My dad started aggressively disowning Phip when he was about eleven or twelve years old. Because he was going to a Christian Church and identified himself as Christian at the dinner table. My dad yelled from the kitchen, “No son of mine. You’re not my son. You never were.”
My mom was sitting at the dinner table, and she leaned over a little and said, “You are always my son, no matter what you believe.”
Then my mom argued with my dad about the fact that you can’t just send your own son away to live with your drug addict friend, because then they could lose all their children, and my dad mentioned he’d like the quiet.
My dad doesn’t like children. He never has. He made that perfectly clear to my mom’s entire family long before they got married. They got married because my dad got my mom pregnant on accident. He blames his cat. He says the cat chewed on the condom. He said I was a miracle baby because he tried to get me aborted. My mom is very against abortion. Unless there’s a very serious medical condition to consider. She was forced once, so it made her really protective of her kids. Then for some reason she thought she should marry the guy?
My dad was apparently sweet when we were just babies. That makes sense though. Babies give adults all kinds of weird instincts.
My little brother and I, as four and five year olds, used to discuss my dad’s mental health. We knew by then that he was badly traumatized and that was what was up with his anger. We thought we would fix it.