My father was always a tortured person. His family was pretty fucked up and that's where he learned many of the things that led to the way it is now.
He didn't know his limits with alcohol, although he didn't drink much, as long as he felt happy. He got that from my granddad who was a serious alcoholic for most of his life. He was the type of man that would beat my dad up as well, which didn't help. I can only recall two instances where my dad ever hit me and it was never excessive. It was mostly his frustration with me as a young kid and his inability to show this frustration any other way.
My family went downhill over a large amount of time, my dad cheated multiple times as far as I know, never owned up to it and even gave my mom an STD, but he never admitted doing anything wrong. When I was about 11 years old and after he was slowly driving his company against the wall, my parents split up but had to live in the same house, in part because we didn't have the money and in part they wanted to be there for me and my two sisters. His aforementioned lack of venting his frustration in a healthy way led to beating up my mother one night, which she saw as her cue to take her kids and leave. She took my sisters to a womens shelter and gave me the choice to go with her. At that time I didn't understand what was happening when we weren't present and I loved my dad, so I decided to stay, because I didn't want him to be left all alone. One of the first decisions I regret deeply in my life...
Over the next 3 months, my dad would cleverly talk me into being his witness without me realizing what I was helping him with. He stalked, followed and threatened my mother multiple times and used every opportunity to pressure her into coming back. In his twisted, frightened way he was trying to protect his family. Every time he stalked my mother he would come home quickly, to have me account for his whereabouts. He told me he was getting cigarettes or other things, little things. He used me to lie to the police in that way, because I didn't know what he really had done but he was my dad, he wouldn't do bad things, right? I would soon find out how bad of a man he could really be.
After he knew he had enough sway over me and showed me how badly he wanted our familty to be together again, he did one of the cruelest things to me you can do to a child. He mixed as many paracetamol pills as he could with alcohol in a small plastic vial. He knew my mother had bad bodily reactions to both alcohol and paracetamol pills which could in big doses trigger an anaphylactic shock, if I remember correctly. Aside from the other wonderful side effects overdoses of paracetamol can have on your body, like liver failure and damage to your kidneys etc.
At this time it was decided by court, that I "had" to visit my mother once or twice a week. I don't remember exactly if it was once or twice a week. So my dad instructs me to put this mixture into her coffee when she's not looking, he told me that me doing this would help get our family back together, to be happy again. And I believed him. I didn't know at the time what was in that vial, I just knew I wanted my parents happy again. I didn't really think, I just did what he told me. So I drugged my mother and gave her one of the worst nights of her life. She survived, but she had a friend call her every hour to make sure that she could still answer the phone, was still concious that night. I can only imagine what I put her through that day. The next morning my mom rightfully screamed at me, asked me what I had done, what I had given her and why. I still pretty vividly remember how her face looked that morning. She was white as bones, large black rings under her eyes, a pained expression on her face for being betrayed by me. Eventually I confessed to doing it and she went to the ER to get herself checked out. I felt horrible. Here I was trying to make it better and it got so much worse, I thought she hated me too now. She would never forgive me, from looking at her face I knew, while being only just 12 years old, I almost had killed my mother or at least seriously harmed her because my dad said so.
A month before that I had already done horrible things, my dad had repurposed a baby phone to act as a bug to listen in on my mom and made me install it in her living room, under the table. To this day I don't know why I didn't question any of it. Maybe it was still the shock of this whole situation, the fact that my dad became this other person slowly but surely.
After three or four months my mother got sole custody of us and I had to move in with her and my sisters. That's where I subconciously began to deprogram from the things my dad used to tell me. I began to ask my mothers side of the story and ultimately believed her more and more, questioned things my dad said and did more and saw them for what they were.
He didn't stop back then. He did so many horrible things to so many people, he extorted his new girlfriend and used her to get loans in her name and squeeze her of everything she had. He used the little sister of his girlfriend in his plans to kidnap my mother and leave her somewhere in the woods. Thankfully that never happened. He slashed her tires multiple times while she was at work, to keep her from leaving and to "have a chance to talk".
The weirdest thing in all of this is that I can understand why, on a certain level. This is all speculation but at least in my mind it makes the most sense. Family was everything to him, because he never had a real family when he was a kid. I think he just broke when my mom "cheated" on him. They were seperated as I said before, but lived in the same house because of us still. She met someone and had a fling with him. I think at this point my dad still thought it would work out somehow. I don't know how he could think that after all his lies, cheating and countless other things he had done. He just deluded himself to eventually make it all right. That my mother tried to move on hurt him deeply and I think that's where he just broke as a human being. His fantasy became his reality and everyone became his enemy. From what I can tell he just never recovered, never sought help. He actively refused to get therapy. To this day he thinks it's my moms fault that it all fell apart. I haven't seen him in 14 years or something, because I don't see the point. About two years ago he wrote me a letter after he almost sabotaged my student loan.
In germany, if the parents can pay for you to go to college, the government can and will refuse to give you a student loan in most cases. So he told the people that decide if you get a loan or not that he would really like to pay for me, although he instantly admitted that he didn't have the means to pay. That was enough though to make me have to prove that he couldn't and wouldn't pay and that this was just his way to fuck with my life again. So I had to prove that he still owed my sisters aligmony in the tens of thousands and that he would have to pay them first before he could ever be considered to be able to pay for me. He knew full well that if he had succeeded I would be "dependant" on him and he could use that to force himself in my life again.
Then came his letter. On the first page he told me how proud he was of me for being able to get a degree, that he had learned now how wrong he was and that he made mistakes, all the things you say to seem sincere. Weirdly enough he couldn't even keep his lies straight till page three, where he again blamed my mom for everything and made all the excuses I already heared a hundred times.
I know that he will never change and after over 14 years I can't care anymore. I am so detached from him I don't even see him as my father anymore.
That's why I'll never see my father again.
