00:00
00:00
Sentio
Judgement has come!

Age 38, Male

Science Teacher

University of Bath

Gloucestershire, UK

Joined on 11/7/04

Level:
60
Exp Points:
38,647 / 100,000
Exp Rank:
276
Vote Power:
10.00 votes
Rank:
Sup. Commander
Global Rank:
45
Blams:
30,002
Saves:
70,000
B/P Bonus:
60%
Whistle:
Deity
Medals:
6,754
Gear:
1

None

Posted by Sentio - December 1st, 2008


Copy and pasted from here. It is 100% true, and I hope it explains my frequent absences the last 6 months, and possibly a few angry responses to people I have made in the forums. I apologise for those, and I hope you know they are out of character. A few of you know some of the details, none of you know all of them.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
-----------------------

I don't want to speak ill of my father. When I was growing up he was my best friend, my role model, and the one person in this world I most wanted to be like. We spent hours watching sport together, chatting together about everything and anything. I thought he was the best Dad in the world. He supported me through school, helped me when I was struggling with something, or upset about something, and was the driving force behind where I am today. Some would say he pushed me, I would say he was proud of me and wanted me to go as far as I could, and I want to think I have made him proud.

As the years went by he spent less and less time at home. I knew he was driven by his work, he was immensely proud of the work he did (a cancer researcher, who in his latter years was head of biology at UCL, and now has 5 separate drugs in clinical trials for various cancer types), and he travelled a great deal for that work. I didn't question it.

When I was 16 (7 years ago now) I discovered he was having an affair. I don't know if he wanted me to find out, he gave me his email password so that I could use his account, back in the days I didn't use the internet and had no email address. I stumbled across an email addressed to him from a woman I didn't recognise, and curious about the title I opened it.

We never talked about it, and I even convinced myself that he was in the right. My Mum can be hard to live with at times, and I thought maybe he deserved a chance with someone else. I was always much closer to my Dad than my Mum, and I simply couldn't bring myself to blame him. I didn't get chance to resent him for not being at home as I left for university at 18, to Bath, the same place he and my Mum had studied. I didn't know if my Mum knew, or my younger sister, and we simply never spoke of it.

On the 23rd of May this year my Dad died of a heart attack, with no warning, at the age of 49. He was in good shape, didn't smoke, hardly drank, and had a reasonable diet. The pathology report said it was simply bad luck, though possibly stress had been a factor. There was also a genetic link that may also affect me.

After 6 years of hiding his secrets I had a chat with my Mum. The affair had been going on for 10 years, and she had known about it from the start. The other woman was his secretary, and they had been living together for some time. My Mum had hidden it from us for that entire time, not knowing that I knew (and my sister had also found out independently 3 years ago). Every day, once we had gone to school, she would sit at home and cry her eyes out. The only thing stopping her from throwing him out was us, and I guess the hope that he would someday come around and come back to us.

His other woman had a family of her own, two kids who are now 10 and 8 from a previous relationship. I find it very hard thinking that they saw my Dad more than we did, and got what I used to have, and could have still had. I'm sure he loved us, but it wasn't a love I was willing to share.

He had lied to us, to the other woman, and to work for that entire time, sometimes for no reason at all. He even told my Mum that he had told us about his affair, which he never did, and made her even more distraught. My fathers family is deeply religious (something my Mum's side very much isn't), and his Dad (my grandfather) would never have spoken to him again had he known. When my grandfather passed away last year my father tried to arrange a meeting with his other woman and my Nan. She threw him out. For the last year of his life my Dad had been telling my Nan that he wanted to move back to Devon to look after her, his other woman that he wanted to move to Devon with her, and my Mum that he wanted to move there with her, apparently reconciling his differences, or so my Mum thought. I don't know if he was just confused, or whether he had grown so used to lying that he didn't know when to stop.

I loved my Dad, and it hurts me deeply to think that I didn't really know him at all. I never would have thought he could lie to us, or hurt us the way he did. He had a whole other personality that I never knew existed. The man I knew was the best father in the world, and I want to remember him like that. I regret not confronting him about everything, and I regret not talking to my Mum- we are now closer than we have ever been thanks to all of this, and I can only imagine the pain she has been through all these years protecting myself and my sister.

He was my role model. I don't want to be like him anymore.


Comments

You won't be like him Rob. You're your own man, and I imagine your father wouldn't want you to be like he was too. I bet he was proud of the son he helped raised and regretted the time he spent lying to you and your sister. But that's done now, sadly nothing can be changed, you know the truth. It's just up to you how you remember him.

Thanks Leanne, that is one of the best comments I've had in some time, and it pretty neatly sums up the situation without the over dramatic license I used in writing all of that :). As it is I've already started to break away from the route he took- I decided not to do a PhD as it was what he wanted me to do, not what I wanted. I'm doing a teacher training course instead and should be teaching GCSE and A Level biology within a year and a half.

And I've banished the bad memories and I am focusing on the good times with him, usually watching football focus, or when he was watching me play sport and supporting from the sidelines. Those are all things I'll never forget and never stop being thankful for.

Thanks again, you really do know just the right thing to say sometimes. I hope all is well with you and you have a great Christmas. And stop catching me up in the B/P ranks! :P

to many WOOOOORDS

Oh the irony considering your latest news post... at least this one is in English!

Complete unrelated post that will get your attention.

I meant completely and comment. I should think before pressing on that yellow button.

Hope life is picking up now for you Rob, you really deserve it to.

Thanks Leanne, it really is actually. I've got an interview at Cambridge university on Wednesday for a PGCE- no doctor Rob I'm afraid, but well on my way to being a teacher, with a good dose of sports coaching to go with it.

And I'm moving in with Em in the Summer as well :).

I hope things are going well for you too- shame I couldn't make the London meet up, but I'll do my best to make the next one!

I think he wanted you to be cognizant of his actions, but he couldn't bring himself to tell you personally. Liars always find it easier if they've got that shred of truth to cling to (ie: told your ma he told you kids).

I don't think you should feel as if he were purposely hiding away half of himself from you simply to keep it from you. I think he kept quiet about his actions purely out of shame. He knew you knew everyone around him knew about his infidelity, and probably felt all the less deserving of your affection and admiration because of it. It couldn't have helped that his own mother tossed him out of her house.

Honestly, I bet that was the leading role in the stress that killed him. Shame generates the worst kind of stress, for it's the kind that eats at you during all your lonely hours. When you're cheating on your family with another, the division means that even when you're in company, you feel alone.

Anyway, you shouldn't let it subtract from the memories of your father's merits. You've had the chance to learn the lessons through his hard way.

Thanks, these are the kind of comments that really help. I didn't post this for sympathy, I posted it for comments that reasserted what I wanted to think, and that is exactly what you have done.

It's been 8 months now, and life is pretty much back to normal (though I still get moments every now and again where it hits home that he is gone, and the odd bad dream). The good things I did with him are the ones that have stuck in my memory, after all the bad things were all done away from us, and although it doesn't make what he did right, it hasn't dimmed my memories of him to greatly.

I fully agree that his infidelity no doubt led to the stress that killed him- he must have hidden a great deal from a lot of people, and been in constant fear of it all coming out into the open (even though he probably suspected we all knew).

And the lessons have been learned- there is no way I could ever do what he did to any family I might be lucky enough to have in the future, and I feel thankful that any children I might have will only know of how wonderful their grandfather was rather than any of this.

I haven't read that yet, but did you ever know that you're my hero?