My Father

My father was and still is a master of tuning out the obvious. He always protected mother, and I was never sure exactly why. Most of the abuse towards me happened when he was not at home. But, he was even a victim of mother's abuse. I say victim, evn though he was a grown man. I often wondered why he never stopped the insanity...it was not till years later, that I realized it was because the whole masquerade had become normal to him. He never listened when I begged him to please make it all stop. He never was an abuser until I was in high school. I never will forget that night when he was on his knees doing the knife bit with mother. I decided enough was enough, and picked up the phone to call 911. He immediately hit me across the face and yanked the phone out of the wall. I saw him in a different way that night, and lost the respect a daughter has for her father. His answer to everything was and still is to ignore the reality, and try to buy my silence. Money....I actually learned to hate money, and would have traded it all for love and the abuse to end. Our realtionship today is still strained...we go through the motions because we have to...he is my father, and I love him. We have cried together through the years, but in silence.