my dad is an idiot

a different kind of poem

trying a new format here. it felt too big for a poem.

my granny dies. dad doesn’t come to the funeral. he’s weak. he thinks he’s tough but he’s weak. are you over it yet? he asks. im not. well you’re gonna have to be over it sooner or later.

my granny raised me, he didn’t. my granny bought me lemon ice-creams in the summer, he didn’t. my granny walked me to my piano lessons and told me bedtime stories. she also called me sweetie and love and corazón. my granny taught me how to make torrijas and tarta de la abuela and empanada. my granny ordered pizza when my friends came over. she played cards with me. she took me to the beach every single day. she waited for me to go on the same ride at the amusement park a hundred times. she saw me learn how to ice-skate and i knew she got bored eventually but she still came. she said i love you. she cooked me lentil soup the way i liked it for so long that i had to tell her she didn’t always have to cook it that way. she made me fried chorizo sandwiches and i told her i probably shouldn’t eat that but she knew i wanted to. she bought me chocolate and hid it from the rest of the family so only i could eat it. she bought me my first suitcase for my first ever trip on my own. she bought me my current favourite teddies. she said i love you.

he didn’t, he didn’t, and he didn’t.

sometimes it’s as simple as that. sometimes there’s no grey area. a one-off trip to the algarve doesn’t do it and a one-off feeling like taking my daughter for dinner today because i have nothing else to do, doesn’t do it either.

my granny raised me and he didn’t. and i want him to know that. i want my older, more determined self to go back to that moment in his car when he asked me if i was over it. i want to punch him. i want to make his pretty face become ugly. it’s the most girl-like thing ever, the most feminine thing ever, to sit there with my skirt and punch him for being an idiot. for disrespecting the women who have been nurturing, generous, kind, and loving to me. the women who led me here, to be my most honest, free-spirited self. i want to punch him and i want everyone to see it. i want everyone to see how polite and how respectful it is of me to do this. i want to go back to that moment and tell him he is a heartless piece of shit. i love cursing. i love that you’re not supposed to say it. what do i owe to this man? what respect does he deserve when all he’s done is harm?

✵

i will never let a dad who isn’t a dad talk like that of people who are, in fact, good loving caregivers. that will never happen in my presence. silence cuts like a knife. passivity is a bad friend. i will not be passive. i will stand there and tell them to fuck off and then i will go on with my life without any thought of them except for when i write.

i will never let a dad who isn’t a dad tell me about shoulds and shouldn'ts. i will not let them tell me how to live my life. i will not let them share their preference on what i should study in college or what job i should do or what country i should move to. i will not let them say what clothes make me look more put-together and what clothes make me look like a ‘hippie’ or an ‘emo’. i will not let them decide when i’m adult enough to learn what my family on my mum’s side has been building up the courage to tell me all these years. i will never let them say what it is to be successful. yes, you run a business but you also run away from being a father, a son, and a husband. that doesn’t sound like success to me.

i will never let a dad who isn’t a dad call me a bad person. i will not let someone who promises their daughter they’ll pay for college and bails last minute call me a bad person. i will not let someone who cheats on multiple women at the same time call me a bad person. i will not let someone who left their girlfriend in the hospital to go on a trip to the US with someone else, call me a bad person. someone who stopped their kid from drawing because they thought it was a waste of time. someone who wants to have a baby just to make him feel young again but is later going to abandon them. i will not let someone who didn’t go to her daughter’s only grandmother’s funeral, call me a bad person.

you won’t call me a bad person, dad. you don’t get to say that back to me. when we are at your favorite restaurants celebrating my 13th, 14th, 15th birthday, you don’t get to say that my half-brother is a better person than me because he shuts up. because he’s passive. because he does what you say cause he is still longing for your approval. i think you know that, that all he wants is for you to love him, so you use him, you use everyone who ever wanted to be loved by you; and that sickens me.

i’ve also wanted love and affection like any human would but i have integrity so i won’t shut up. if you think i’m a bad person because i speak my mind then it means i’m doing things right. i would be very scared if you thought highly of me, i would be terrified.

