# 1 DAD

I'm starting this off with my fb post from the other day:

I feel blessed to have such an amazing father in my life. His name is Jeff. he came into my life just days before I turned 13, but ever since has done the best he could to take care of me and help me to grow and live my own life. It is wonderful to have someone in my life that i can truly look up to as a father, someone who always shows love and support for me.


So yes. This gets to be my blog post about my realtionship with my father, my real father, not that other guy who, as far as i'm concerned at this point, is nothing more than a sperm donor. (I'm done trying to hold onto to some naive belief that he is actually someone better than he is).

So in this particular post, i will be referring to jeff as my father, and the other guy is biodad (that's what i call him in my mind these days).


My father.
The years I spent with him were usually not all happy and fun and enjoyable.
My particular past up until that point was so clogged up with traumatic experiences and hurt feelings and confusion that it would've been a struggle for anyone to try and figure out what to do about me by that point.

We moved away from Maryland to California. Suffice it to say, I was very pissed off about being forced to move for the third time in my life. I felt like I was finally gaining sifficent closeness with certain friends at the time and things looked like they might pick up and get awesome.
That being said, I was pretty much determined to dislike anything and anyone related to the situation.

In retrospect, I am certain I was much better off moving away. The five years i spent in Maryland, without a doubt, were the most traumatic years of my life. There are things I may never really end up blogging in those years, out of respect for the other people involved mostly.

But here I was, despite my objections, out in California. It might as well be a different country. There is so much difference between the coasts that it's ridiculous sometimes. I felt like a foreigner. i really did.

Anyway, this post isn't abou that. This post is about my wonderful father.

I have to point out some things that only recently have I fully come to understand, no matter how long they were told to me. That my father has struggled with trying to understand me even a little bit over the years, but he has tried so hard and cares so much.

In my opinion, he was never really obligated to try at all to understand me or like or get me to like him. And a lot of times we butted heads, as they say. There are certain things that put us on opposite ends of the spectrum of human personality.
There are still certain comments he makes to me that irritate me, but I look at it now with the knowledge that really he is always just trying to help, in the best way he knows how.

He really had aided me a lot. And I have always really appreciated it, and maybe sometimes he thought I wasn't trying my best, even though I almost always was, but that's okay. How does anyone but me really know how hard I am trying to succeed with things? I am the only who never knows completely everything that is going on with me at a particular time. So i don't blame him at all for ever thinking I wasn't really trying hard enough.

And i really just appreciate that he helped me at all.

It's obvious he cares. I can tell that for sure by the fact that he has tried so much to be a good father to me. He tried his best and did what he thought was best to be the best father he could for me, despite how much a challenge it has been. It sounds like I must've been the most difficult, partially due to my age. My sisters were both still young enough to get used to the idea of a new father, or at least to be more accepting of the change. My brother was so old he didn't stick around long enough for Jeff to really make any impact anyway. It was me, old enough to understand, but still years away from being out on my own. even without all the demons I faced within, it would've been a struggle.

But he did is best. and really, isn't that the most we can really expect from our parents? That they tried there best, did what they thought was best according to the extent of their knowledge and experience?

Well, that, and love and care for their children. And never cross the line and really hurt them in any way.

The only thing I ever really felt was lacking was the idea that he was ever proud of me when i did succeed, when i figured things out, when i slowly made improvements and began to grow and better myself. I think now I get that a lot more from him.

Because that's all i ever really wanted from any of my parents:
I wanted them to treat me right and I wanted them to be proud of me and who I am, even if i don't exactly live up to their expectations.

I still have a long way to go before having a life of my own, a happy life and a decent job and all that. But I feel blessed to have a father who supports me no matter what.

My father is the best I could have ever hoped for.

All my love,
Heather