Typical.

Man, that was one horrible weekend. I need a vacation from that vacation. I was foolish enough to believe that it would turn out otherwise. I mean, it was doomed from the very start.

It was early January when my dad called me, telling me not to make any plans on the last weekend of April because the whole family was going to attend my cousin's wedding. And he told me that he was about to buy plane tickets because air fares are cheaper when you book months in advance. Fast forward to a month later. Yup, he hasn't bought any plane tickets by the time i got home. We finally bought tickets two weeks before the scheduled flight. And he had to use my credit card because he had no cash on hand at that time... and by the way my credit card was blocked because he paid my bill with a check that bounced. And what about our tickets for the flight back home? we bought it a week before, and apparently he never talked about his planned duration for the trip with my siblings who can only afford a few days off from work. And what's so fucked up was the fact that i was coordinating things between all of them. Jesus, why couldn't my dad call them instead? and why the fuck did he not talk to them months before? Well, that's my biological father. The word planning is not in his vocabulary. There's minimal amount of responsibility and initiative in his body. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't any at all.

The flight to our destination was awkward. He sat beside me and kept on making small talk. The fact that i kept of tinkering with my ipod should have been enough for him to realize that i was in no mood to talk to him. But no, he just kept on blabbering and blabbering. By the time we landed, i asked him about our travel plans. The day after the wedding, we were supposed to rent a van to travel to the beach a hundred miles away. Then we were supposed to stay at some resort. I wasn't surprised to find out that he hasn't made any arrangements. We'll just rent a van when we get there, he says. Find a place to stay when we get there, he says. The two days we were there, he never made any fuckin' calls. He never made any arrangements. Good thing my aunt offered to lend their van when he asked my dad how we were going to the beach. And this happened a few hours before we were supposed to leave. That's my biological father for you. Everything has to be served in a silver platter to him. He can't do anything by himself. For anything to happen, some other person needs to do things for him.

Oh yeah, we got delayed because he just couldn't get up early, even when necessary. And again, he didn't call for any airport transfer service until the last minute. How typical. And we almost missed our flight home because he kept on insisting that we didn't need to leave early because the airport was only an hour drive away. Never mind the fact that we kept on telling him that we should leave early. He just told us to trust him. Jesus fucks, we've known him all these years. Did he actually think that we can trust him? That we can depend on him? And hasn't he heard that there's no way that the time spent traveling by land would be constant. It's either more or less, and when you have to be someplace important it's better to be early because you never know what you'll encounter on the road. But that's my biological dad. He doesn't believe in the saying that it's better to be safe than sorry. His motto in life is just to fix things as you go along. Trouble is, he doesn't really have the capability to fix things. He just has this penchant to consistently fuck things up. And what's worse is the fact that he was shouting at the person driving us to the airport telling him it's his fault that it took so long for us to reach the airport. The same way he shouted at the waitress at the restaurant earlier because the coffee that was served with his breakfast wasn't brewed, even when it says clearly on the menu that the included coffee in his meal was anything but brewed. The same way he shouted at the airport employees, ordering them around as if he ran the place. That's my biological dad for you. He always acts like he's king, like he's such a big deal even though he's not. He's always boastful, he's always bursting with pride even when in truth he has nothing to be proud about. He thinks of himself as everything, always going for the shock and awe approach and he manages to fool a lot of people. But for those people who can look closely, for those people who can see what he really is, they know that he's nothing. A hollow, shallow, empty space filled with nothing but fluff. He's just a huge chamber filled with nothing.

I realize that the main reason i enjoy traveling to different places and why i enjoy going on vacations is because i am far from him. Sure i feel great when i get to explore new and different places, when i get to do different things, when i meet new people... but the location doesn't really matter as long as it's far from him. At home i'm always pissed. At home i'm always sad. It's just either one of those. When i'm far away, i feel content, i feel happy, even when i'm not doing anything at all. A real vacation is something that keeps your mind off the negativity, even for a short while. It's won't be a vacation at all when you bring that negativity with you. In my life, most of the negativity centers on my dad. He's someone that i wish i can always leave behind.