i think i’m a good person because i don’t shut up. and my granny didn’t shut up either. she knew what you were up to. people who are brutally honest, authentic, and show you instead of tell you, won’t deal with anyone’s bullshit. and that’s who my granny was. she worked for her family. very few people could say they were so generous in their lifetime. i really wish she could have had those vacations you had in azores and in the south of france. i wish she had a lover who actually loved her, because she wouldn’t just toss them away like you do every two years max. i wish her son didn’t die because she loved her son the way you could never love your son. i wish someone had told her she’s truly the coolest person they have ever met. instead, it’s you who is getting praise from everyone because you started a local business and bought an apartment near the beach. because you’re very good at talking and pretending. and people buy that. they really do. they buy the well-dressed well-spoken man who bought an apartment near the beach.

i know that when you go out for drinks and people meet you, they think you’re cool. little do they know that you’re actually an idiot.

they don’t know you told your seventeen-year-old daughter that she would be a failure. they don’t know you never bought your kids socks. they don’t know that what might seem like tough love on the outside, is cold manipulation on the inside. they don’t know that you made your daughter measure herself every week and if the weight didn’t go down, you would cut her maintenance. they don’t know that you never went to your daughter’s only grandmother's funeral because you didn’t feel like it. they don’t know that they could count the times you’ve picked her up from school with their fingers. they don’t know that your mum didn’t meet your kids until they were seven or eight. that you don’t speak to your daughter anymore and you don’t have any other reason other than ‘she’s a mess’. people buy that because you bought a house near the beach.

✵

i don’t care about your money. it always seems like you have more money than you do because you spend it all on yourself. if you spent the money our mothers had to spend, then this would be a completely different story, wouldn’t it? you wouldn’t be going around in an expensive car picking up twenty-something-year-olds. it is very easy to go to the US with some girl you met in barcelona when you don’t have to pay for your kid’s clothes, activities after school, food, and college. life is easy for you. so easy that it hurts to watch you bring people down. people whose life has been hard and still, they showed up, for themselves and those around them. they didn’t just talk about success like you do, or about family (something you have no idea about). they really were there. they were someone to talk to, someone to hug, someone to clean your dishes for you when you’re too tired, someone to watch tv shows with, and someone to kiss you goodnight. maybe that’s what you found threatening about my granny. that she was what you could never be. a person with integrity, with a big heart, and generosity. a strong woman, the kind of person you don’t fuck with because she’s so connected to her intuition that she can see through you before anyone else does. the kind of person who isn’t shy to speak up. you were so threatened cause you knew she could see behind the layers of nice car and nice charisma. she could see you. and deep down, maybe you know you aren’t such a good person after all.

I know that no one knows you’re an idiot. but I do. and my granny did too. and that’s why the other day after years of not seeing you, i told you i have no respect for you. i told you in front of people and i don’t care if people thought i was having a nervous breakdown. i was calm and assertive and i said what no one who has been hurt by you was brave enough to say. i think sometimes we think we need to hide our emotions out of politeness and be well-behaved for people to respect us but i won’t be well-behaved. in front of me, there was someone who had said the worst possible imaginable things to my face, pretending just like he always does. my body screamed danger as soon as I saw you and said don’t get one inch closer. i said you’re not a decent person. i like spontaneity and i like true feelings and i love people saying truly how they feel; and i hate people like you who are cold and calculated and manipulative and you never know what they are thinking. in that moment, i showed my true feelings and even though i had no one there to hold my hand, i was there for myself and for my granny and i was there for all the times i wanted to tell you off but i was too afraid to do so.

when i was walking back to my house, i cried at the thought that i could never not love myself. that i lost the chance of having a good dad the day i was born but losing myself would be the greatest loss of all.

i had me. me and my words and my courage and my baldness and my not well-behaved behaviour.

apart from what i told you outside the court, you deserved to be called an idiot. but I’ll do that in writing, since i’m much better at that.

you are an idiot. all through and through. and i know i’m not alone in this, my granny knew, she knows, and that’s enough for me right now.