#it's 2625 words...yikes

[angelic-guardienne]

It’s 12:30 AM and I’m super tired and still have homework to do and have to get up for school in less than six hours but my brain is whirring entirely too fast. 

A few days ago I made a post about the bros being relatable, and in the tags I said Prompto specifically. 

And me? I’m so angry. I’m so angry. I know I should be forgiving, but I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired.

Read more bc I’m just -- too much. 

TL;DR: Basically I just rant for entirely too long about shitty parenting things, then connect my own experiences to Prompto’s at the veeeery end, followed by “You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family” and how both Prompto and I did that.

Reason I said Prompto specifically? Terrible parents. Parents that only care distantly, if at all. Parents that don’t really try.

I suppose it’s a little rude for me to say such things...

I’m just angry. See, for context, my whole life has been between two households cause my parents pretty much hate each other (and whenever I say “hate” they say that they don’t hate each other but that’s beside the point). I spend the week with my mom because she lives closer to my school, and then on weekends I go over to my dad’s.

My mom is golden, more than so. Maybe it’s because we spend so much time together, we’re just that close, she’s pretty much my best friend, she loves me enough for two people, five people. (she’s been a single mom the whole time she’s been raising kids cause my older brother’s father didn’t stick around either, which just makes my mom that much more amazing to me because she raised two kids pretty much by herself)

My dad?

With me, I bottle up things way too much so there’s always that one thing, that super small thing that always breaks the bottle, the last straw that breaks the camel’s back, that’s how I handle like 95% of everything I deal with (unhealthy, yeah, but that’s another thing for another time)

And the bottle bursting always happens whenever I’m in a good point, as in I have a bit of motivation and my grades are good and I’m just generally not as depressed and that bone-deep, soul-deep exhaustion I feel isn’t as harrowing. It’s like the plot of life takes a sudden left turn straight off of a cliff.

The little thing this time was my flute.

Y’all know I play the flute. Y’all know I’m in marching band. 

About two-ish months ago, I took my flute in for repairs, ‘cause it was garbage and didn’t play any notes, and I wanted it for marching band season so I just. Took it in for repairs, that was July? More than two months. whatever, so I got a call saying I could pick it up this week. 

Went over to the shop...

Repairs came out to be $203. Like I said, garbage flute. Buuuut way back when I sent it off originally, my dad was prepared to lay down $200 so that it could be paid for -- as in, there was a pre-payment system so that if the repairs cost $200 or less, they’d already be paid for, but if it was over that amount they’d have to get customer approval before beginning transactions and whatnot.

(Of course it’d be $3 over the line... but anyways)

So I’m like, cool, I’ll just call my dad and he can pay for it and I can pick up the flute, it’ll be great, right? 

Nope. (and here, if this was a verbal story, I’d pop my “p” just because of how simply and quickly he turned me down and how infuriated I am about it)

The basic rundown of what he said was that no, I wasn’t going to get my flute until next week (this week, now) and that I wouldn’t have it by Saturday (a truly important date for me b/c it was my last marching band competition, I wanted to have a playable flute for that ((and I ended up having to use my expensive ass concert flute for that event, anyways))) and that I might not even get it next (this) week because I was low on his priority list.

I probably sound like a brat but -- his daughter? Fucking low on his priority list?

He gave me a hard time when I said I should be at least second on the list, and because I’m a little shit I just took it with a tight smile and an “okay, see you next weekend, love you too, bye.”

And like -- god, he’s been doing this shit for my entire life. I guess it just took until now for me to finally see it. To say the least he’s very poor at keeping his word with me.

(Once my mom said we could go to the movies together to see Spiderman: Homecoming. She promised me we would go. Come the day of, we were running on a bit of a tight schedule due to unforeseen circumstances, and even though I told her that it was alright and we didn’t have to go see the movie, she still took us to see it because she promised. She made time for a basically three hour outing (four, I think, we may have went out to eat) because she promised me that we would go see that movie.) 

((My dad’s never done anything like that. Once, when I was younger, he asked what I wanted, probably something for a birthday or Christmas or whatever, and I said I wanted to spend a day with him, just he and I, so we had one meal together at a restaurant and he took me back home. And me, being myself, I just ate that time up because I didn’t have any other times that I could say were ours, just ours. It’s... kinda sad.))

Every single time he doesn’t keep his word I get all broken up and just completely break down, full out sobs and all that jazz, because? Why? It’s the same thing that keeps happening. 

I’ve been making excuses for him for years, years, my entire life. I’ve been forgiving him over and over.

Because he’s not all bad. He’s really not. (And I don’t mean it sarcastically, at least I don’t think I do, cause I’m not too sure anymore) He buys me the things I want on the appropriate dates, as in holidays and birthdays. He bought me a PS4 with the help of my brother, and he bought me FFXV (also with the help of my brother) and the like. The things I wanted in that moment, if it’s close enough to a holiday, he’ll buy.

It’s the wants, but he never participates in the needs. Never, not once.

You know, when I was younger he would always say no whenever I asked to do something with my friends on the weekends? (There’s one particularly terrible experience that happened when I dared to have an outing with my friends on a Friday without letting him know) Did you know it got to the point where my friends just stopped asking if I wanted to hang out because they knew the answer would be no? 

Do you know how much that hurts?

One of my best friends (we’re estranged now) was having a birthday party for herself, and she was debating on asking me because she knew the answer would be no and she just figured that it would be better if I didn’t know about it in the first place. 

