Daddy Recovery: The Podcast – But I Prayed
My grandmother was pissed. My father had done a brujería against her, and she was MAD. For My grandmother was pissed. My father had done a brujería against her, and she was MAD. For years, my father called her for everything. I have an ingrown nail, could you pray? I lost my law license, could you pray? I’m suicidal, could you pray? She took his death wish as the highest act of ingratitude, and Lord Knows my grandmother could hold a grudge. It is why I believe she has lived for so long: her anger won’t let her sleep, let alone eternally slumber. Yet, for me, my dad being evil was simply him… he never showed me kindness.
Growing up, Mr. H only liked men, in every way. He saw women as service and men as equals, of which his trouble childhood, with his own mother, fueled this toxic, misogynistic notion. Add on some DL tendencies, and, in truth, my father hated women; resented them for the inevitable way they would be in his life in the form of multiple wives, sisters, and daughters he would either have to care for while desiring to destroy or actually destroy them and send them brujería to die so he could cover that he abandoned them. After all, he would not want his men to think he was bad. Yet, if there was one thing he was good at, it was charming women to believe that despite all the tears and abuse, somehow, his absolute nothingness in value to their lives was oddly vital.
¨Tanto que me llamaba?¨ my grandmother announced enraged. My father had gone all the way to Cuba for another hex against us because that is how low he was; he would rather pay 10,000 dollars to a Santero to kill my grandmother than give it to her as a thank you gift. ¨Me llamaba hasta mama!¨ she exclaimed, and it was true. Looking back, my father´s relationship with my grandmother and my mother was more like, a son: demanding them to show up for him, clean his messes, and forgive the demons he carried that loved to cause them. The problem is he hated his actual mom, and shared a similar mentality with her of ¨you owe me.¨ The difference was my grandmother was sweeter in the way she showed up: always with prayers.
My father thought women owed him while men could own him. They could have their way with him in every way but the idea of a woman ever being more than him disgusted and enamored him; using occasional humiliation to remind them that though he acted like a sloppy mess, he still had a penis. Over and over, to every wife, he eventually smashed the pedestal he placed them on over their head: completely changing their futures and assuring they had a baby to solidify their potential was never fully realized. Yet, my perplexity did not come from my father acting evil… it is who he was. My befuddlement came from why my grandmother thought she was the exception to his hate, even if all he did was act with vitriol to her daughter … to her granddaughter.
¨I´m only nice to him for you, Diandra,¨ my mother and grandmother would declare when in my babied innocence, I confronted them on why they were nicer to the guy who made me cry than to me… the one who actually wanted to please them. Still, if there was one thing the women in my family loved, it was being liked by strangers and men, while being rather indifferent to how much their daughter cared about or felt cared for by them. THIS Achilles heel is what my father noticed: no one minded leaving their daughter dusty to leave their man or even adopted son on a higher shelf.
My father had an innate ability to destroy women and oddly make them compete with each other for his false affection, which they would display in money, ego boosts, sex, tears, and absolute mental breakdowns. Even I felt competitive with my mom as he treated her better, which made my constant remarking of his abusing of me fall harder on a cloud than on my mother´s ears. She was too wrapped in the smoke of a man good with words but deadly with actions, and, in some ways, my grandmother was the same: offering her prayers, which was most sacred to her, to a man whom her daughter complained made her cry of embarrassment.
Still, what I wanted to understand was how someone could drag your daughter through the mud, and you tell her she is more sensitive than dirty. That is when a dark fear come over me… what if it was not that my father like my mother more than me but my mother liked my father more than me? She was so strict and hard on me, but endlessly graceful and forgiving of him, of which my grandmother displayed the same level of judging her more for choosing him than him for scamming her.
Suddenly, it was apparent to me that, generationally, none of us could report our grief to our mommies. Yet, out of all of us my mother had no one to report to. In Puerto Rico, my grandmother’s prayers were legendary, even to Santeros, whom understood she only prayed to God, aka Jesus was her sole homeboy. This empowered her enough to forget that for however wealthy she was spiritually, materially, she was so broke even Amazon Prime was unaffordable. Still she liked feeling like, God was listening to her in the ways, she was unheard by her own family. My mother in not having that dynamic just fell into silence. Meanwhile, I was the strange one because I, simply, cried to the internet: turning Youtube into a listening ear for the torment men gave us, even when we prayed.
