A better synopsis

I got way carried away in my previous entry trying to set the scene for the current drama. I dunno if anyone’s gonna wanna wade into that.

The TL;DR version is: my parents suck and I barely talk to them (especially my father. I did try to cultivate a relationship with my mom, for a while, before I realized the full extent of what an asshole she is). They do send me money on my birthday and at Christmas, though.

Recently my dad made – via email – what I believe is a veiled ultimatum of “I’ll only send you money for your upcoming birthday if you agree we can visit you.”

I was going to make up an “oh I would but I can’t right now because -” excuse, something to string them along just enough to keep the money coming. They give a big enough chunk of cash that I’d definitely feel the loss. But my roommate/platonic life partner person, The Dandy, said I might as well just tell the truth. And, I mean, I’ll miss the money, but I’m in a place in my life where I don’t actually need it, so.

I ended up replying to my father that I’m not willing to visit with him and my mom because it brings up too many childhood memories and I end up all fucked up for days after and it’s just a lot. And I listed a bunch of specific memories. Because I strongly suspect my father has either forgotten what he’s done or willfully diminished it in his head to “sometimes I would get a little bit annoyed with my child.”

And when said child grows up and directly reminds you that you once punched a hole in the wall right next to their head in a fit of rage, it’s hard to rationalize that away as being just a li’l bit peeved, amirite? And perhaps some kind of mental floodgates will open and a bunch of actual, unadulterated memories will crash through. So my email to my father may well have hit him like the plot twist in the movie Memento: this whole time, nothing was what he thought it was. Dun-dun-dunnnnnnnnnn.

And so far he hasn’t written back. Or sent me money for my birthday.

I suppose there’s always a chance they’ll send something belatedly, once they recover a bit from my email, if only to preserve the fiction that they’re nice people? I dunno. For my own well-being I’m going to assume not, and further assume that this isn’t the end of their participation in my life. They’ll probably make some kind of response eventually. And it will be absolutely deluded and ridiculous.