Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for violence and mature content.
My late father...god this is a long ass story
My dad and I were very very close. He took me everywhere with him until preschool, and it broke his heart Everytime i screamed and cried when he left me there for half a day. I can clearly remember being a very hyper and excited 3 year old running around and helping my dad build stuff...then my mom fucked everything up. Don't get me wrong I love my mom but....she fucked me up. Anyways my mom was/is an addict. I don't fault her for that but there's a lot shes done. She blamed my dad for the divorce, she resents me because she lost my older brother to Trysome 18 and immediately got pregnant with me. I was born 6 weeks early and almost died. So I'm the child who was not supposed to live but here i am and she resents me for being the one who lived instead of my brother.
My dad moved out and my mom did everything...and i mean EVERYTHING to seperate us. And my dad dropped off the face of the Earth until I was about 7/8 years old. Now what i didn't know was that my dad had been sending letters and gifts (expensive ones ) in the mail to my little sister and I. My mom took any money he sent us, any expensive gifts were pawned for money, and the letters were destroyed and my sister and I never saw them...we believed our dad had abandoned us.
When I was 8 my dad sued for custody...he had heard what my mom had allowed happen to me and the trama she was putting me through. I had been raped at age 6 by a family friend (there's a few articles of it online because it was a big deal since he was also impersonating a military man who was overseas) my dad literally sold everything he owned that was of any value to him...Anything from Zepplin merch to his 70's hippy van and his Harley. And my mom completely destroyed him. So he lost everything...and again he disappeared...or so I thought. Again letters and gifts were destroyed or sold or stolen and I never knew any of this. My mom was heavily using at this point and when i was 10 I found her heroin stash...right around the time my little sister who was 8/9 years old got into the cocaine my mom hid. My sister was rushed to the hospital where my mom told them she'd found it out in the road...at the time she also told me the heroin and needles were from a woman who doesn't exist...mind you I'm still believing everything she says. And I'm also hurt that my father who I had a very close bond to had left me to rot in the hell hole that was my mom's house (regular beatings if something was lost no matter how small and regularly sent to bed without dinner) as I grew older she kept pushing about how bad my dad was and planting memories in my head that never happened. She escalated to using her fists and feet to hurt me even going as far as biting me as hard as she could because i wouldn't give her my laptop for her to Snoop through. She had CPS convinced I injured myself to get attention and they blindly believed her. I was scared. Not only of her but of myself. My head always felt full and I was starting to skip periods of time (undiagnosed BPD and Bipolar) I was severely depressed. I was always being kicked out my friends would take me in and the cycle would continue...when I was 17 my dad finally got in contact. He had heard through my aunt what had been going on and that we were being evicted because my mom never sent in the rent payment. The sheriff had served the papers to me and instead of 24 hours we had a week since I was extremely sick when he came. (I was dealing with ovarian cysts and still recovering from Mono) my dad came and grabbed my sister and I and our cats and took us to his house.
I was convinced he had abandoned us and i hated him. Slowly he started to coax me into trusting him again...and our relationship was on the mend. He was in remission when I was 17 1/2...I was there when the doctor said the word remission and we went out for sushi to celebrate...a month or two later he started getting sick again...it was gradual...I didn't even notice it. Easter Sunday came and he took a turn for the worst. He told everyone to keep the fact that the cancer had come back and that he was gonna die from me...so i didn't know...after Easter I started sleeping in his bed because it took too much time for me to get up in the middle of the night to get his breathing stuff ready for him if he started having trouble breathing. Then he wouldn't eat anything. Finally I had to put my foot down. I called my uncle and had him take us to the hospital...my dad told my aunt to take me home...he wouldn't talk to the doctor till I left...
I thought he was fine...and he was...for a short while...he went to live with my older sister in Tucson...I was sent to live with my mom again since school had started back up. And I hated it. My mom was as bad as ever.
That second week of June....I'll never forget. My dad came by...he hugged me and told me that his divorce to my stepmom had gone through finally...we made plans to celebrate later because I was babysitting. And I said I love you and he smiled and waved and left...that was the last time i saw him smile...
June 20th I got a call...he was in the ICU and his lungs had filled with fluid...they didn't think he'd last the night and i was told to rush to Tucson and say goodbye...I was scared...heart broken. I didn't understand because my daddy was healthy a week before...I rushed and sped the entire way and a trip that took 2 hours was done in 25 mins.
I stayed in that hospital room for as long as i could...I couldn't see my dad like that...I went home and cried.
The next day he was brought back home...
I spent the entire day talking to his unconcious body...helping keep his pain manegable and giving him water.
I was getting ready to get in bed...it was 9:50 pm...when he started gasping...I held his hand until he passed away...at 10:01 pm on June 21st 2016 my dad passed away from Renal Cancer that had metestized to his lungs...
It's been 3 years now...I'm 21...and I cried while writing this post...
The wholesome part of this post is just how close I was to my father...he called me Boo my entire life...Boo or BooBoo...he said i reminded him of Boo from Monsters Inc...the memories of i have of my father are good ones...I'm just upset he never saw me grow up all the way...I still feel like that 18 1/2 year old girl screaming at the top of her lungs and feeling hopeless now that her only protection was gone that she wouldn't survive
Thank you Dad...for teaching me how to survive and be strong
RIP: Raul Sanzon
October 18th, 1963 - June 21st, 2016
I LOVE YOU "UN CHINGO"
Hey Amnesia. I’m really sorry for your loss and I hope you’re hanging in there. I just wanted to leave a few notes on this story of yours to hopefully improve some of the clarity and overall appearance of this work.
Your resiliency throughout your life really does come through within this, and I’m glad you were able to still try to connect with your father despite everything that happened. Separation, forced or not, between parents can very easily not bode well for everyone involved, including the rest of the family.
I think some more specific details concerning different get togethers with your father could really add more character to this and give a larger spectrum on who your father was. Such as with going to preschool and how he responded to having to leave you there for the day.
I also hope this was a bit therapeutic for you to be able to look over your relationship with your father.
If you cut up the really long third paragraph, that could allow for better flow and for your reader to really follow all of those sudden events in there. Besides that, the grammatical error and were noticeable, but they weren’t too distracting.
This is a tough subject manner so I really hope you’re doing ok. Hang in there. ^^
Wow this was really heart-breaking to read, I am very sorry for your loss if this is your story. I can only imagine how traumatic that all must have been / must be. Also it seems totally reasonable to still be grieving over the loss of your father even three years later. <3
Hopefully writing this piece was able to let you process some of your thoughts on it.
I think is very well written, because although there are many threads that are interesting in here, you focus on a single topic, and get through with that topic in mind - the relationship with your father.
I think the story would read better without any use of ellipses (...) because it almost always reads as an extra pause, and most of the instances in here, really didn't seem to call for it.
There's a few spelling mistakes here and there too (uncapitalized "i's" and such), but a quick read-over should be able to catch many of those.
I'm not sure you explain the theme mentioned in the title very much in this story - it might be interesting to explore some of those threads and go into a bit more how you knew your father loved you - or how you mended your relationship after being separated for so long.
I'd also say I think the third paragraph could be broken up a bit more.
Overall, this was a compelling and well-written tribute, and my heart aches reading this story.
Wishing you well,
alliyah
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