Some who have followed the things that I've written over the years (and those who just have known me) know that the relationship with my dad has been frosty at best (and non-existent at the current time).
Some have given me a little grief about it, saying I should let bygones be bygones, but it isn't always as simple as that. There are just some things that in my mind, are unforgivable, things that you just can't shrug off and say oh well.
My dad is the type where if you don't do things the way he thinks you should do them, he gets mad at you and tries to force you to.
Case in point: when I was signing up for classes initially after high school, my mom and I had talked about how many credit hours I wanted to take. I wanted to work as much as I could and figured since it was just Tri-C, I wasn't going to overwhelm myself right out the gate. In a couple years when it was time to get more serious about it, I'd cut back on work and pick up classes.
My dad was furious about this. The whole time I was up there signing up, he was arguing with both my mom and me about how many classes I was taking. Even after I told him it was up to me, he continued to insist on taking more classes.
This post isn't about college or things like that though. This about what happened when he found out what kind of work I was doing.
He never really cared for the things I liked. He didn't like the things I watched, the music I listened to, or how I went about my business. He especially didn't like that I was working in a pharmacy. When he was sober, he was just not thrilled with it, when he was drunk or high, I was a pipeline for my mom to get whatever drugs he thought she was taking.
His favorite was to accuse me of stealing Demerol from the narcotic safe to give to my mom. While the "safe" (kind of hard to call an unlocked cabinet a safe) at the store I was at wasn't the most secure, there was still the matter of the perpetual inventory that was kept on all class II narcotics. If I had ever taken any Demerol (or whatever else he thought I was stealing), someone would notice.
He just didn't like what I did, was bitter towards my mom because she wouldn't get back with him, and generally wasn't in his right mind, which I fear has been permanently lost.
No, he wanted me to follow in his glorious footsteps as an iron worker.
Now, I have nothing against iron workers. I think a lot of them do a job that most wouldn't envy, whether it be on the ground or several stories up in the air. It didn't even have to do with getting dirty on the job. Hell, I probably could've dealt with the height issue for a good paycheck.
What worried me was how unstable the industry was. My dad was having a hard enough time staying employed (despite the drug/alcohol issue, he was an excellent worker) and jobs weren't exactly sprouting up. Sure, I could've taken an apprenticeship and gotten lucky, but it didn't look good. Most jobs were laying off workers or postponing work and many of the factories that produced steel were shutting down.
It just didn't seem like a very stable career choice and that's something I've always been conscious of. It's why I've stayed in the environment I've been in (although there's currently a saturation of pharmacy personnel).
My dad would try on occasion to convince me to try, saying the invitation was open as long as I was interested, but after a couple years, he finally dropped it.
Funny to think that a few years after that, the steel industry almost completely collapsed overall in the United States and iron workers were being laid off left and right. Granted, it's stablized in recent years as even my dad has at times gone back to work, but it's still not an industry I'd feel very good in.
I think if my dad hadn't gone down the road he went down and a lot of things had played out differently, I would have strongly considered the idea of following in his footsteps. There was a time when he was a good dad, someone I would've loved to look up to, but when he started to spiral out of control, that's when I stopped looking up to him.
Instead, he fell into the drug/alcohol addiction and to this day has been unable to turn things around. While things may not have played out exactly as I had envisioned, I don't regret anything that has happened.
I certainly do not regret the decision to avoid his footsteps.
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