I’ll never forget the look that she gave me, the pure hesitance in her whole being, when she finally told me about the party.

You know I only hear about parties second-hand now? So much time was spent, “Did you go to so-and-so’s party?” 

“I didn’t even know so-and-so was having a party... how was it?”

“Ah... it was fun.”

“That’s good.”

It fucking hurts.

But does my dad care? No. (Sometimes I felt like he was doing that on purpose, just to make it easier on himself in the long run, not having to hassle, trying to cart me around to everyone’s birthday parties.)

But all that was a tangent. 

I don’t think my dad knows where I want to go to college, and I frankly don’t think he cares so long as he doesn’t have to pay anything.

(My reasons for believing that? I told him a while back ((he probably doesn’t remember)) that I was going to apply to both Queens University of Charlotte and Duke University. I want to go to Queens more badly ((which requires more work on my part because I’m basically in a one-income household, so scholarships)). Duke has this financial plan where, if your family makes less than a certain amount of money yearly, the school will cover a certain amount of the tuition. At the current income level and their need-based aid, my mom wouldn’t have to pay anything because my education would be completely covered by the school. Queens has no such plan as that... but it’s my preferred school, for reasons I won’t list at the moment. When I told him these things, he basically told me to “just get into Duke,” because then he won’t have to pay anything.)

Like I said, the big things, he just doesn’t want to be involved in.

He doesn’t help my mom make payments on my car, at all. He doesn’t help with school fees, at all. (I have a fun story about that one) 

When I got my permit to drive, we went driving exactly three times together (once when I first got it, and then twice when I was about to take my test for my license so he could help me parallel park). And after I got it, he called me “driving partner” ...and then hasn’t let me behind the wheel since.

My dad’s never taken off of work to support me. I’m always second place. (As a foil, my mom has taken off of work plenty of times to support me, and then worked extra to make up for it, all for me ((and bills, of course)))

I send my dad a schedule of the football games for this season, basically every time he can come see the marching band perform the show at half-time, and does he come? Not to one game. Not at all. 

I didn’t tell him about competition this weekend because (after much coercing) he’s going to the game next weekend, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get him to do something like this for two weekends in a row.

(And he told me he might not even stay to watch the show, depending on his work hours.)

When he picks me up to drive me to his house on Fridays, he won’t speak to me unless I speak first. He doesn’t ask me how my week was, nothing. The drive is just an hour of fucking silence (because he doesn’t turn the radio on with me in the car), if I don’t talk first.

He once had to pick up some food so he had a lunch for work that evening. So, with me in the car, he stopped by Chick-fil-a. (Note, I hadn’t eaten anything that day, but I hadn’t told him that.) He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything, didn’t ask me if I had eaten, didn’t even look at me. About twenty minutes down the road later, with me having to hold his food in my freaking lap because there was nowhere else to put it, he asks me if I was hungry. And when I say yes, he tells me about the leftovers in the fridge.

He makes me feel like such a nuisance whenever I even think about asking for something outside of the prompted times (again, holidays and birthdays).

I hate it so much. 

And then he feels like he can still think he plays some huge part in my life when he’ll barely speak to me when we do get to see each other. 

It’s like I, as a person, don’t even matter. It’s like all he wants is the final product of a “good daughter,” but not actually put in the work of being a father. (I once got a 96 or so on a test, and was very proud of it, but when I told him, his response was, “Why didn’t you get a 100?” I stopped telling him about my grades after that.)

If my school is doing a fundraiser and I ask him to buy something, no matter how politely I put it, he’ll tell me no. A random ass kid from the neighborhood can come to the door selling bottles of water and he’ll rush to get his wallet.

I just don’t get it. ...is it me?

But anyways... so yeah. My dad, as a parent, does the bare minimum.

To relate this all back to Final Fantasy XV as per this blog, I imagine Prompto’s parents were much the same as my dad.

They were never around. They never actually took care of him like parents should. He came home to an empty house most of the time.

And presumably they sent money, because Prompto ate fast food a lot but surely didn’t have a job, to at least show that they care a little bit.

They don’t want him to die.

So it’s the bare minimum... and Prompto, like me, just takes what he can because there’s so little, and makes excuses for the rest. 

And knowing Prompto (especially with how he reacted to having to kill Verstael), if his parents died in the fall of Insomnia, he would be torn to pieces by it. And he might be asked why, because they were never around in the first place, and Prompto can’t explain it well (neither can I, for that matter) but there’s just something about his parents dying that’s just... killing him, too, even if they weren’t the best parents... they were still his parents. 

When I was having a sobbing fit at the game immediately after the whole flute thing with my father (aka a basic thing of “am I just worthless to him?”), my friend said something to me that really stuck with me. 

“You can’t choose your blood, but you can choose your family.”

And it’s not her own quote (she said as much) but it’s still true.

My dad’s related to me, and I probably love him because of that, because... he’s my dad. How can I not, even when he does make me angry sometimes?

I made my family elsewhere. I have amazing friends that support me, and I have my mom, and I have my section in the marching band and I have you guys, here on Tumblr and everyone I’ve talked to in the past that’s still with me now... I have a family. They may not all be blood, but they’re my family.

Prompto did the same thing with Noctis, Ignis, and Gladio. His parents may have been his “blood,” but he made his own family with the people that really cared about him. He chose his family.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to end this -- this was a little raw with emotion and I know I’m most likely just screaming into the void, but it’s... it’s nice to get some of it out, you know? This probably isn’t cohesive at all.... sigh.

It’s 2:30 AM now. I need sleep.