With Love to the Perfect Jerk

Since I was a younger teenager I had a habit of explaining my relationship with my dad like this, "I love my dad; I hate the man". It still holds true today and believe me when I say this is no secret from him. He himself adamantly describes himself as "the perfect asshole". Since I was a child I'd hear him say this jokingly to other adults in my life and especially so to my mom. She herself, besides her laundry list of flaws and trauma from a rough life, is a saint for putting up with this man she had kids with. She's a subject for another much deserved story though.

The thing that makes my dad 'the perfect asshole' is that he makes decisions void of emotion, he tells truths with little to no mental filtration, and at the end of the day he is a "do as I say not as I do" kind of person.

Examples!

He tells me to think with my head, believe in maths and sciences, and form my own opinions. But when I do those things I am met with, "You're too young to understand", "fake news libtard crap", "that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard", or worse yet just a sound of disgust, a shake of the head, and silence.

He tells me to never depend on a man. I can be whatever and whoever I want and to not let anyone tell me otherwise. Then, I grow up hearing him make sexist and chauvinistic comments until I'm left struggling with my own femineity and what exactly that entails. No matter that I was born and identify as a woman there's so much disgust for myself in femineity because I heard all those qualities described as weak and lesser and inherently less dependable. He now looks at me and asks me why my partner doesn't take care of me more; why they don't pick up more of the weight that is life in a relationship. And I have to try not to shout that it's because he taught me to shoulder it all and that because I am a woman if I open my mouth to voice my displeasure I am complaining and nagging and that will drive anyone away.

He's the perfect asshole because he is two people coexisting in the same body.

My dad who wrote me the sweetest poem for my sixteenth birthday. My dad who covets all of my creativity like a collector. My dad who has apologized in my adult years for the depression he passed down to me. My dad who carried me to bed every night until I was nine years-old. He rough housed with my sister and I and made us fly through the air giggling. He made us feel like we had the whole world at our fingertips. My dad keeps pictures of all his kids and grand kids on his desk at work. My dad who kept a father's day card I made him for nearly five years on that same desk until he was scared it might get ruined because he's a diesel mechanic and things don't stay pristine in a shop like that.

My dad shares a face with the man who can put me down and tease me. The man can say, with a straight face when I'm in the room, that women and children should be seen and not heard; that women belong in the home raising kids. He's a man who can tell me with not a second thought that no avenue of creativity is a valid career. My dad shares a face with a man that sometimes I swear can see me as not his daughter.

My dad has made me everything I am and everything I have to try everyday not to be. To him, with all of my heart, I am grateful.

I'm grateful for the trips to Golf 'n' Stuff on the rare vacations he took and that one time he felt so bad that I got locked out of the house with no one home after school one day that he took me to a diner down the block and we shared a basket of onion rings. Good onion rings can still lift my spirits. I'm grateful for the stubbornness he instilled in me and the strength to stand up for what I believe in even when it's him I have to stand up to.

So, from your biggest pain in the ass, I love you dad.