I have four parents. Yes, four. A mother, a father, a stepmother, and a stepfather. Every Friday, I pack my massive blue duffle bag and hop in the car. I drive two towns over to whatever house I am scheduled to be in for that week. I have been doing this since I was a year and a half old. I have been doing this for more than twelve years.

When I was ten, my father was hit by a drunk driver. The man who hit him drove off and left my dad in a snow pile on the side of the road. The police offered my dad a ride to the hospital but he declined and took a lift home from a police officer. Weeks later, he decided it may be a good idea to get himself checked out. The test showed no brain damage, but it was clear something was off about him. Less than a year later, he was fired fired from his job. I have no doubt the crash had something to do with it.

He had a few jobs after that but they were low paying and I could see the wrinkles deepen on his and my stepmom’s face as they dipped into their savings account again and again. One day though, my father announced he was going back to school… To become a nurse. I’m not going to lie, I was shocked. I has always known my father as a bike mechanic. He said it was going to be good for our family. He said, in the long run, it would get him a good job and make good money.

Before I even got a chance to say goodbye to my old father, he was already enrolled in Vermont Technical college. He got a job in a fancy nursing home and it was all good for a while. I hardly noticed any huge changes. Then he quit his job because he didn’t like the work conditions. And so he got another job at another nursing home. But then he was fired from that job. He was able to get another one at a facility for nuns when they were about to die. It all sounded perfect. Maybe he could keep this one for more than a year.

His new job had a catch though and he had to work the second shift. This ran from 3pm to 11pm. I would wake up for in the morning, eat breakfast, then knock on my father’s door and he would drive me the three minutes it took to get to my school in his pajamas. It was about a mile to the school and I could easily have walked. It was literally the only time I got to see him though.  I would come home and he would have left for work about a half hour earlier. I would eat dinner with my sister and my stepmom and then go to bed. He would get home around midnight and I wouldn’t see him until the next morning when I knocked on his door for another ride to school.

But already, I felt my father slipping through my fingers. He only talked about his job, money, and bikes, none of which I am too fond of talking about. I didn’t want to spend time with him. I started to walk to school again as the weather got warmer because I didn’t want to have to talk to him, even for those few seconds. I looked forward to the Fridays that I went to my mom’s house and dreaded the Fridays I had to go back to my dad’s. I hated having to be alone in the house with my stepmom without my father. It felt so empty. But it didn’t feel right with him in it either.

I had always been perfectly fine with switching houses every week. It didn’t bother me. But as I began detesting going to my father’s house, I began to hate the switching all together. It was never enough time with my mom and always too much time with my dad.

Around that time, I was having a conversation with my mother about college, despite the fact it was still four years away. I said that I didn’t think I would have a hard time leaving home and my parents because I had spent eighteen years with them. To that mother responded with something I will never be able to erase from my brain. She said, “Nine years. You only lived with me for nine years.”

And that was when I hated my father. I hated that he had taken up precious time I could have spent with my mother and made me spend it in an empty house that I despised. I hated that he put his work before his family. He may have said it would be great for our family but he was so wrong. I hated that he wasn’t my father anymore.

As I write this, I still hate him. But with that hatred, I also have a boat load of guilt. There are so many people that don’t have a father, or they don’t have any parents, let alone four. I feel guilt because there are so many children who are in so much worse situation and here I am hating my more or less comfy life.. I feel guilt because I know he thought he really was doing what was best for our family. I’m pretty sure he still thinks he is. I feel guilt because I don’t want to see the person who does everything for me. I hate that person.

With this guilt, though, I have learned to hate myself as well as my father. And with the hatred of my myself, I feel more guilt. I am in a neverending cycle of hate and guilt. I do not know what to do.