THE DADDY DUMPSTER FIRE
Biological, Step & Bonus: All Trash With Different Flames
I apologize ahead of time—this one’s a little long. My daddy issues are… profound. I’ve got so many I could hand a few out to friends.
Turns out, no one seems to want the baggage, though. Rude.
I get it. My childhood wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Actually, it was never sunshine or roses. It was chaos, turmoil, fear, confusion, and a whole lot of self-doubt.
Three men tried and failed miserably to be my “dad”. Here’s the saga:
DADDY NUMBER ONE
Daddy Number One was the best of the three. I loved him—a lot. Up until I was twelve, I thought he was my real dad. We weren’t especially close, and I noticed early on that he shared a deeper bond with my siblings than he did with me. He was never cruel, though. He was a good man despite drinking a few too many beers every night. He worked hard, took care of the family, and lived for my bio-mom.
He loved her so much, and she repaid him by cheating with a man who didn’t shower and couldn’t hold a job longer than it took him to take a shit. Daddy Number One was willing to look past the cheating and try to keep the family together, but Mom loved Showerless, so they split.
I wanted to go with my dad. He actually paid attention to me, and he wasn’t mean as hell. When I told Bio-Mom that, she was furious. To be fair, all four of us wanted to live with him.
“Well, that’s too bad, Laura,” she snapped. “You can’t go with him because he’s not your real dad.”
I remember that moment as if it just happened. She dropped a bomb into my life like she was casually talking about her day. I ended up with Daddy Number One anyway, thanks to Bio-Mom’s spiraling behavior. For over a year she partied and barely saw us. Eventually, she got custody back, and suddenly Daddy Number One pulled away. I didn’t see him much, and there were always excuses. I watched him spend fun, quality time with my siblings, as we drifted apart.
When I was sixteen, he started hosting extra weekends because he wanted to quit drinking. He didn’t drink when he had us kids, so he rotated weekends—one child at a time. As the oldest, I was last. I waited eight weeks for my turn while my siblings came home glowing about their visits: movies they chose, all the best snacks, and a cool restaurant for dinner.
Finally, it was my weekend. We barely spoke. I tried to start conversations, but his short responses made me give up. He picked the movie: a nearly three-hour cowboy-and-Indian epic I couldn’t have cared less about. I didn’t get snacks. I went to the bathroom four times just to escape the boredom.
The kicker came when we left. I thought maybe he’d make up for it with dinner somewhere I liked, but before I could ask, he pulled into a Burger King drive-thru.
That’s when it hit me:
I was a burden. He didn’t want to spend time with me, didn’t want to spend money on me, didn’t care to share the things I liked.
That night was the last time I considered him my dad.
I didn’t want to resent my siblings even more for the fun they had with him that I didn’t, so I made it my fault that we didn’t spend time together. I started making excuses, saying I didn’t want to. And that was that.
Daddy Number One was okay with not being Daddy at all.
DADDY NUMBER TWO
Daddy Number Two doesn’t deserve much space. I’ve talked about him before in The Lie I Told and the Book That Set Me Straight. He’s Showerless. He’s the guy my bio-mother cheated on Daddy Number One with. I couldn’t tell you how many times he cheated on her, it was near constant. Honestly? It feels like her karma. She expected a relationship built on cheating to turn into something good.
That’s laughable.
Daddy Number Two was always trash—manipulative, selfish, and quick to ditch you the second you stopped feeding his ego. On Christmas Eve, he stuck his hands down my pants. When I told my bio-mother, instead of protecting me, she made the path to the truth harder. She didn’t believe me. She even asked, “How could you do this to me?”
That question burned hotter than anything he ever did.
If you want the full disaster story, it’s in The Lie I Told and the Book That Set Me Straight. For here, it’s enough to say Daddy Number Two was no bueno. Walking away from him—and my bio-mother—was like cutting off a chokehold. The manipulation, narcissism, and bullshit bouncing off those walls was suffocating.
Hindsight is 20/20 and for once, I can see AND breath.
DADDY NUMBER THREE
Since I was twelve and my crap-ass bio-mother dropped a dadless bomb into my life, I’d always wondered who my real dad was. I searched and searched, despite the fact that my bio-mother wouldn’t even spell his fucking name right. When I was 23, I stumbled across someone I thought was my step-mother on Facebook. Her profile picture was of her and a man who looked eerily like me, and my heart raced as I typed a message explaining the situation.
I sat on that message for a year. Back then, messages from people not on your friends list went to a separate folder, and you didn’t get notifications. At nearly 25, I finally got a response. She thought I was right, that they had wondered about me for a long time, but couldn’t find me—which made sense, considering my bio-mother had us moving all over the East Coast and Alabama every few years.
We quickly arranged a meet a few days later. My step-mom and Dad came to see me, my husband, and my two small children. Looking back, there are a few things I cataloged and threw out, almost immediately. I scold myself every day for letting them slip.
I had become so attuned to manipulation that I should have seen the red flags and walked away.
The first thing I logged was baby talk. My father talked to me like a baby quite a lot. The way he touched me didn’t feel fatherly. Even the hugs from Daddy Number One had been more “dad-like” than these. His hugs felt possessive.
He put his hand on the back of my neck more than once.
