Holidays – Jacqueline's Story

Blog post 11

The Toxic Wedding Guest

I’ve been planning, for the past two years, to get married. We want a small wedding, with only close family and a few friends, less than fifteen people including us. The problem was, if we talk about immediate family, my father would surely be included in that list.

I didn’t want him there, and I agonized over that for a good year and a half. Having him there would give me so much anxiety about what he would do, how he would offend other guests there, or make the wedding about himself.

At first I considered having a destination wedding. Having a wedding out of state would provide a plausible explanation for why my dad couldn’t be there, both to other guests and to him. He’s too old to really travel like that anymore. It would give me an easy way out, in that he wouldn’t be able to come and I wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of not inviting him and all the repercussions that came with that. In other words, it would really let me off of the hook. I looked at multiple bed and breakfasts in several different states, looked up local marriage laws, even considered Vegas. While all of these were doable, the problem was that a couple guests, who were very important to us, would not be able to travel to be there. It wasn’t really a fair exchange.

So after a lot of thought, a year an a half’s worth, I relented and offered to get married in town. And then my anxiety over it really began to escalate. I was still not estranged from my father at this point, and I was really worried about how he’d behave at the wedding. I was afraid he’d say horrible, sexist, insulting things to the women there. I was afraid he’d be inappropriate with me. You never know what he’s going to say. He really is a creepy old man.

And then one time when I was pondering this and discussing it, I blurted out, “Well if (twelve-year-old female family member) comes, we’ll have to really watch him, because twelve is his favorite age for little girls.”

And then I thought, Oh my God, what the fuck just came out of my mouth? And I knew it was the truth. I am sure that I am not the one that my father has molested. He’s so blatant about it that nobody figures out what he’s doing. I’m sure he’s grabbed a girl and held her too long and groped her breast in the guise of a hug, right in front of other people. He’s forced kisses on unwilling victims as they squirm away. He’s even charmed them to sit on his lap, then there is the hug, and before she knows it, there is an old man’s hand brushing across her breast. He’s a genuinely creepy old man and he’s not going to ruin my wedding with his presence.

But the problem is not as simple as not inviting him. I’d have to tell my kids why. And not some bland story, they’d really have to know. I may have to answer the question of other guests as to why he’s not there. I’ve already decided that they will get a bland yet final, “He can’t come.”

So this all came to a head just before Christmas. We made the decision to get married here, in town, and to not invite my father. I was ready to let the chips fall where they may.

Except for the fact that this stressed me out so badly that I woke up on Christmas morning with shingles. I recognized what it was and was at the urgent care at 6am on Christmas morning to get antivirals, which worked. But I should point out that risk factors for shingles at my age are being immunocompromised, which I am not, or stress. So, this decision caused me extreme stress, but I was determined to go forward.

I told my kids, and they were both tremendously supportive. I went through Christmas and winter birthdays with no contact with my father. He wrote sad letters to me protesting my rejection, but I finally told him to stop contacting me. So far, he hasn’t since then.

The wedding is about a month away and my father is not invited. I’m enjoying planning it and I expect it to be a good time. I’m free from the anxiety and worry as to what he’d do or say if he were to come. We’re planning on celebrating our marriage surrounded by people we love and who really care about us. I am looking forward to it.

Christmas

I’ve always hated the Holidays. Well, maybe not always, but I have a long history of hating them. And it’s because the Holidays have a long history of bringing me misery rather than joy.

I remember when I was quite young and the Sears Holiday Wish Book would arrive in the mail months before Christmas. I’d spend hour upon hour perusing that magical catalog, dreaming about the magic of Christmas morning and getting glittering new toys that I had put on my Christmas List after discovering them in the catalog.

After much anticipation, Christmas morning would finally arrive and I would open my gifts. One year I got a Six Million Dollar Man. Another year, a microscope and premade slides. But after all the gifts were open, the excitement would start to wane. I’d get a little tired and cranky. Or I’d abandon my toys and build a fort out of the boxes. And inevitably, my father would call me “ungrateful.”

