I had dinner with my dad tonight, even though I really just wanted to stay home.

A month earlier, he'd said he didn't need or want a girlfriend--that women and cars just caused him problems and cost him money. So I was surprised when he told me he had a new girlfriend the last time I was at her house. Or rather, he rhapsodized about her. It was rather sickening, actually, and upsetting. This woman is somebody he dated before my mother; it's also somebody he continued seeing after he married my mother. It's also the younger sister of someone who was a good friend of my mom's. It's very similar to the woman he was engaged to after my parents split up--kind of creepy, really.

Anyway, the last time I was there he was going on and on about this woman. Apparently he's loved her for thirty years, and she's his true love, and she the love of his life, and by the end of the night I wanted to tell him high school wanted its drama back. It was rather upsetting, actually--he implied that he never loved my mother, than he always wanted to be with this other woman, and he was completely oblivious to how upsetting that was to me. I've known my entire life that I wasn't planned, and that my parents would probably have never gotten married if I hadn't been conceived. But before, I always sort of felt like that was okay, because they loved each other even though things went spectacularly wrong in the end. The things he was saying, though, just seemed to negate all that, and I couldn't find the words to explain it to him--especially when he started in with the "Don't you want me to be happy?" crap.

I was almost sure this woman would be there tonight, but she wasn't. But he talked about her all night--Tonya this, Tonya that, Tonya Tonya Tonya. When he started telling me how they discovered while talking that they'd both kept track of each other for the last thirty years, I just burst in to tears. It was just to much, to think he'd spent my entire life wishing he'd been with someone else, which would've meant I was never born. He didn't mean it that way; he's a very face-value type of person. He was utterly confused when I started crying and when I finally managed to explain it to him, because in his mind it had nothing to do with me and it was ridiculous I'd even take it that way.

I don't know that he quite believed me when I explained why I was upset; I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm jealous or afraid he's going to abandon me like my mom sort of did for a while after she re-married. Because he decided to go in to that and start trashing me mother, we got into an entire different line of conversation, which is where the possible progress comes in.

Ever since they split up, he's insisted that he won't ever be in the same room with my mother again, for any reason, no matter what. When I had sinus surgery last year, I begged him to put their issues aside so that when I went under I could have both my parents there, and he refused. He's been saying for a few years that he can forgive her for what she did to him, but not what she did to me. I've tried and tried to tell him that I've talked to her, I've cleared the air with her, and she and I are fine--so why can't he let it go?

Tonight, I think I finally managed to get through to him, and he said that for me, on certain occasions like when I graduate, he might be able to deal with. It's more than I thought I'd get from him. I've got at least another year and a half to work on the graduation thing, so hopefully I won't have a) forgo walking in my own graduation ceremony or b) chose a family to exclude.

He also told me tonight that Tonya is terrified of meeting me, which I find rather hilarious, actually. I guess he told her about how he dumped his ex-fiancée partially because of her attitude toward me--I didn't know it until later, but she'd given him an ultimatum and said he had to cut me off and never help me again with money, or my car, or anything, because she had to come first.

So Tonya has extrapolated from this, I guess, that if I don't like her she might be out on her ass. Too bad that's not true--I freaking hated the 21 year old brat he was dating a couple of years ago, and all I got was "don't you want me to be happy?" But I have nothing against Tonya. I don't know her, after all, and the reasons I'm upset aren't really about her. I just hope that if my dad follows through on his hints about running off to Vegas, that they do exactly that. I hate weddings anyway, and I think I'd sob through the entire ceremony if I had to watch either of my parents marry someone else. My mom got married without any of her family there and didn't tell me until a month later; I almost hope my dad does the same. Never thought I'd say that.