As the night went on, I sensed manipulation. Where my step-mom seemed forthcoming, Daddy Number Three carefully chose his words, painting the picture he wanted me to see.
As time went on, more red flags kept stacking up: he had me sit on his lap while we watched a movie. At 25. His ego was inflated so much it felt like it might burst. He’s the king of ultimatums: breaking things down so you feel the negative impact, then washing it down with a threat.
My husband hated how Daddy Number Three smacked my butt more than he did. I hated it too, and I let it go on far too long. At the time, I remember thinking desperately, “There’s no way both of my parents are these kind of people… right?” Wrong.
Eventually, I tested the theory. I pushed back on things he said, standing up for myself and my family. I got the classic narcissist response: he didn’t like it, and suddenly I’m the problem. I bonded a little with my youngest sister over this—we vented about the things Daddy Number Three did and the way he blamed others. And the baby talk? It got worse. He would talk down to me like a child, and it grated on every last nerve.
The man is annoying as fuck.
Near the end of our relationship, he called out of the blue asking if I wanted a car. I was confused at first, but he explained some “dad rite of passage”, some shit about not buying my first car, then added:
“Besides, if you have a second vehicle, you can come see me more.”
That. Right there. That’s when the screen over my eyes started to crack. I looked back at our relationship. I had been raising two small children, driving over two hours one way to see him nearly every week. They rarely came to me. Even after I pulled back on visits because I had one vehicle and my husband worked a full-time job, he dangled that car over my head like a puppet string.
NOPE.
We drove the car two and a half hours, returned it, returned the tags, and said:
“Fuck your strings.”
I watch now as my father dangles those same strings over my sisters. He owns an auto shop, and both work for him and live with him. They follow his rules, testify in court, do his bidding—whether they like it or not. Seen it with my own eyes. Heard it with my own ears.
Ultimatums and puppet strings go hand-in-hand.
My step-mother is desperately trying to get away from him as I write this. He stalks her, leaves her messages everywhere, even flaming boxes of her own belongings. He threatens her, makes her feel unsafe, and has stripped her of everything, including her kids and grandkids. He’s manipulated so many people around him that they barely know who they are, they just go along with what he says for arguments sake. The level of chaos and confusion he’s created speaks volumes about the depths of his manipulation.
He’s a coward—a chihuahua with a small dick complex, loud bark, little bite, all bullshit. He can pretend to be a husky, but a chihuahua can’t thicken its fur.
He even thinks he can manipulate a judge. I can tell you from experience: he’s not smart enough. He’d need to learn how to speak proper English first, but a narcissist gonna narcissist, right? Right.
I hope he keeps digging his own grave, and I hope he rots in it—for what he said to me, for what he’s put me and my sisters through—and let’s be honest, there are FOUR of us, not two.
Why not let the judge ask why two of us don’t claim him back?
And for what he’s done to my step-mother. That woman is a saint. He’s beaten her, taken everything from her, manipulated her until she didn’t know who she was. But I know her. I know her better than he ever did. She’s caring and funny, helps whenever she can. She bakes the best chocolate chip cookies. She loves her family. She loves my kids dearly.
I spent this last weekend with her, watching her roll around in the grass with my teenagers, laughing and smiling like I’ve never seen before. She’s freeing herself. It’s beautiful to watch.
I feel sorry that two of her daughters aren’t watching her blossom. No actually, they’re trying to help in her demise. But she finally gets to be who she wants to be, and I love her even more for it. She’s more of a mom than mine. I look up to her strength, her ability to persevere for her family. Because that’s what she did for 34 years. She endured beatings, rape, and abuse words can’t describe.
Daddy Number Three was supposed to be Daddy Number One, but I realized along the way he doesn’t deserve the title of “Dad.”
Being last on the list of shit dads is fitting.
My bio-mom is a shitty person too. I’ve long said she and my dad were cut from the same cloth. They were meant for each other. It’s a shame he date-raped her and got her pregnant with me. My mother didn’t do a lot right, but she tried to keep me from him. I understand that now.
She did me one small favor.
Here’s the thing:
Daddy Number One isn’t a bad guy. Having a relationship with a teenage girl is hard enough without blood as a factor.
He took the easy way out—and that’s okay.
Daddy Number Two never claimed to be a good guy. He openly tells everyone he’s a piece-of-shit, and they laugh like it’s a joke.
But Daddy Number Three? He claims to be some sort of victim every day.
In 1989, my father was charged with eight crimes, including:
sodomy, battery, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th degree sex offenses, 2nd degree force/threatening force, and 1st-degree rape using physical force.
That same year, my bio-mother was date-raped by him and did not press charges, resulting in me. Thirty-four years later, he stands accused of brutalizing my step-mother just as long.
Am I to believe there were no victims in between?
That he stopped with her?
I don’t.
And anyone who does is a goddamn fool.
My father thinks consent comes once, like it’s not necessary every time. Since you said yes the first time, he assumes he can take what he wants, when he wants, and share it with his friends.
It makes me sick to be related to him—but I’m proud I had the intellect to break free. I saw through his façade. I got my kids away from the chaos he creates, absolutely refusing to continue the pattern.
Of course a narcissist wouldn’t like that.
He once told me I’m a bad mom. He’s wrong. I’m breaking the cycle. My kids will never know his brand of chaos.