My father didn’t like William at all. He had long ago spotted me among the sons of his friends, so he didn’t consider my other boyfriends and didn’t take them seriously. He was living with illusions and dreams, and after the news of my engagement to William, he threw me out of the house. He expected me to change my mind and apologize, but that didn’t happen.
My mother supported me, but she couldn’t go against my father – she was afraid of him, and she was also afraid of being left without a roof over her head, because she hadn’t had relatives for a long time, and there was no way to go to someone else. I was in a completely different situation. My mother-in-law was a wonderful woman. She gladly allowed William and me to live with her, and she supported us in every way – morally and financially. The three of us lived together, and later we had a little boy, and life together was still much better and quieter than life with my resentful father.
Because of my dad, I couldn’t really communicate with my mom either. She had to lie about meeting her friends to visit me and her grandson. She was afraid of Dad for a reason. He’s a very difficult man, and he can be violent and hit me. But somewhere deep down in her heart my mother loved him very much, and she could not imagine how to leave him alone.
So she was patient, and William and I lived as if my parents lived not in the same city as us, but very, very far away.
Only nine years later, when our son was already in high school and my mother-in-law had a stroke, did my mother persuade my father to visit us. He had already noticeably grown cold and missed us. He was happy to see his grandson and even hugged William, accepting him as his son. Mom helped a lot with taking care of my mother-in-law, and William and I mostly worked. So it turned out that my grandson had to be left with his grandfather – to take him to school, to pick him up, to take him to soccer, and so on.
I began to notice that after spending time with his grandfather, the child was different. He was more abrupt, more often displeased, and he could also cry for no reason. William had to ask my son for a long time what was wrong. It turned out that my father humiliated him in every way, telling him on the way to and from school that he was an unnecessary child, that we, as parents, would not love him with his grades, that he was useless at soccer lessons and therefore was always on the bench.
My father hasn’t changed a bit. He still hates William and me, and he’s ready to ruin our lives in any way he can, taking revenge for what happened so many years ago.
That was the end of my relationship with him. It was better for me to leave work early to take care of my son, and communicate only with my mother, rather than tolerate such an attitude. He is an adult, even an old man, and he is not afraid of anything, and does not think about anything. If Daddy doesn’t need a family, we don’t need him either. We somehow lived without him for nine years, and we will live ten times longer.
