I didn’t expect my first blog post to be about celebrating the death of two male family members, but here we are. I wish that my grief could go beyond initial shock. I wish that I missed the presence of my dad and grandfather. I wish that I felt the devastating squeeze of nostalgia around my heart for the moments when they were alive.

Unfortunately, my life has only improved in their absence.

I won’t get into the intimate details of the emotional terrorism that accompanies having a drug addict for a father and an alcoholic grandfather, but I will say that despite my best efforts, “daddy issues” still impacted my love life. Not because I consciously wanted to repeat the dynamics I had with the father figures in my life, but because I assumed that all men acted like them in private. I thought it was normal for everyone to have two faces: the charming one that you display in public and the abusive one that you reserve for those closest to you.

If I’m being honest, it never occurred to me that you could have a man in your life and not be miserable on some level. I thought that was the trade every woman made for romantic relationships: Your significant other acts like a terror for a few years, but if you believe in him and love him no matter what, one day his love for you will inspire him to change for the better.

To be fair, this narrative is also quite common in television, novels, and movies. So I thought I was doing the love thing correctly. I couldn’t understand for the life of me why my relationships kept turning toxic or abusive or stressful. I convinced myself that I was doing something wrong, rather than understanding that I was undeniably involved with the wrong people.

For those of us who have not benefitted from emotional nepotism, dating isn’t a fun and easy time. It can feel so obvious from the outside when someone is getting the short end of the love stick, but when you have to build a love life from scratch, you can only work off of what you know and what you’ve seen. In a house where tyrannical alcoholics reign and you’re punished for not accommodating their disease, you’re literally trained to find positive qualities where none exist. Someone being inconsistent with their affection or dishonest or mean isn’t a dealbreaker because it was never allowed to be.

Despite being raised to be the biggest codependent in the room, I never could handle my grandfather or father’s bullshit for very long–a habit that would translate into my love life. I was an aggressively commitment-phobic “ride or die.” I’m sure this quality confused the hell out of the people I was involved with because I would put up with everything until I had a “valid enough reason to leave” (in other words, they proved themselves irredeemable through love).

All that being said, here is an excerpt from my journal exploring these thoughts further. I entered my first and only situationship for about two months after finding out that my grandfather wouldn’t be around to see the spring. Naturally, I picked a guy just like him instead of processing my grief responsibly. Oh, well.

I blocked him on everything just now. Phone number, instagram, TikTok, etc. And I feel a lot better tbh. I want a new foundation for myself in love and life. That girl–the one who was treated by everyone and anyone however they wanted–is gone. I have worked too damn hard to allow anything other than pure, loving energy into my world. That goes for friends, lovers, coworkers, family–anyone. I deserve better and more. I want to thank the foxes and the snakes for teaching me that their presence in my life is wholly conditional and not a guarantee. If it’s not a “hell yes,” then it’s a “no.” Period. 

Rejection is my right. 

I could cry with joy right now. I didn’t realize that ending things with Greg so thoroughly would make me so happy. I’m genuinely emotional. I just wish I understood fully why…maybe it’s because I was finally able to run counter to my family conditioning. I did what I wanted. What I really wanted. Not what felt expected or demanded of me. No one made me continue to interact with him, or love him even though I felt otherwise, or “when he did something bad enough” to warrant a “good enough reason” to leave. I left because I didn’t like him and that was enough.

I know that sounds so silly, but I have felt trapped by people that I’ve genuinely hated or resented or disliked for a long time. I have always felt like I know what love is and how love truly feels, but the people in my family had successfully told me otherwise. I was gaslit to believe that I was the problem, that I wasn’t strong enough, that I was difficult, that I lacked the proper tenacity to love and be loved, that I was overdramatic, that I was unkind–when all of that had been subjected to me. 

My grandfather and my dad sucked. They were objectively terrible people. And their “good hearts” weren’t good enough in my opinion. “You have to love him,” but he wasn’t loving to me. My dad caused nothing but problems for everyone in my family, he was inconsistent and entitled to my affection even though he did absolutely nothing to earn it. He genuinely never gave a fuck about my feelings or what I wanted. My grandfather was an asshole. He was self-centered, self-absorbed, and an emotional tyrant. And I’m glad he’s dead. 

I didn’t expect to say that. I didn’t realize I felt that way, tbh. Happy, I mean. By fully ending the situation with Greg, I gained some massive insights about my feelings towards him and the dead men in my life. I was emotionally confused and stressed about their roles in my life for a while, but now I have unexpected clarity about everything. 

It’s not socially acceptable to feel happiness rather than grief over a “loved one’s” passing. But that’s my truth. I’m sorry other people feel obligated to love family members in their lives, especially when those family members were awful.