I am kind of hesitant to call him my father now.  I would rather think of him as a sperm donor.

But, anyway, on with my story.

So my girlfriend and I were riding with him, I will call him SD, in the car this afternoon.  We were talking, and somehow the conversation kept getting worse and worse.  It was a stupid conversation to begin with.  I don't even want to get into what we were talking about.  It was really dumb.  But it made me think SD was even more racist than I already thought, which is really dang racist.  Eventually by the time we were done with our trip he was up in my girlfriend's face yelling at her very aggressively.  I told him to give me the keys so we could leave.  He did that, but he kept yelling.  At a woman.  Very close.  He opened the car door in order to do it.  I told him I would kill him if he touched her and I had to drive off with him still trying to keep the car door open.  Somewhere in there he called both of us a slur, and he called me a girl.

I am so angry I cannot function.  My mom and I are going to talk about it in the morning, but I think I am permanently done with him.  I suspected he was a horrible person for years, but it is just weird finally hearing him say all of those things.

Sorry, I just needed to vent somewhere.  I figured you guys would understand.  I am sure a lot of you have been through even worse.  At least he didn't hit me and seemed kind of afraid of me.  But yeah, it feels strange losing your SD. 

I am sorry to hear about your altercation Chris.  Put a bit of distance between the two of you for a time, but don't burn the bridge quite yet.  Maybe there is a way forward but not quite now. 

If you think about it, many people behave badly to family and then hate themselves for it but can't get out of the dynamic.  This incident could give you an opportunity to reset things at some point, if you and he both want to. 

I very much advocate discussion in order to resolve issues.  But I also insist of establishing "don't ever go there again" boundaries with people.

Good luck!
Julia

Thanks, Julia.  I am going to have to put distance between us, but I am afraid I will never really get away from him.  I am very conflicted right now.  The only thing keeping me attached to him is that I love my mom, and she has some health problems, and I like hanging out with her because she has a hard time driving and getting around so she likes me to drive her places.  I wish in some fantasy universe (I say that because she's probably never going to leave) she would leave my dad because I don't think he is doing a good job taking care of her.  I think my gf and I would do better since we know how to cook, clean, and take care of animals.  He is lazy and doesn't do enough housework.  He doesn't even know how much of what to feed their dogs or how to operate a washing machine.  Grrrr.

Hi, Chris!  Let me offer my condolences.  I've had similar experiences with my dad.  The situation between us even today is bad.

He's ancient and I'm not young, and we've never resolved our differences.  Looking back on things now, I wish I'd come out as trans to him long, long ago, and I wish I'd taken on a number of other issues as well.  He wouldn't have liked what I had to say one bit, but we would have had years to try to come to terms with each other.

As it is, I'm not even out to him.  He still doesn't know I'm trans.  We live thousands of miles apart, so it's easy enough for me to keep things secret, but I don't like the situation one bit.  It's just that old and set in his ways as he is, not to mention his fragile health, my brother and sister and I all agreed that we needed to keep quiet about it because he simply wouldn't be able to handle it.

Not a great situation.  Also, in discussions/arguments we've had in recent years, he's made it quite plain that in certain ways he has no respect for me whatsoever.  He's got issues himself that he never even wanted to recognize, let alone deal with.

So I don't know what to say to you, apart from the fact that you've certainly got my sympathy.  I can say that I wish I'd dealt with things one way or the other when I was young.  A whole lifetime has gone by, and the issues that always separated us are still there, unresolved.

I don't think you need to do anything straightaway.  Maybe you want to take your time, months or even longer, to mull things over.  But if you decide you want to tell your SD exactly what you think, exactly what your problems are with him, you never know, he might eventually decide he'd like to patch things up with you and try to have some kind of relationship with you, even if it's not the ideal one you'd like to have.

My feeling is (going by my own experience) it's best to get things out in the open as soon as you can and not let them fester for a lifetime.  If the result is that you simply can't get along with him, at least you know that much and you don't spend your whole life worrying about it.

But these are just my thoughts.  I can't tell you what to do in your life.  Only you know your own circumstances, so you'll have to make your own decision.  I just wish that I'd done things differently when I was young.

I wish you all the best, in this respect and in all others.