After a few years of this, I would expect that this reaction would be coming from him, and I began to anticipate it. I made sure to act grateful, whatever that was. But it was impossible. Because he’d catch me at some point without a smile on my face, and it would all be over. I was ungrateful.

In addition to my lack of gratitude, I didn’t love my father enough. I knew this because he told me so. He’d get weepy and say, “I can’t be happy because my kids don’t love me.” I told him over and over that I loved him, and he said that I didn’t show it. That I was a selfish brat that didn’t care about him. I was crushed. I wondered what I had done wrong, or if I was broken and incapable of showing love.

On more than one occasion, I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, or his birthday, and his answer was, “I want a happy family, but I can’t have one because my kids are awful and they don’t love me.” As I got older and he said to me, I realized that that was an awful lot for a grown man to put on a child.

At one time when I was quite young, I remember reading that each family can have their own birthday traditions, and you can even make up new ones. A creative and artistic kid, I decided to make up a birthday tradition for our family. I had a toy sewing machine that sewed with glue instead of thread. I was too young to sew with a machine that actually had a needle in it. Nevertheless, this glue sewing machine actually worked and I had made little stuffed animals with it and a purse. For our new birthday tradition that I made up, I made a hat. I think I modeled the hat after my rabbit fur Davey Crockett hat. I had made it out of my favorite scrap material that someone had given me. It was yellow and had cats on it. The new tradition was to be that on someone’s birthday, they would be given this special hat to wear for their birthday dinner, because they were the birthday person and deserved a special hat. Then they would keep the hat until the next birthday, when they would present the hat to the new birthday person. Kind of like when last year’s Miss America presents the crown to the new Miss America. The very first person to wear this hat would be my dad, as his was the first birthday after I made the hat and the new tradition.

I really thought this would be a very special and unique thing for our family. Our very own birthday tradition. But of course, that wasn’t how it went.

My dad’s birthday came along and we had our usual birthday dinner in our dining room, which we only used for special occasions. When it came time for the cake, the real celebration, I brought out my special hat for my dad to wear. He was loathe to wear it. I explained that it was a new, special tradition for our family that we were starting right then and he would be the first to wear the hat. It was his job to watch over the hat until the next birthday, at which time he would present it to that person. My birthday would be next.

My creative, childish, and yet fun idea of a hand made birthday hat was not met with the enthusiasm that I expected. My father would barely wear the hat for a moment. And when my birthday came only three weeks later, no hat for me. I asked where it was and was only told that it was gone. I was gutted. I was looking forward to getting the birthday hat and then passing it on to my brother, who had the next birthday. And the disappointment showed on my face. And there I was again. Ungrateful. To him. To my mother for all her hard work in making dinner. Nothing was ever good enough for me.

In adulthood I’d come a long way to distance myself from such unhappy childhood memories and to find parts of the holidays that I enjoy. I’d put my father on “low contact” without telling him and managed to see him only on the required holidays a few times a year. He would still find a way to ruin them, and as such, I dreaded the holiday season as it approached. I hated to see my father. I’m a relatively well functioning human being but being around him puts me into a tailspin. I can’t stand to have him touch me. At all. Forget a hug. His touch literally makes my skin crawl. If he touches me at all, I go wash. Spending any time with him at all makes me physically ill and will trigger a migraine that will last for days afterward.

Nevertheless, this Christmas I managed to buy him a Christmas gift fairly early in my seasonal shopping and intended to have him over for some sort of dinner. I called my brother and invited him to come to our celebration and he told me that he wouldn’t be able to make it as he’d be working that day. But he’d let Dad know when Christmas dinner was so that he could come without him.

He thought he was doing me a favor, but the mere thought of my dad at my house without my brother there to dilute the situation was more than I could handle. My mood turned dark for the rest of the day and for days afterwards. Even I was puzzled at the sudden and strong reaction that I had. My dad is an awful person to be around but my reaction was visceral.

I did a little searching of my memory, and asked Google what those memories might mean. For the first time, I finally found some clarity regarding my father and his treatment of me. I looked up some things that he had done to me when I was a child, and the Internet was unequivocal: my father had molested me. Everything suddenly made sense.