I have never discussed this with anyone in real life because I am ashamed/embarrassed. It is an issue I think about daily, and I would very much appreciate some honest reactions. I suspect I am BU, and feel very guilty/petty about being unable to change my feelings about this.
I am 35. My father and I have very little contact, and other people in the family believe this is because I am BU about my father's decision to date after my mum died when I was 22. This is NOT TRUE. My father changed almost overnight when Mum died, and pushed me away/distanced himself almost immediately back then. It hurt, but I have tried and tried (and still try) to keep in touch with him: it was his decision to abruptly stop phoning me and take himself out of my life back then. Now we see each other only when I return to his village to visit my grandfather (his father), who always pleads with my father to come over for lunch/dinner to see me, which is very awkward because my grandfather is a lovely man and his heart is broken by my dad's new persona (dad has also emotionally distanced himself from my grandfather, who now feels uncomfortable visiting my dad's house 40 minutes from him because my dad's new wifewho I have never been invited to meet!acts as if she does not want my grandfather in their house. My grandfather and grandmotherwho is now deadused to drop in at the family house almost every day when my mum was alive, and they were very much a part of our life as I grew up). But I still love my dad and still keep hoping that he will decide he wants to be part of his "old" family once again. I have NEVER forgotten to send him a present/email on his birthday/Christmas/Father's Day (he will not give me his mobile number, and avoids replying to requests for it, and he has cut off the landline at his house, so we are email only pretty much). The last time I visited his home was when I was 23; he had a live-in girlfriend at the time who took offense that I cried on Christmas Day and kept bringing up my mum with my brothers in front of her (it was our first Christmas without Mum): my dad had told me then that I was not welcome in his home if I could not make his significant other welcome. I never felt comfortable going back, and he never asked me back. But as I said, I have NOT willingly distanced myself from him and still remain hopeful he'll change back; it hurts when other family members tell me that they are surprised I "cut off" my dad. Here's the other issue to this, about which I AM VERY angry, and wonder if ABU about:
We had a comfortable middle class life when I was a child (my dad's financial status IS relevant here). When I was 18, my father's American dentist friend convinced my parents that I should have porcelain veneers on my (perfectly fine) teeth, which were not absolutely American-straight. I did NOT want this and cried a lot about it, but I was a people-pleaser then: I had always done what my parents told me, and spent a lot of energy being the perfect daughter/student/exactly what was expected of me. I went along with it after my parents "insisted". During a university break, I had the procedure, which back then consisted of the dentist grinding a huge amount of enamel from 6 of my front teeth (think to a Gollum-like degree), which was very painful. Then, after almost two weeks, the new veneers were glued to the stubs left behind. It DID look great, but:
Those veneers are not meant to last a lifetime. They look pretty horrible now. I cannot afford to replace them; I am a teacher and that kind of cosmetic thing is well beyond my budget with my other family obligations. In my late 20s, when the veneers began showing their damage, I was heartbroken and attempted to speak to my dad about it. I think I might BU in having asked him then to help me replace them? Maybe I was very childish/emotional in my approach to him about this: I am a teacher, and I died/still die a little each time a stroppy teen comments about my horrible teeth. My dad always completely evaded the issue when I emailed him about this (no, I do not have my own father's mobile number, as he has always avoided my repeated requests for it over the years via email). So, yeah, I am very, very angry with my dad about this issue mostly: he had always emphasized my appearance as a child/teen, which is partly how he had forced me into submitting to this horrible cosmetic mishap, and when I think back to how he had always warned me about my weight (I was not fat, but his comments about weight/fat women when I was a teen also resulted on some intense food issues). He used to tell me he was "proud" of me for being so pretty when I was a teen, and remark on my friends who he felt were overweight, etc. This sort of emphasis on appearance when I was a child/teen has undoubtedly contributed to the heartache and shame I feel now about my hideous teeth, and I am so very angry at him for not fixing my veneers for me now, but then again, I am 35, so do I really have the right to be so angry? After all, when the veneers were done years ago, my dad surely expected me to grow up to have the financial means for their upkeep, and should a parent be expected to help in upkeep of their adult child's cosmetic dentistry if the parent forced the child to get said dentistry as a teen? I just don't know. My birthday was two weeks ago, and my dad had actually sent an email the week before the birthday in which he casually mentioned he was going golfing with his dentist friend. I KNOW I was BU when I snapped back an email reply saying it made me feel angry that he mentioned this man to me (I also blame the dentist friend), and then writing that my dad should think about how his life would have been different if someone had forced him to have this done to his teeth when he was a teen and he had gone through his 20s with the crumbling, hideous results. He never replied to the email, and didn't email me on my birthday a week later, so I know he feels I am BU at mentioning this still. I felt like such a loser on my 35th birthday to think about all this, and I wonder if I am childish and spiteful for being angry about the teeth issue, or for wanting/expecting my dad to pay to have them fixed.
So, am I BU?