Several years ago my family went on a road trip to Wyoming to visit relatives.

That was the last road trip I went on with my father.

That was the one he punched me on.

Only in the arm, but, it was still a violation of trust. He threatened to do worse if I ever hit him again.

I hit him because he walked in on my in the bathroom, deliberately, and then just laughed instead of apologizing. Acing like a middle schooler (no I’ve know middle schoolers who were more polite).

I’m not defending my actions per sec, I still probably shouldn’t have done that (though if it was any other guy doing the same thing my father would have been fine with it). I guess I thought if he’s going to act like a creep, I’d treat him like one.

But that logic didn’t go over well with my family.

Still, my dad retaliated too much. He hurt me when he hit me back, and he could hit harder than I could. Also, he hit me twice. But it wasn’t really the phsyical pain that bothered me, it was that he did it at all. Something my mom always said he’d never do, though he’d threatened to plenty of times.

My dad had a nasty temper, and the thing I realized was it didn’t matter if you could argue I deserved it (which is what my aunt basically said). My dad got mad over stupid things all the time, even if this time it was valid, if he’d hit me over this, he’d do it when it wasn’t valid too.

I was scared of him getting that angry again–but then I always was scared of his anger.

I didn’t know at the time hat that kind of fear shouldn’t be the kind your father inspires in you.

That with a safe man, you wouldn’t even be able to picture them hitting you even if they were angry.

There are men I know like that, but my father was not one of them. Not from when I was a little kid.

The next year, when they all went on a road trip, I stayed home. Best decision I made where that was concerned.

By the year after that, my father had moved out. Actually, it was right after their trip. Where I heard there was plenty of drama that I was happy I missed, no doubt I’d have ended up in the middle of it.

Something died between me and my dad on the trip though. Maybe if he’d let it be a wake up call, and had tried to change, and fix things after that, it could have recovered.

But instead he blamed me for what happened, claiming he “didn’t know what else to do” since I “never respected him”.

Even though the entire incident was started by him disrespecting me.

But my dad is good at gas lighting.

My father wasn’t often physically abusive. That incident was the closest he came to it, usually he didn’t do more than yank me out of chairs or rooms he wanted to be in, and threaten to hit me if I talked to him the way I did.

But since it had gotten worse over time, I had a feeling it would just keep getting worse till it became a consistent thing, if we pushed him enough. We all walked down eggshells around him because of that.

My life got much better once he moved out (really we made him move out).

I’ve shared the story on this blog before, more while it was happening, in fact, but, I doubt most of my new followers have read those posts, so sharing it again after all this time is probably a good idea for context.

There’s too much to really tell the rest, though.

I’ve had good road trips since that time, and I hope I will remember them for years to come, but it’s probably not up for debate that that one is the most memorable.

I’m likely to remember it till my dying day unless I get dementia in my old age.

I’m not really sad or mad about it now, it just reminds me of why we did what we did, and why it needed to be done.

I hope other people had more pleasant memories for this prompt though.

–Natasha