My dad lived on the other side of the world. He died two days ago. Ever since, my family has been on my case about flying over for his funeral. It\u2019s a 20-hour flight, super expensive, and they\u2019re all saying if I don\u2019t go, I\u2019ll regret it forever. To them, I\u2019m already the bad guy for refusing.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing: this man walked out on me when I was 8. He packed his bags, moved abroad, and started over with a new family. He didn\u2019t say goodbye. No phone calls, no visits. Just the occasional birthday card that I later realized wasn\u2019t even in his handwriting. My mom raised me on her own, and I learned early on not to expect anything from him.<\/p>\n
Now he\u2019s gone, and his \u201cnew family\u201d wants me to show up and act like I was part of his life. They expect me to stand there crying at his grave when he never cared enough to show up for me.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s where it gets complicated. Yesterday, one of my half-siblings reached out to me privately. I was shocked when he told me they found a box of letters my dad wrote to me over the years but never sent. Apparently, his wife (their mom) kept them hidden. The letters were full of apologies, regrets, and promises that he wanted to make things right. He even said once that he\u2019d bought tickets to visit me but never went through with it.<\/p>\n
So now I don\u2019t know how to feel. On one hand, I feel like I owe nothing to a man who abandoned me. On the other, what if he really did regret it and I never gave him the chance? Am I wrong for staying home, or is it okay to protect myself even if it makes me the villain?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My dad lived on the other side of the world. He died two days ago. Ever since, my family has been on my case about flying over for his funeral. It\u2019s a 20-hour flight, super expensive, and they\u2019re all saying if I don\u2019t go, I\u2019ll regret it forever. To them, I\u2019m already the bad guy …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":875,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions\/875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}