This post contains topics of death, loss, emotional abuse and neglect. Please take care when reading it.

Father’s day has always been an awkward day of the year for me.

As a young child, I would take part in the gift making activities at school, without having any idea of what to put on the gift because I honestly didn’t know what my dad liked other than beer and racing. In my preteens, I steered clear of him on father’s day due to his usually loud and boisterous personality enhanced by alcohol, usually making him obnoxious and mean. In my teens, I ignored the day and usually opted for isolating myself in my room, or working if I had the chance to pick up a shift.

I had no choice but to start acknowledging the day when I was twenty. He passed three months before my first official fatherless fathers day. When significant people pass away in your life, their lack of a presence is deafening. I knew that he wasn’t a great father to me, but I always figured I could get to know him as a friend in my adult years. I knew that even though he had a complicated relationship with my brother growing up, as an adult they were closer than before. I figured the same could be for us. That chance was completely ripped from me that day.

I was furious when he passed. How dare he make my childhood hell, and then not even give me the chance to rip him a new one for it? How dare he pass away and not even give me the opportunity to try and have a relationship with him? After watching him leave time and time again, this is what I get?

If you’re a part of the Shitty Parent’s Club, you get it.

Now well into my twenties, this day still carries weight for me. It’s tender like a bruise. A quiet yet nagging reminder of his absence. The only thing he was consistent with, really. I usually stay home on Father’s day, cozied up in my apartment with my dogs. I try to reflect on things and remember the old bastard quietly in my own way. I try to wish him well in the afterlife, wherever and whatever that is. All other 364 days of the year, I do my own emotional work. One of the biggest things that I have done for myself in this decade is to unlearn what I was taught as a child.

I leave my parents’ confusing, erratic codependent relationship in the past and I work hard to eradicate any codependent habits of my own. Which means I hold boundaries for myself. I don’t offer to fix other people’s problems. I bite my tongue and pause before I say “yes” to anything- something I’m still working on, daily. I don’t enable anyone. I cut people out if it comes to it, family and friends alike. I let my friends and my family do things for themselves instead of doing it for them. It took me until I was twenty five to start to figure it out, and it’s still one of the hardest things for me to do. When your role models as a child don’t have their shit together, you learn dysfunctional ways of existing and carry it with you into adulthood.

I remind myself that I’m in control of my future. I decide who I am, not my family. I don’t need to carry the wrong lessons with me into my adult life. I can choose what I relearn, and boy am I ever learning. I feel like every year I become better at understanding my past and who I am. Every year I’m given the opportunity to deep dive into my psyche and really understand how I learned to be the person I am today. I discover how I need to unlearn things or get better at emotional skills. I remind myself that I have to work harder at this than everyone else because of my trauma, and that’s okay. Living a happy, full life because I did all of this emotional work is well worth it.

One day, this day will be lighter. I had this dream weeks ago one of a little boy running in the grass, laughing. One day, this day will be about someone other than me and my story. I’ll be able to make happier memories then.

Until then, I light a candle.

I say my peace.

And then, I keep working on me.