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My Dad Is A Stranger

  • darcyjs
  • Aug 1, 2024
  • 5 min read

Hi :) 


I’m Caitlin Stanley, and this is my story. 


My life started off easy in my eyes, a little girl with the world at her feet. Everything in my life was going great, and I wouldn’t bat an eye on anything that came my way. But, that was before my parents really started to show me their true colours towards each other and eventually towards me and my sister. I was around six or seven when I really started looking closely and actually hearing what my parents were saying towards each other, it definitely wasn’t that parent- lovey-dovey-talk you would think. They hated each other. It got to the point where me and my sister were hiding in her room, with her holding me, saying “It’s okay” while they were screaming at each other. I knew that everything wasn’t ‘okay’. But I had my sister, she was there for me when I was scared out of my mind and couldn’t hold back my tears. She has always been there for me, even when she was going through everything in her own life. I never thought she was, but looking back, she was and is my favourite person on this planet. I was the type of person who would have something bad happen to them, and just say that I was okay and to forget about it. I really thought I did forget, but being older now and growing out of things, I’ve realized that all the emotions I had towards the fights, yelling, and overall emotional abuse are coming back to finally hit me in the heart. Even though I was a kid and cried, I didn’t really know what it meant for me and my family at the time, I was just scared. When my parents finally divorced, that was the first time I actually felt it, that realization that it was happening, that hurt, and I hated it, but as me and my sister moved from my mom to dads house every week, I realized who the villain was at the end of the story. My dad. I always have this memory playing in the back of my mind, I was at home and my mom had just gotten back, it was my dad at the top of the stairs and my mom at the bottom. He was yelling as hard as he could, and all I could remember was me screaming at him to stop, pushing him away from the stairs, but he didn’t move or stop no matter how hard I tried. It was like I didn’t exist, like I didn’t matter. My mother was there for me, she made me feel like I did exist and I felt like a good person. She still makes me feel like that, even if I make a mistake or give up, she lifts me up when times are hard. It was a dread after about a year to go back and forth, I just wanted to stay with my mom. I hated going to my dads house. He was an alcoholic and would drink everyday, even when having work the next morning. He even got a cleaner for the house because of how gross it had become after my mom left him, he couldn’t do a single thing for himself. I even had to clean the house myself. When my sister was old enough, she moved in with my mom, she couldn’t handle it anymore. He always made me think that we were poor, and when he came home almost every day he would tell me that he only had a hundred dollars for food. He would then say he was going out to get drinks and at the time, I didn’t know how much it cost, he would bring back a case of 24 beers, bottles of rum, and coca cola. He would bring me along to get food but didn’t get enough food for me to make lunch to bring to school. I barely got new clothing, and always had to rely on my mom. However, with her having to pay more than my dad did for child support, I didn’t get a lot. My mom, stepdad and sister moved out to Alberta, but I had to stay behind with my dad for a month before I could see them. Those weeks were some of the worst weeks of my life. I was bored, sad, and just wanted to be with my family. I told my dad that I was going to move there and see how I felt about it, but as soon as I got there and saw my sister, new home, mom and stepdad, I just knew I wasn’t going to leave their side. I didn’t want to go back and live the way I did with all the lies, having no reason to stay, and I didn’t have many friends. Since then, I've been gratefully taken care of by my family and I wouldn’t ask for more. I don’t ever want to see my father. Recently, he's been trying to bribe me into coming back to live with him by offering concert tickets, camping trips and making me feel bad that he’s there all alone. He still is my dad and I will never forget that, but I'm done with him and can’t stand to have him in my life anymore. Every time he texts me, I get a wave of sadness and anger that I can’t help. I hate when he calls and says that I should come back. My dad is narcissistic and can’t even put his own kids over himself, and I really don’t think that he can love someone more than himself. I’m moving back to B.C. soon, and he keeps telling me that if I don’t like where I'm going then the doors are always open. Open in hell with him. He wants to sign me up for school there just in case. Even if I don’t like where I live, I would rather stay there than live with him. After moving away with my mom, I've come to the conclusion that the only reason why he wants me back is because of money, and how he has to pay so much for child support because I live far away. Leaving my hometown, my dad, and starting a new chapter really helped me to figure out who I was, and helped me see what I was doing wrong in my life and how to move forward with these memories. The emotional abuse I went through, and how hard it was for me to climb out of that dark hole really showed me what kind of people I want in my life. It also showed me the people I should avoid, and now I’m not scared of my dad, because I don’t have one anymore. He’s just a stranger to me now.          

 
 
 

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