Hi there,
For months I have been with this idea in my head to write about “the parasite”, as we commonly call my dad’s partner. After spending more than 20 years fighting against a monster that has taken his money and has achieved its goal, which was to get him away from me, writing this post is a kind of therapy.
When I was little, I don’t remember how old I was, but I’m sure less than 5, my mom decided to get divorced because, according to her own words, “she felt like another piece of furniture in the house”.
We went to live at my grandmother’s house until she got her own place to live. At that time, the lawyer told her that she could take everything from my dad, but she decided not to fight, she just stayed with me and left.
So, from there, I spent the weekends with my dad and the week with my mom. I remember that from the first moment I had to spend every weekend with this “friend” he had, to go to lunch, to the beach, to the movies, for everything.
Imagine that I was little, and I told my mom how annoying it was to have this “friend” and her two daughters with us the whole weekend. My mother, who was always very clear and direct with me, told me that this woman was not a friend but her girlfriend, that I should accept it so that I would not suffer later.
Weekends and vacations became moments when I didn’t spend time with my dad since I had to put up with three complete strangers. I also realized that he always paid for everything and there was never a moment when that woman took out her wallet for something.
I also had to go to the house of this woman who lived with the whole family crammed into a very small apartment. That house was a mixture of disaster, dirt, and cockroaches. I didn’t understand how my dad, being so obsessive with cleanliness and order, so perfectionist and meticulous, could have gotten mixed up with those people.
My grandparents, who were alive at that time, suffered greatly from the separation of my parents since they could not understand how my father had let such a good woman go. My grandfather Gastone never spoke to my dad’s new partner and always asked him how he had thought of getting involved with such a scum. My grandmother treated her well and as soon as she left, she also began to insult her. The word that my grandparents always used towards her: “La Puttana”.
In addition to the fact that I had to put up with that trio for all the time that I was supposed to share with my dad, we also began to travel with them, who always demonstrated their poor hygiene, their rudeness and, above all, their overwhelming ignorance. Imagine that if I left something dirty, my father would go crazy, but never said anything about their filth.
His girlfriend’s daughters also started calling my dad “old drunkard.” Really? They took his money and to top it off they insulted him. I used to say this to my father, very annoyed, and he pretended it was nothing.
Additionally, I realized that this woman who took everything she could from my father was telling everyone that she was the one who paid for everything and the one who had to be lending him money so that he could eat. Besides, she got tired of saying that he was an old jerk.
Here I must tell you that this woman is exactly the same age as my dad. Physically she was always very ugly, she had bad breath that would kill you and lots of dandruff. In other words, you can’t even say “he looked for a beautiful 20-year-old girl who takes money from him”, not even that.
My mom was shocked at the things I told her and that my dad was so incredibly stupid and masochistic to put up with it. Already at that time my mother told me “Juan is not the man I married.” To top it off, “the parasite” called my mom on the phone to tell her all the gifts my dad supposedly gave her and that the following year they were going to get married, and we were all going to live together. Every year she told the same story.
Once, going through my dad’s drawers, I found some letters that “the parasite” wrote to him. In all those letters she said that she cried a lot and that “her daughter” (me) was a manipulator and that he did everything I ordered him to do; She also lamented the good relationship my dad had with my mom and that she hoped someone would treat her that way.
In other words, this woman facing the world was the one who had a relationship with an “old drunkard” who disgusted her and whom she had to support, but in front of my dad she was the defenseless one who lived crying. Also, in all those letters she kept saying that “the relationship was going to end soon”, but there she was still stuck like a leech.
This is how the years went by and the behavior was the same. My childhood was ruined having to be with those people, my vacations, and the precious time I should have shared with my dad were ruined.
For fifth grade I went to live with him because in Caracas there were better schools than where my mother lived or that was the idea that he and the parasite put into my head.
So, from then on, I spent the week with him and the weekend with my mom, that is, now I had to see the parasite more days because her driver (my dad) would go, look for her and bring her to my house all afternoon. What a nightmare! Luckily one day I told him that if that woman didn’t love her daughters because she was always in my house; fortunately, from then on, I didn’t have to see her anymore during the week.
Then he bought an apartment on the beach that the parasite instantly took over, put all his family and friends there, and told everyone that this apartment was hers. My dad did absolutely nothing. When I wanted to go and take my friends, everything was a problem. That damn apartment caused me so much discomfort that I decided never to go there again.
Also, the relationship with my dad was getting worse and worse because that woman put strange ideas in his head, she had him as a driver up and down so when I needed to be taken somewhere, my dad was conspicuous by his absence. If we went somewhere, it had to be with these people, so I also stopped going out with my dad.
While my mom was always the most wonderful woman in the world, the best mother and the best friend, the one who taught me the things I needed to know in life, the one who sent boyfriends far away if they dared to make a bad comment about me, the one who was unconditional even if we fought (and we fought a lot); my father, on the other hand, took it upon himself to become a stranger in my life, whom I saw in the morning when I went to school and at night when I went to sleep, because he was always chauffeuring the parasite and her daughters, and at the weekend he would go to the beach with his new family.
