By: Revanche

Cutting off my father: part 4, and a new chapter

March 7, 2018

It’s done.

The gravy train has left the station.

You joined me on this stressful, ugly, painful path last year and I’m starting to breathe a sigh of relief as I share this: decoupling our finances is finally done.

I’ve stopped paying his rent.
I’ve stopped paying his utilities.
I’ve stopped paying for his gas, groceries, car registration, insurance, and cell phone.
We removed all identification information that I knew of from the old house so he doesn’t have easy access to my SSN and placed security freezes on all three credit reporting agencies so he can’t get to my credit.
He doesn’t know our new address.
He doesn’t have any of PiC or JB’s personal information, and their names are so common anyway that they don’t show up in Google searches.
My name is not common so I routinely request the removal of my personal information from data scrapers.I’m not responsible for him or his actions or his whereabouts.

I’m not his switchboard for the landlord or the social security office.

I’m not his bank to keep looting.

It’s done.

NOTE: This doesn’t mean we’re flush with cash. We originally needed to stop supporting him because we couldn’t afford it any longer. When we moved, our mortgage and our taxes tripled.

For more years than I’ve been a legal adult, I’ve been Revanche: dutiful daughter, working her fingers to the bone and back to support her nuclear family, only building her own life after her parents were taken care of. My whole identity, my story, was entwined with their futures, and their comfort.

But because my dad wasn’t who I thought he was, the very foundation of that which my self was based on has been shaken to pieces.

That’s not me anymore.

For a while I wasn’t sure where to put my feet, I wasn’t sure who I would be, in this realm or offline, if I wasn’t the daughter who supports her parents.

For weeks, I foundered with the knowledge that so many of my decisions in the past 20 years were based on trusting someone not worthy of trust. Loving someone who didn’t love me. Sacrificing my life and health for someone who wouldn’t sacrifice his comfort to save his daughter pain and suffering. It was all for nothing?

Sometimes I couldn’t breathe under the weight of the guilt over stopping his support, as snippets of his faux devotion to frugality, the proof that he was in this fight with me not against me, float to the surface. His yard sale clothes, the broken washer and dryer that he couldn’t afford to fix. He used these as badges of suffering, just like my suffering, he’d imply, that he too was just hanging on.

Then I have to remember all over again he offered me edited, carefully curated snippets. He showed me the anti-Instagram life, it was designed to elicit this very guilt and belief that he deserved all the help I could muster. Then comes the helpless rage and guilt for being conned after years of experience in fending off my sibling con artist.

In the end, I come to the same conclusion I always have, with just a little more peace in my heart: I did the best I could with the information I had at the time. I may hate the information I have now but that changes nothing.

I’m no longer the daughter who supports her parents. It felt like that was my defining story but that was never my whole story, just like none of us are just one story, or just one person. I’m much more than that single facet of a person.

It’s time to remember who I am, wholly.

I was a poor kid, from a poor immigrant family that couldn’t claw its way to the middle class.
I took on my family’s debt, deciding that I’d pull us out of the pit. I worked my skinny rear end off, sought opportunities, took some chances and doubled down on my new career choice, asked for help from mentors, asked for recommendations from people I’d impressed. My family didn’t develop the way they needed to in order to make the class transition, clinging to their habits that kept them poor, but I have changed from a survival and scrabble mentality to a career and wealth builder who can strategically save, spend, and invest money. I can fend for myself and my chosen family.

I was a quiet, shy, unambitious kid. I pretended that I had dreams but they were copied from other people.
I’m an introvert and don’t spend limited emotional and verbal energy unless I *really* like you. Heck I can’t even spend it when I really like someone, so every minute shared with dear friends is a treasure. I still have ZERO cool quotient and that’s comfortable. My friends are awesome and love me for who I am. My life has evolved to fulfill some level of the vaguely defined Ideal Life.

I was a bad writer.
A really bad writer. But I started blogging anyway. And kept writing. And writing. And writing. And one day, north of a million words, my writing started to be worth reading. It’s still not good enough for me, but it’s not embarrassingly bad anymore. Mostly 😉

I was bad at math. (*gasp!* Defective Asian!)
I’ll never enjoy algebra but I’m great with money math and that’s all that really matters in my daily life. And it’s never too late – maybe I’ll take math lessons when I have a minute.

I wasn’t good enough.
I had a lot of rough edges but who didn’t? I know the depth of my young self’s ignorance now. It’s a little cringeworthy but my basic instincts were good, they just needed some life experience and learning from others to temper them. I’m better than enough. Imperfect, but much improved. I am a first generation immigrant who learned about strength, honor, trustworthiness. I came from farmer stock, brave people who took risks for their family, and repaid more than all her debts. I learned the hard way to be compassionate, built a serious work ethic to make up for my intellectual shortcomings, eked out a living for myself and my family before getting married.

I’m looking ahead …

Who is the person I want to be now?

A voracious reader and frequent writer, a gardener who doesn’t kill all the green, a cook whose food doesn’t kill all the dinner guests, an equestrienne, a world epicurean, a thoughtful, healthy and well-rested human. Intense about money like an Alaskan Malamute – remote, slightly forbidding, built for endurance and strength more than speed, easily withstanding -40 degrees Fahrenheit, less like a ping pong ball of a short hair Chihuahua bouncing around to fend off the next slate of worries without a spare ounce of fat to cope with a famine. Probably still obstinate but hopefully for all the right reasons. Definitely cranky, to winnow out the tiresome. Maybe even funny! (Maybe not.) But someone who would be missed if gone.

A great me would also have great relationships: a wife with grace in her heart, a mom with patience and love and discipline, a dog-mom with the good nails for ear skritches and the doctoring and training skills to keep my pups healthy and civilized, a true friend who shows up (metaphorically in the case of long distance friendships) in good times and bad, a mentor to the young and underrepresented, opening doors that they didn’t even know existed. Someone did that for me, once or twice. I aim to give that back for as long as I am able.

The hardest lesson for me to learn out of all this is that, while service is the heart and soul of what makes me me, we are more than what we do for other people. My worth isn’t defined by whether I helped ten people today, or whether my writing resonated with anyone. It’s good when it does but it’s not bad if it doesn’t.

We are more than the service we provide. We are more than who we are to one person. We are worthy.

:: How do you describe yourself? How would your friends and family describe you? Do you think about how you’d describe people in their eulogies, then tell them while they’re alive?

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