Anonymous, Canada
While growing up, I looked up to my dad very strongly. He always advocated for me and my sister to stand up for ourselves, helped teach me how to manage my chronic illness, and shielded us from our abusive mother. He taught us to be free willed, independent, strong women, and when my parents finally divorced in our 20s, it seemed like it was the best for everyone involved.
At that point, my siblings and I pursued therapy, and I did a lot of self work to recover from what had happened. As I grew older, I also went to university, and took multiple poli-sci classes and read numerous political-science and history books,
I began to realize how fundamentally unjust the world is. When you're chronically ill and the victim of a decade of abuse, you fundamentally empathize with those experiencing homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, and any other intersection of marginalization. As such, I started doing charity work, attending political rallies, donating money to causes, and volunteering.
Meanwhile, it seems like the anger about my dad's life had poisoned him. Visits became increasingly strained, and as we grew older, he started constantly picking fights, calling all the women in his life "psychotic b******" and specifically stating the same about my mother, my sister, his sisters, and the women he was dating.
I can appreciate his anger at my mother, but he refused to address it in a healthy way. I increasingly attempted to change topics or avoid talking politics so we could simply have a relationship, but after he aggressively embraced Jordan Peterson, he became unbearable to be around. Then the pandemic happened, and all hell broke loose.
Now my dad was joining the trucker rallies, making misogynistic and transphobic "jokes" at every opportunity, ranting constantly about how "Justin Trudeau wants us to live in a prison state," saying the wage gap wasn't real, screaming about how "Women on Youtube will only date men who make 100k or more" and numerous other things. He kept claiming that university students were brainwashed and he did his own research. Every.
Single. Conversation would immediately turn to politics or his hatred of women or queer people; requests to change the subject were immediately disregarded; he would never ask about my life, and he was simply unbearably angry to be around.
The last straw was a visit to his city where we went for a family dinner with my aunt and female cousins: he kept broaching the topic of abortion. Later on that week, he referred to my sister, his daughter, as a "b****" because she had gotten angry at him.
We stopped speaking. Then he almost died from a random infection, so I went back to Canada to help care for him. He acted like nothing had happened and avoided discussing our silence for the past year; he gratefully accepted my help until I asked him if we could discuss and improve on our relationship.
It ended with him yelling in my face that I was a "brainwashed communist."
I am so tired, and so sad for him. He is extremely well off, makes a ton of money, and could be living a happy life surrounded by people he loves. Instead, he spends every night falling asleep to YouTube alt-righters ranting, and routinely calls his own daughters and sisters slurs.
It's incredibly sad. After that month long trip home to help care for him in a time of need, he hasn't bothered to call or reach out once in the past year.