Every day I love you less and less

I’ve been pondering an entry on work, telling you a bit more about the people I seem to spend far too much time with but I feel I have to get the following out. It’s been niggling at me all weekend and I fear it may explode in a huge raaaaaargh kind of way if I don’t put it down somewhere. I suppose it kind of ties in with the whole impending parenthood thing as well.

To be honest, I don’t understand my father. In fact, I feel like I don’t know him at all and it frustrates me no end at times. We are actually very similar. My love of reading comes from him. (Whilst my mum reads a fair bit, it was my dad that got me hooked on sci-fi/fantasy novels and encouraged my reading. My mum always thought I was quite solitary as a teenager – I was – but she discouraged it.) But that doesn’t mean I feel any connection to him. I think, in some way, if someone told me tomorrow that he wasn’t actually my dad after all, I’d probably understand a bit more. He doesn’t seem to be like me or my brother and I wonder if that has to do with the alcohol.

It is a Friday ritual these days for me to get home and unplug the phone. I do this most weeks and, to be honest, I don’t feel the tiniest bit guilty about it. In fact, I feel relief. Relief that I can unwind from my week and spend time with my husband, the relief that I can watch Green Wing without hearing the phone at some hilarious comedy moment. (thank god for Sky Plus and live pause). I didn’t unplug the phone this week – I tend to do it 3 out of 4 weeks and then cope with one call a month rather than one a week. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in a few weeks and I was hoping he’d gone into one of his silent modes, which he used to do from time to time – weeks of ringing every Friday and then nothing for months. No such luck.

So the phone goes and my drunken father is on the other end. "Still pregnant?" Yes, dad, quite happily so, thanks. "Oh, well, never mind." It takes all the self control I can muster after a late shift at work to not slam the phone down there and then. Nothing like making me feel loved and nothing like making me think he’ll love his grandchild. The conversation goes on in a similar vein – "Can you not wait until February? I don’t want to be a grandfather before I’m 50." Round and round it goes, where it’ll stop, nobody knows. He then puts his partner on (as an aside, the woman deserves a sainthood quite frankly for not booting him out years ago.) She is very much looking forward to the new arrival and asks if we found out the sex at the scan. (I said no, we don’t really want to tell everyone, especially as it’s by no means certain). She then told me she was knitting things for the baby, which I was touched by. Her parting shot, before passing me back to my dad and the conversation that never ends, was, "he was worried when he couldn’t get in touch with you before." When? "Oh, I can’t remember, maybe last week." I explained that we were out celebrating our anniversary last week. (but refrain from adding, "you know, the one you both forgot." It wouldn’t have achieved anything) He can’t expect me to be in all the time to take his call, especially when he opens with something so gobsmackingly insensitive that, had it been a more hormonal moment, I would have just cried. Finally, after another round of, "Can’t you wait till February? Just cross your legs or something." he hangs up and I come off the phone feeling hurt and, quite frankly, a little unloved by someone who is meant to have created me in a loving moment (although I don’t think it really happened quite like that.) and is meant to love me unconditionally.

How do I know I’ll make a good parent? I mean, if that’s my frame of reference, surely I can’t go wrong? And yet, I do worry about it all. I’d like to think my father never meant to be like this. (although he did tell my mum he wasn’t much good with babies, he’d be better when they were older) Surely bad parents don’t set out to be bad at it. Maybe the mothering gene in me, the one that has led me this far on the journey, is only good with other people’s kids, not my own. To be honest, I’m starting to wonder how I’ll cope at all. I mean, given my previous history of mild depression and suicide attempts, what if I get post-natal depression? How will I cope when Duncan goes back to work? I need to address these issues in my head but I’m not entirely sure how to go about it.

Until there is a next time…

xx