It was hard to go on with this new part of my life and even harder to write about it. Even though I had gotten along swimmingly with my step-father, not all of my sisters did. And there was a lot of tension in the family. Things that I found out about our past life and the hurt and pain that followed, it was not an easy path to take. And when I did find out what really happened, it was painful to ask my mother, because I thought that she would lie to protect me. So I let that pain go for two years before I broached the subject and asked her. She of course did not lie, but it did not make it any easier to finally face the truth about my father.
For a while it was fun because he was the "Disneyland Dad". He had slowly stopped coming and seeing us. I don't know what possessed my mother to even let us go and stay with him in the first place, but there was always supposed to be someone else with us. It was usually my grandmother, she was the sweetest soul and it pains me to know how she must have felt after my father quit coming to see us. Our visits to her stopped as well, I didn't get to see her again until I was a young adult. She had memories of us, but the dementia had set in so bad that even though she remembered all of her grandchildren, she didn't recognize any of us. She would talk to us and recognize a voice and then keep asking where we were. That was such a hard time, for her as well as all of us girls.
I think it was even years later before my two younger sisters found out about my dad. We all knew then the horrid truth of why my parents had divorced, my father had been molesting my older sister. It had been going on since she was probably six or seven and she was 11 when my parents finally separated. The man that I had idolized and wanted to be just like was a monster. There were times when I just thought that if I retreated far enough into a hole and was a good little girl that nothing else bad would happen. I hated him and when in the midst of our high school years he came back wanting to reestablish a family tie, I was very guarded. Some of my other sisters welcomed him back with open arms, but I could not. This man that had practically shattered my existence wanted back into my life. My sisters talked me into seeing him so finally I went and met with him one day. He tried to explain why it had happened, he told me it was my mothers fault because she was not as physical with him as he had wanted. I wasn't one to make a scene, so I didn't say much. I wanted to tell him that I could have forgave him more if he had cheated on my mother with a whore. I was seething inside and wanted to scream at him, I wish that I had had the guts to tell him how I felt and I regret it to this day. The pain that he had caused and now he was going to blame it on someone else. I almost hated him even more at that point in my life. Why couldn't he just apologize and say that he had gotten some help. None of that ever happened which made me even more gaurded of him.
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