. He remembered me and recognized me when he woke up.

Since it was a head injury, he was more or less coherent, but at least he was alive. The two from the backseat were only scraped, they had called for help. They married some time after it but have divorced some years back. He is the only friend of my dad and late uncle who still keeps in touch.
He never regained his old self, having lost some of his balance and his right arm does not function properly still.

Dad continued on with his life, I was overjoyed when I heard I was going to be a bigsister. Having lived so long as the only child had its perks and downsides. Once I planned on moving to live with them, after elementary, but then I got some friends and stayed here. They visited less and less and we didn't visit them often as granny was feeling worse. Soon it became once a year. Dad even sent social services after us when I remained there. I don't know how much of his talks are from my stepmother, who is not much better from my real mother, but at least she knows how to be one. They were there when I was forced to go through the confirmation. But they weren't there when I graduated. Not at the party either. Granny had just been in a massive heart surgery, when she was in my confirmation at the church and later at the party.

My sister, who is 9 years younger than me, has never known dad like I have done. To her dad has always been unable to do certain tasks and to me, father was the one who goofed around and played with me, made me happy.

It is easy for him to criticize how I have been raised. He has not dealt with teens. That is what gramps said after I had snapped at him and dad was rather shocked how I acted towards my gramps. He took it as nothing, having raised two boys past teens. Very easy for them to whine to me for not doing my part of things here. They do not know me, how messed up I have become, how I feel when I return after the 6 hour day at the workshop back here.

Not many understand me. Sad thing is, none of them is a blood relative.

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