I want my Daddy

Steven and I talked while he was up here,
"Have you talked to Dad lately?"
"No, have you?"
"No"
"I want to, but I'm always putting it off to avoid having to talk to HER"
"Yeah, me too"

'HER' is my father's bitch, er, WIFE. I love my father very much, and I hate that she has become this wicked stepmother between he and I. Thing is, it has gotten progressively worse. When they first got married, one year before JP and I got married, she was decent to us almost all of the time. Now when we see her, or call to speak to our father, she is cold, and almost snotty. I can understand, she is being cold with us because we don't call often to talk to Dad... but we don't call often to talk to Dad because she is such a heinous bitch. I almost want to get my Dad his own cell phone, so I know that when I call, HE will answer, and I won't even have to worry about speaking to her.

I don't think they're happy. I've been to their home a few times (How fucking sad is that, first off, I am his daughter and I can count on ONE HAND the number of times I have been invited to her home...yeah, it's her family's farm, so it IS "her" home.) I think they are sleeping in separate bedrooms. I would suspect that my father would love to be rid of her, but doesn't see that as a viable option. He is living on her family's land, so if he divorced her, he would have nowhere to go. He has been divorced once, from my mother, and being raised in a more traditional catholic family, I'm shocked he did it once. Actually, he wouldn't have, he would have stayed married to my mother forever, SHE divorced him... with good reasons, but that's neither here nor there, the point here is that my father is being held prisoner by the original evil stepmother... stepmonster.

I don't even know if I can ask him about this. My father is not a big 'talk about our emotions' kind of guy, I don't know how to say what I want to say to him without hurting him. What do I want to say? How about "Dad, I love you, and I want to spend time with you, but I cannot waste any more energy or effort trying to appease that woman. It's a matter of I do not care what she thinks or feels, she is not a nice person, she is a fake person, and I know she does not like the fact that you have children and grandchildren. I feel like she is holding you prisoner and I hate having to speak to the warden every time I call there. It is not you, Dad, I don't want you to ever think that I don't call often because I don't love you, I do, I love you so much Dad, but I just cannot continue the way things are. I don't know what to do about it either, so there, I'm laying it out there for you, I don't know if you can do anything, or if you even want to, but I love you and I want my kids and my family to see you more often. But not her. She has a toxic affect on me, and my kids, and I will not do that to them anymore."

I want my Dad to be happy. I want to be in my Dad's life. I don't think either of those is going to happen as long as she is around.

It's a sad Christmas Eve here, not just because my kids miss their Daddy, but because I miss mine, too.