• 28 Nov, 2025 *

i had a long talk yesterday about parenthood with someone’s mother.

by all accounts (except sometimes her own) she is a very good mother, and i think this goes a long way towards why i feel inclined to discuss my own parents with her.

we mostly talked about my dad.

he’s a mess of a guy. i’m not gonna get into it too much. but, suffice it to say that a lot of things he did (or didn’t do) when I was younger are still weighing on me a long time later, and my mother has very rightfully cut him out of her life after they divorced about 3 years ago.

he still tries to talk to me reasonably often, and i keep my replies as minimal as I can without being impolite.

he asks me if i wanna come visit, stay over for a night or two at his place in the middle of nowhere over that side of the adelaide hills.

the first few times, i asked him in return:

“when are we gonna talk about things, dad? i want to talk to you about everything we did to hurt each other, although i was a child and didn’t know better - admittedly, you were also sort of still a child and didn’t know better, but i wish you had tried to learn a little faster. can we talk about that, please?”

he responds, “what things? we can talk i guess, but i don’t know what you want to talk about.”

these days i usually just ignore his questions, and talk about something else instead. but i’ve told him what i need.

i get it, he’s trying to be a good dad now. he’s got a new girlfriend and three dogs and a beehive. he wants his kids around again, even if we’ve grown up and moved on.

last night i told my friend’s mom,

“i’ve stopped trying to talk to him about it, but i still leave him the option - to ease my own conscience, as much as for his sake. i want to reconnect with him, but there’s too much we haven’t talked about. i don’t even need him to apologise. i just need him to even acknowledge that any of it happened.”

she said something then, in the classic way parents do when talking to someone who isn’t, always with the quiet implication that ‘you won’t know what its like until you have kids of your own’.

she told me that it seemed like he still cared, if he was still trying to reach out. maybe he’s not very good at it, but he must still care about his kids if he’s trying to be a good dad now.

the thing is, i don’t think she’s wrong.

i thought about this for a minute, and replied pretty simply.

“yeah, i know he cares. but if he wants me to be his daughter again, he has to care about me in the way i’ve been telling him I need, not just in the way that’s easy for him.”

the thing is, i think he does care. she was right - it’d be easier for him to move on and forget about us, so he must care at least enough to still try.

but i don’t think he cares about me as a person.

he doesn’t ask about what i want. he doesn’t inquire about my life, or my friends, or my dreams.

he said he wanted to go on a holiday to melbourne together this year, said it 3 or 4 times, and then... when the time came, he never followed through. he didn’t even mention it.

he cares about me as an avenue to relieve his own guilt. if he can win me back, then he will prove to himself that he’s a good dad after all. i’m just part of his narrative, not a being in my own right.

this is exactly why he could never be a good dad.

and i think i’m very tired of feeling like someone else’s means to an end.