Imagine that once I needed him to pick me up at the gym at night and as usual, he was busy taking the parasite home from work; I wasn’t going to wait more than an hour for him to show up, so I had to go by subway. Arriving at the building, two guys came to rob me with a gun to my head and everything, they didn’t kill me by a miracle. My dad invented a parallel reality in his head about this in which “I decided to take the subway because I had a fight with my boyfriend at the time.”
To him, I was the bitter one, the one in the wrong side, the one who hated the world, the one with no friends. It was my fault because “I had a very strong character”
You think that this woman is very sick, psychologically speaking, is a mythomaniac, manipulative and many other things. But in the end, it is my dad who allowed her to get to where she has come, he allowed her to speak ill of me, to speak ill of my mother even after she died, to speak ill of him who pays for her trips and all her whims . In fact, the few times my dad’s friends went to the apartment on the beach, that woman made such scandals that no one ever went anymore.
I decided to go to Spain to do a master’s degree mostly because I couldn’t stand living with my dad; Although the two of them lived apart, that woman from a distance always managed to ruin and worsen our relationship every day. I was so sick of being there that I thought I’d move out, settle down, and take my mom to live with me.
Before I went to Spain in 2012, I found out that in 2008 my father had secretly married the parasite. In other words, they had been “married” for more than 4 years and my dad lived with me, and she lived as always snuggled up to her sisters’ house. Why did she marry then? To secure the property and money my dad might have. Obvious.
This was such a shock to my mom and me that we couldn’t believe such a lie and that my dad could be so unbelievably stupid. He was definitely a completely different person than the one we had known.
So, I left Venezuela crazy to get out of that weird and sick situation. Unfortunately, my mom died months after being in Spain. My dad went to Valencia to supposedly “be with me” but he was glued to his cell phone for two weeks because it turns out that the parasite kept him busy asking him for the things she wanted him to buy.
That December of 2013 I decided to return to my country because I needed my father’s support. I hadn’t talked to anyone for a year or practically left the house. Since my arrival meant that the parasite had to disappear, she wasn’t there physically, but she was writing to my dad and calling him every day.
One day it occurred to me to grab his cell phone and read the WhatsApp’s and what I found were millions of messages saying that she was crying alone, that she wanted to commit suicide, regretting not being able to go to the apartment on the beach and of course, asking for bank transfers. Do not think that that month that I was there she was not going to get money from him.
My dad became a complete zombie, he barely ate and was glued to his cell phone day and night. He forbade me from going to the apartment on the beach so that she could go alone, who despite “crying alone” where she lives, no longer cried in the apartment on the beach. In addition to this, one day while discussing he told me “That I was such a bad person and made the poor woman cry.”
He also told me that “he no longer shared with anyone because they were all gossips who spoke ill of his wife.”
That’s when I understood that that man was anything, maybe an alien, but not my dad. The rest of the days that I had left in Caracas I had to go to my friend’s house because being in that house with him was depressing. I also understood that the parasite would have achieved her goal: to totally isolate my father from his friends and his daughter.
I returned to Spain and hardly even spoke to my dad anymore, I gave him other opportunities to spend vacations together with the hope that he would change, but I only managed to ruin the vacations for my boyfriend and me. In fact, I bought him a ticket to go to Vietnam and it was 600 euros that I lost because he didn’t feel like coming (maybe she didn’t give him permission).
My dad has become a mythomaniac and a stranger. A person who now also lives in a parallel reality. In addition, he lost his lifelong friends and associates with very bad people, who are the friends of the parasite and her daughters, so they also broke into his house and robbed him. I had to ask my friend to go get the rest of the things that were left out of my room and take them to her home, to at least have safe the things that I have left in Venezuela and that have sentimental value.
The relationship with my dad is less than non-existent. Many doctors recommended that for my psychological well-being I close that chapter since it was clear that he was not going to change.
I avoid talking to him, but the few times I do, it’s like I’m talking to the parasite. Despite the difficult situation Venezuela is going through and the fact that his company has closed, and he no longer has a job, he continues to spend absurd amounts to pay for her trips because if he doesn’t, she starts saying that she wants to die. The last time he was away he spent a fortune in two weeks.
Imagine making matters worse, that for two years I went through a disease from which I thought I was not going to get out alive and my dad did not care. I went through the operating room countless times. What did he do? Absolutely nothing.
After having gone through the death of my mother alone, after having suffered a terrible illness alone, I decided that it was over to continue suffering for someone who no longer deserves to be called “father” because more than 20 years ago he stopped being such a thing
I always remember my mom telling me that if either of them had to die, she would rather die because she knew my dad would take better care of me. How wrong you were mom!
Today it is as if neither of them was there, but I always have my mother present, that strong woman who gave me everything she could, who taught me the most important things in life, that unconditional friend and confident with whom I died of laughter, that extremely good human being.