There has never been a topic that has been harder for me to write about. It’s not because of anything specific as far as I am aware; it just never seems to come out right. My family and I have interesting and difficult relationships. There are people that have told me that it’s normal and it’s simply how people are, others have told me that my family is dysfunctional or our situation is not ideal. I have two mothers and two fathers with a little sister that I try my best to care for. With a family so large and spread out with emotions and personalities from each person surging and clashing it can be extremely tough to really get to know any of the people that you actually care about.

Because my family became two and my sister and I became the common denominator, spending time with each parent individually, I actually began to get to know my father. For the first year and a half at least my sister and I didn’t hear about the new people our parents were seeing and that was most definitely for the best. With mom it was different, she over though everything, over controlled more than usual and tried to create a perfect would that didn’t exist. With dad the goals were getting through life and having fun in the process, laid back but with purpose.

Somehow dad found things that we’d never done before, and whether it was because we were desperate to start over or because it was real we liked them and were able to move slowly forward. We would spend hours making Lego dinosaurs or playing with matchbox cars then I would wipe off the table and clear the kitchen and remind dad that we watch needed a lunch for school in the morning. That’s how it was for a year or two; me picking up the slack, all the things that seemed to slip dads mind. On occasion we would do fun for-the-hell-of-it kinds over things that mom would never do. We set up the camping tent in the living room pulled out mats and sleeping bags and spend the night there. Once dad managed to endure and tolerate the two of us as we smeared his head and face with shaving cream. Dad gave us that boost in the right direction but stayed behind himself; so I reached back and grabbed his hand.

That’s when I started taking care of my dad. As we started getting older I ended up switching schools from a sheltered private school to a regular run of the mill public school and dad moved from the town house to his own house in Hartland so that everything could be closer together; dad’s, mom’s, Leah’s school, my school. Right around then was when I went through one of the toughest times of my life. My grades stunk because I’d never had them before; I’d never had to try that hard for anything in my life. It looked like I half-assed everything when really I was working my hardest. During my time with mom I was yelled at and slapped for what I couldn’t do yet. When I was with dad I cleaned up after everyone just pushing through everything on my own.

Seventh grade and eighth grade were about when I was introduced to the typical public school drama and that stage in life when a person becomes aware of how much other people in my life had been emotionally affected by all that we’d been through. One night as I talked to my dad, just about how I was feeling, how I was depressed and why I’d cut myself; he got angry and it went from helping me to helping dad. He left my room and came back a minute later or so with his sketch book that I had no idea he’d had. He talked at me…looking past my head at the wall, saying how he wished he could have just disappeared. He showed me his drawing which has been burned into my brain for the four years since I saw it; I never saw it again. It was a heart; accurate with every artery in the correct place with a hand wrapped around it digging its fingers tips into its center; ripping it. He told me that it is how he felt. That it was how he’d felt for a long time. The divorce affected him too. I knew that but apparently he’d needed to say it. He’d needed to say it to me, because even though he’d never say it he felt that it was my fault that he couldn’t or wouldn’t run away from everything. He’d wanted to go home, to where he was born, he still does. But he can’t because he has two daughters with a mother who still has partial custody.

As with everything, time goes on and many things change; mom moved into a town house with her boyfriend and Dad’s girlfriend moved in with him. Now four years later things are still changing almost faster than I can handle. In June dad had an emergency surgery to have his gallbladder removed. My dad had an irregular heartbeat and a medication to take for it. After the surgery he was not aware enough to remember to take it. He went into A-fib and his heart pumped two blood clots from the surgery site to his brain; this is what caused his stroke.

After that he was given even more medication than he’d already had before, now he has to take something like ten medications daily and he will for the rest of his life. People tell me that I shouldn’t remind him to take his pills that it’s his responsibility. Yes I agree that it is, but if it was left completely to him there would be days that he wouldn’t take them at all. I came close enough to losing him once before because he didn’t take his medicine and I don’t plan on ever letting it come that close again.
My dad is the most important person to me and I will do just about anything for him. When I heard so nonchalantly from my mother that my father was in the hospital and had a stroke I cried and cried. I didn’t know for weeks how he was or whether there was permanent damage. Now he has been back to work for about a month and the only permanent damage there is would be the fact that he lost a lot of the strength in the dominant side of his body. His recovery brought the four of us closer together than we ever have been. He has a fiancée and two daughters and a puppy that drives him mad; all of our lives have come a long way from before and we all take care of each other. That is how it has come to be, and with the family relationships that we have it is the only way we would be able to survive all together in one piece.