Dad, in Journal

The guy who never gave a shit.
The very last time I saw my dad, it was at my cousin’s wedding when I walked up to say goodbye, and he gave me a disgusted sneer and said nothing.
That was 2 years ago.
Before that, my dad made an “attempt” to talk to me. He stopped in on his way home from work. He never got out of his vehicle, and just left without telling anyone be was here or knocking on the door or calling. He didn’t even get out of the truck.
I have no ambivalence about this relationship. My dad is an asshole who completely abdicated his duty as a father a long time ago. I have zero temptation to believe that I have any responsibility in this relationship.

What I struggle a bit more with is the insistence that I have responsibility to the narcissistic woman who chose that sadistic asshole to be my father. Perhaps she is simply less honest, more willing to manipulate through guilt and punishment in order to get what she wants. Intellictually, I know that is true. Yet when my mom pulls the old “family member x is dying/sick/injured you should reach out”, I always tend to think, should I?
Will I be filled with regret if this family member dies and I didn’t say goodbye? And I replay the role they had in my life, and the conversatios we’ve had. Inevitably, the role I recall is minimal, self serving, or totally negligent. And the conversations the same. Yet there is this sentimentality.
I think sentimentality is probably a negative- similar to guilt. It’s the result of an imposed standard, not one that I chose. If I appease my mother, there is no positive for me. Merely the palliative care for the dark guilt and melancholy which plagues me; the temporary pain killer for the poison that she fed me.