My Father’s Legacy: I’m Not Sure He Knew He Ruined Our Lives Before They Even Started

My dad’s legacy was a true surprise. You may already suspect that this first sentence is meant to be ironic.

My dad was a drug addict, a narcissist, and an abuser. I guess I never processed all the things he did. When he died, my uncle told us. He had to drive for three hours to our home. We didn’t have contact with him for years because he choose my dad’s side and balmed my mom for keeping us away from my dad. Even though the judge decided this, my uncle blamed us a lot.

When he told us our dad died, he probably expected us to break down in tears. Well… we didn’t. It felt uncomfortable to have my uncle in our house telling us our devil (his “beloved” brother) died. After 15 very short minutes he was back in the car heading home again. I’m not sure how everything went from there on. I guess I cried; eventually it became clear that him being dead didn’t made things easier at all. We needed to process all the years of abuse, threats, and pain.

After a therapeutic goodbye (we didn’t go to the funeral), the technical part came around the corner. He had a house, he had debts, and other problems he left behind. As an underage kid my mom had to be my guardian.

A long story short, I was 16 years old and I had a debt. of 300.000 euros (roughly $341,000 US dollars).

Years later, I still get confronted with everything he has done. When I want to open a bank account, I have to prove he is dead and I haven’t done anything wrong. My brother wanted to become a policeman, well… that just wasn’t possible. If  I go to a certain place my dad had lived a few years, I better not say my family name out loud.

Sometimes drugs addicts tell us things about our dad when they find out our family name. They tell us the most awful stories about what he did and how he died (at least, those are the stories on the streets). In that way, his legacy is still a surprise for us. Every month I find out another gruesome detail about him.

For me it’s nice to know more about him because a lot of my memories are blocked. It’s hard for me to not have any control about my mind. My mom still needs to process things as well. That means she tells a lot of stories that become clear just now. For me it feels ok to hear these stories. Of course it’s hard to hear all these bad things about your dad, but I never felt positive about him so it doesn’t really change the way I see him.

My mom told me a story I had heard before, but every time she tells a little bit more details. She told how dysfunctional my entire family on my dad’s side is. She told me how abuse, suicide, schizophrenia, incest, rape, drugs, and everything else you can think of is a huge part of this family. My mom told me how my dad was part of a dark family secret. His niece was the only girl in that family along with her mom. She had two older brothers and a dad. Her dad and brothers sexually abused her for quite a long time. Apparently my dad played a role in this drama too. I guess he was involved in the rape that was going on. After a little while the girl/woman (I’m not sure how old she was at the time) couldn’t take it anymore and demanded her mom to choose her side. Her mom didn’t want to lose her family so she always let it happen. The mother still didn’t want to confront the rest of the family so she act like nothing had happened. The daughter at one point couldn’t take it anymore. She disappeared…. They never found her, nobody knows what happened with her.

Now the most shocking part for me is yet to come (like knowing that my dad was involved isn’t shocking enough). When my mom was pregnant with me, they needed a name. They weren’t sure if I would be a boy or a girl, so they had a boy’s name and a girl’s name. My mom and dad both had different ideas of a name for me. My dad really wanted to call me Edith. Whatever name my mother tried, he only wanted that name for me. Eventually my brother was allowed to choose my name.

While my mom was telling the story of my dad being playing a part in the incest, she couldn’t remember the name of the girl which this all happened to. Eventually, my mom remembered the name of the girl: Edith…

At that point I looked at my mom, she thought the same thing as me. How fucked up is it he wanted to call you Edith? I never realized that. Sorry, she said to me. She was totally right, how could this be?

Of course it affected me. He wanted to call his own daughter after the niece he raped. What kind of a sick mind can make this up? What intentions did he have while wanting this? It’s hard for me to realize because I truly can’t find an innocent explanation. All this time I thought he didn’t mean to do certain things, but now I’m not sure anymore.

I can’t believe a dad would do that to his daughter. I can’t believe he had good intentions with wanting this. I just can’t ….

On what purpose did he bring me into this world? What did I ever mean to him if he already fucked it up this bad before I was even born? The scars he already made on my unborn soul. It’s so hard to accept something so wrong—it just changes my whole perspective on everything.

It just hurts….

Well this is his legacy: debts, traumas, and questions. I’m not sure if he had ever realized this. I’m not sure he knew he ruined our lives before they even started.

~written by Namastéallday~