When I was a kid, my sibling died. My whole life was a mess. My parents divorced. My dad lost custody for a few months, so he wasn't there for the immediate aftermath. I relied more on my mother and lost trust in him. It looked like he was moving on so fast. Like he had moved on before I could even accept the kid was gone. My father remarried. He used some bad tricks to set my mother up to regain custody, or so my mother told me. I don't know.
My mother was quite unstable and died a few years later. I had a very lonely adolescence. I was closed off. I didn't trust my father and was angry at how he treated my mother. But it was more that I was angry with how he always treated me like a child. I know I was, but it felt like my voice was silent. I felt more like an object than a person. I always had the impression that he had kids because it was what was expected.
I studied hard. On the outside I was the perfect daughter. But like I said, I was closed off. I never discussed how I felt. I always cried alone. I never showed physical affection. I never said I love you, but neither did he. But maybe I just stopped saying it back and he stopped. I never really spoke to him. We never did anything as a family, I was just left to my own devices. I'd leave for hours without anyone noticing. I once got lost in a forest in a snowstorm, terrified that I'd freeze to death before anyone noticed I was missing.
I came close to ending it, but I had a really good teacher who noticed I was depressed and gave me motivational speeches. It felt like he knew me better than my own father. And I respected the teacher a lot, so I changed my ways and relied on someone for the first time since my mother.
I've been trying to change myself. I'm not resentful like I used to be. It doesn't feel fresh, the losses. But my dad, he still treats me like a child. He lets his wife yell at me and dismissed my concerns over something as madness until I showed him evidence. It felt like a betrayal, because I worked so hard academically only to be continually dismissed.
But then, I never thought he really cared. I know he now just sees me as overly emotional, but he's also quite reliable. Well, we used to be closer, but then I'd get scolded for speaking as I always did to him by his wife, for it not being respectful enough, which created distance. He sends me money, but he still hurts me, like not doing anything for the birthdays I spent with him.
But I cried over my sibling in front of him, or he allowed him to find my crying, and he held me and tried his best to comfort me and I looked at him and just saw a man out of his depth. He reminds me exactly of my other sibling, my useless, idiotic but soft elder sibling. If I had just been the type of kid to cry and then be comforted, maybe it wouldn't have turned out this way.
I love him, but I feel trapped by distance we both created. If I died now I'd have lots of regrets, but at this point, it feels like it's just the way things are, so I don't know what to do. How do I have a relationship with an emotionally distant dad, who I think now does actually care and is just terrible at expressing it? How do I change something that feels so set in stone even though we're both still alive?
TL;DR! my sibling died, my father was absent emotionally, I never thought that he cared but now I think he does. How do I even begin to start repairing the distance between us?