Vanessa A. Rodriguez

Why I Hate my Father

     Every place that I look I see fathers and daughters showing their love towards one another, and it is sad to say that I will never experience that. When most people say that they “hate” someone, they usually do not mean it, because hate is such a strong word. Unfortunately, I do mean it. So the question arises: What is hate? Hate is to feel hostility or animosity to something or someone. I hate my father. It is sad to say it, but it is true. I hate him for three main reasons: he abused my mother and older sisters; he was never there for me when I needed him the most; and he tried to force my mother to go to an abortion clinic to get rid of me. He hurt me in ways that no one can even start to imagine. It is also pathetic how he calls himself a “father.” The only thing that he is to me is a DNA donor. I have learned painfully that more than biology is needed to establish parenthood.

     My mother never told me why she had so many scars on her body. I always wondered why she had them, until the day I found a journal that she had kept many years ago. In my mother’s journal, horrific actions were explained. Secrets became clear. My father caused our family’s hidden series of horrible events. When my older sisters would come home from school five minutes late, he would beat them until they bled, and when my mother tried to stop him, he would do the same to her. On every Mother’s Day, I remember one entry that my mother wrote in her journal about another Mother’s Day from long ago with my father. Her gift that Mother’s Day was a beating in the middle of the street in front of all his friends just because she told him that she was tired and wanted to go home. This story reveals their entire relationship as one of dominance. My father never let my mother and my sisters have any friends. The only people that were allowed to come to the house were family, and he even had problems with them. The reasons that my mother stayed with him were so that her daughters could be with their father and because, back then, he was the only person that she had in this country.

     When my mother told my father that she was pregnant with me, he told her that she was lying because she got pregnant with me when my sisters were fifteen and fourteen years old. He assumed that pregnancy was impossible because she was too old. After he took my mother to the doctor’s office and the doctor told him that she was indeed pregnant, my father told my mother to get an abortion. He took her straight to the abortion clinic and when my mother refused to have it done, he made her walk home. When it came time for my mother to do her check-ups with the doctor, my father made my mom walk to the doctor’s appointments in the snow, even when she was eight months pregnant. My mom told him one day that it hurt her to walk, especially in the snow, and he told her that he was doing it on purpose so that she might get hit by a car and lose me. After that day she left the subject alone because she was scared that he would hit her and the impact would kill me.

     As a little girl I never knew any of the problems that had happened in my family because I still had not found the journal and my sisters never told me about any of it. I had concerns, but no way of knowing. Because I did not know the truth, I did not hesitate to talk to my father on the phone. I remember now how I would call him, and he would tell me to talk fast because he was busy. I always did what he wanted to make him happy. I recall times when I had award ceremonies at school and I would call him to ask him to come, but he used to tell me that he had other places to be. I was naïve and thought that he was kidding and believed that he would be there, so I would tell all of my friends that they could finally meet my father. He never came. This happened so many times that my friends started to make fun of me. They told me that I was lying or that he was never going to come because he did not love me. At a young age I did not understand this, but now I do. It hurts to remember all the times that I wanted him there for me. I needed a father to tell me that all my problems could be handled together.

     As a child I wanted my father there for me because I did not understand who and what he was, but now I just look at him as my DNA donor. I have never shared my story with anyone until now. Now that I am in college and understand the power of the word, I can share and heal. I am ready to tell people my story because I want other people, my age and younger, who say that they hate their father, to realize the gravity of what they say. A person had best not say that a parent is hated because this father did not give his child what was wanted. A child must endure abandonment and betrayal to realize that hate is a valid response. I want people to remember that someone else has had it harder than not receiving a wish that was not filled. Most people are very lucky to have a father who loves them. What my father did to my mother and sisters, I will never forgive. My DNA donor is a horrible man and one day God will judge him for what he has done to my mother, my sisters, and me.

Vanessa A. Rodriguez
CM 104.02
Prof. Livesay