Can't Imagine Giving Up On Daughter, But What Other Option Is There?
Big fan of forums and I don't know why I didn't think of this before because it's difficult to tell the true story in real life.
Forgive the short prologue here, but it's relevant to the story...
At 17, the love of my life was torn away when her family moved. After that, I made many mistakes out of anger and hurt, including dating a few let's say unsavory women over the next couple of years.
One day I ran into the love of my life and immediately made the decision to move to where her family lived (Utah... ). After a year out there, I really needed to start college, but couldn't or wouldn't do it in Utah, so I invited my girl to move back to California with me. She declined as her parents were getting older, and so I made the move expecting to see her again soon.
That was the last time I saw her.
When I got back to California, I got into school and started making plans. Unfortunately, one of those unsavory women from my past had other ideas. She had always been jealous that I loved someone else, and was bent on keeping me in her life this time.
So one night she set her plan to get pregnant in motion, and made sure she got her way by getting me as drunk as possible. I knew that night what she was up to that night and I've spent nearly every day since feeling like I failed. That was 17 years ago. She admits in a voice mail message that I still listen to, that she did it on purpose.
Fact of the matter is I was raped, a term I can't stand using, but am finally coming to the realization is the truth. I immediately went on a destructive drinking binge, horrified, embarrassed and destroyed by the fact I'd have to tell the woman I've always loved that I got someone else pregnant. Which I did in a letter from jail just weeks before the child would be born. I told her to move on and now sober and in jail, tried to do the same.
Then the baby was born. I met her the first time while in jail and my heart broke again. I made the decision that when I got out, I'd try to be a good father. Somehow it made sense to be with the woman that raped me, to try and be a normal family.
For the next two years, things got progressively worse, as the mom's drug use worsened, eventually leading to daily arguments and an invite to move out from her grandmother, whom we lived with. I loved my daughter, and despite our closeness, I was extremely unhappy/angry being tied to the mother.
So at the age of 21, I just left. I got into a great university, graduated and moved away without a word. Seven long years of depression led me to one conclusion: I'd never find any happiness running away from my child. So, on her 9th birthday, I surprised her with a visit. To my surprise, she now had two younger sisters who I'd soon learn have different fathers who are brothers.
I still have a hard time fathoming how a child deals with that, but I immediately fell in love with all three of them. I asked my daughter if she wanted me to move back, she said yes, and two weeks later I was back in her life.
For the next three years, things were very good and very bad. The younger girls began calling me dad, which of course I loved, but my daughter insisted on calling me by my first name. The mother fell into drugs yet again, and my daughter eventually lived with me for about a year. We became very close and everyone enjoyed seeing us together because we just had fun.
Until one night I found her on the computer playing a virtual role playing game she had begun playing awhile before that. I have always kept one eye on her computer use, but this night, I saw her typing some of the most graphic sexual language I've ever seen, basically having virtual sex with I assume boys from her school.
I kept my cool, slept on it for the night, and the next day when she wanted to log back on to the game, I simply said "I don't think you should play that game anymore."
That was the end of our relationship. She called her mom, moved back home 20 minutes later and has uttered less than 100 words to me since; that was 4 years ago. I'm told she doesn't like me because I drink at times (very rarely, but I understand her aversion to drugs and alcohol considering her mother lost her to the state twice while I was gone those seven years).
Now she's in and out of therapy. Writes terrible things about me on her blog, worst of all that she tells me all the time why she is mad at me, yet she never has. I get that she was embarrassed, even though I don't see how I could have handled the situation more delicately. I get that she has some abandonment issues because I "left her". I can't really see myself telling her that her mom raped me so I left her mom, even though I feel like it every single day because she loves to talk about how her mom is her hero and best friend.
And recently, I read on her blog that she had sex recently. I don't know that to be true, and I really hate "learning" about her on her blog, but we have no other communication and it fills some hole I guess. My birthday and Father's Dar recently passed, and I am not even acknowledged. Same as last year and the year before. I'll definitely get ideas from her mom what she wants for her birthday and Christmas though, which is about the extent of our "communication".
Through all this time, her youngest sister and I have grown a lovely relationship. She believes me to be her dad, calls me such and treats me the way I deserve frankly. I know that's probably another issue for my daughter to deal with, but I'm not going to separate myself from her sisters to make her feel better.
Lastly, when I first came back, I could immediately tell something was wrong with each of them. I know for a fact my middle daughter was molested, my youngest one was almost drowned in a tub she was left in and was very skittish, and that the three were all taken away on two separate occasions by the state due to the mother's drug use.
From research in other forums, "histrionic personality disorder" nails my daughter to a tee. My middle daughter is scared to death to leave her mother's side, who proudly calls her her "partner in crime". Disgusting.
The one saving grace is that my youngest daughter has really seemed to adjust much better than her sisters, a fact I can only attribute to the fact that I've been in her life since she was 4 and have been able to provide some stability for her. When I visit home to see my family, she's the only one that ever has a desire to go along.
So, I'm a bit stuck. I used to be comfortable that when I left long ago, I'd find my daughter when she turned 18 and fix things then. Of course that was the mind of a terribly misled, angry, disillusioned young man. As I get older, I can feel the panic setting in that things are never going to improve. I don't bad mouth the mother, but she has very few redeeming qualities and as their hero, role model and daily inspiration, they don't have much room for growth.
I recently received news that the love of my life, who was married with three children, was now divorced. We visited and other than the fact it seems impossible for us to be together, things were exactly as they always had been. I don't know that I could run away to be with her (we've discussed it) and leave my children, but at this point in time, I'm having a hard time maintaining the natural pride and loyalty I have for them. One could care less that I exist, one goes out of her way to ignore my existence, up to deleting harmless Facebook comments like "What's your new dog's name?".
I know I'm not alone in this, a sad fact that has recently given me some odd comfort that someone actually understands because I certainly can't talk about it with people I know who have no better insight than "keep doing what you're doing".
So I'm here to ask you who've been or are going through similar pains. What to do, what can be done, will time heal all, do children in these situations have the ability to grow out of it, am I the target of pain for all the wrong reasons, should leaving them be an option, do children really need fathers??
I'm starting to doubt something that is so obviously true...
