Recently, I have thought about the idea of my writing a letter to you. It struck me as unusual for several reasons, not the least of which being that although I have every right to write you the ferociously angry letter I immediately thought of, I never considered doing so as a legitimate way to release the anger I have toward you. Even as I sit here and type, I do not feel that warm flush of anger rising to push the words out of my brain. Very strange, since it is a rare thing indeed to find myself without words. I am stumbling all around my own mind looking for the words to say the things I’ve never given myself permission to say, let alone feel.
I am going to try, however. I am going to try because I am no longer willing to be the person you tried so hard to make me. I’m going to try because I deserve to feel the happiness I was denied as a child, and which I have denied myself for so long…be it out of guilt, a need to punish myself (for not being good enough to love?). I’m already crying. I don’t think you know how many nights I have cried for all the things I wanted and needed that you never provided.
It makes me so angry to try and talk to you about these things and hear how unloved and hurt you were as a child, and perhaps still. You see, I hear you say those things and all I hear are excuses and there are no excuses for the things you did to me. You have told me you beat me, you touched me, you hated me because …. oh so many reasons ‘because’…. because I looked like my mother, because you weren’t ready to be a father, because you felt pressures, because you didn’t feel good about yourself, because, because, because…. so many reasons and none of them seem good enough to justify the fists across my back and face, none of them are quite reasonable enough to excuse the fingers, the penis, the intrusion of you between my legs, none of them are true or just enough to excuse you from taking the innocence and hope I never got the chance to experience.
There are times when I want so very much to hate you the way I used to hate you. At least then, I could tell myself you were some kind of monster and believe it. I look at you now, I remember you from the last time we spoke and you are an old man…. I cannot see the terrible, powerful, frightening father who pounded my head against the concrete wall…. I cannot see the man who lifted me by the throat and shook me as if I were subhuman, undeserving of even the most basic of human respect and decency. When I look at you I have a hard time remembering the selfish bastard putting his penis between my legs and telling me he wanted me ‘the way a man wants a woman.’ I just see a tired old man who wants someone to care for him…. and I remember that feeling well enough to feel somehow guilty that I cannot do this. And that feeling of guilt hurts and angers me all the more…. for I did nothing to create this situation. I was innocent. You are the one who stole my ability to feel that compassion and to give it to you now is to justify the things you did to me and that I cannot, will not do.
I wanted to do all of these things and more. For a long time, I have tried to tell myself I can be better than you were, that I can be the person you need me to be, that I can care for you the way I always have and you could finally be the father I needed so much. The terrible reality is, it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way and I am tired of lying to myself and the world. I deserve more than to live this lie.
There is a part of me that will always love you. There is a part of me that loves you for the father you might have been…. for the father that I see every once in a while looking at me from across the room with pride. There is a part of me that will always sit in the quiet of my room and pretend I am in your lap… safe and secure as you tell me the bedtime stories I never heard and hold me with paternal affection unmarred by your deviance.
There will always be in me that part that wanted you to be so much more than you ever were… and that will always mourn the father who never was… and I love him, my father. I love him even though I will never know him outside the realm of my own dreams.
I am still so very much in pain. The sexual abuse is not the thing lingering like a thorn in my mind, it is the neglect and abandonment, the mental anguish and denigration, the utter emotional starvation that lies within me and throbs in agony. I feel as if I’ve never been able to trust anyone, to love anyone, to really feel safe with anyone. The things you did to me live with me still and they are like a barrier between who I am and the person I want so much to be.
I cannot allow you that place in me any longer. I realize my healing does not depend upon my finding some way to reconcile you and incorporate you into my life. Indeed, I do not need you in that way and it is just as well, for you could never be that for me. For years, you have lain like salt in my wounds and I have been loathe to remove you for fear that I would miss some miracle of amnesia or transcendant love that would take us beyond the past to a place where we could be family. In many ways, I grieve for that more than anything as I finally cast this illusion aside… I always thought if I tried hard enough, I could make it different, make it better, make you less than a monster… make me more than your victim… but that isn’t possible until I stop waiting for you to be someone you cannot be, until I stop pretending this is one of my stories and I can craft the ending I desire.
Talking to you last month was a watershed moment for me. Being able to say to you the things you did were wrong, hearing you agree, being able to ask you *why*… even if you are unable to answer, these are the things that are balm to my soul… to be acknowledged by you… validated and heard. But the result is not closeness, rather a feeling of relief and detachment… I have gotten from you what I needed, and I do not need you anymore. So I tell myself and I think it more true today than ever it was.
I look forward to the day when I no longer need to think about you, to cling to what you did in order to have something by which to define myself. Already I create new definitions, new labels, new foundations to replace the ones you left to me. In place of victim, I am a survivor. In place of unloved child, I am a cherished mother, a friend, a confident, a lover. In place of weak, I am strong. In place of frightened, I am secure. I have made these things in myself and they are free of the taint of you. There is good where once only terrible memory and sadness stayed… and for this I’ve no one to applaud than myself. *I* have taken the bad and made it into something good… *I* have used the anger that sprang from the seed of abuse you planted and nourished it into a tree of life. *I* have overcome the sum total of how you perceived me, and *I* continue forward, into the sunlight, where all things dark and horrific are purged, are melted away.
I suppose somewhere in all this I am giving you what tribute I can for being someone who was willing to listen and admit to the things that have haunted me for so long. But frankly, I give this only with much loathing and reluctance. After all this time, I am no less unwilling to validate you for anything related to the past. I do not feel you deserve it and I suppose in a fashion, this but means I cling still to memory… trying to fool myself into thinking I am not needful of retaliation against you, yet seeing oh-so-clearly that I wield this new weapon of acknowledgement with a certain, savage satisfaction.
It seems that even in my breakthrough, there is still a bitterness, a rage, a cold hatred that seeks to spend itself by finding some method by which to give back to you even the smallest portion of the hurt you have given me. I cannot help but think that until I find some way to rid myself of this need for vengeance, I will always be somehow tied to you and all the things I would rather leave behind. So… I write. I sit here over days and weeks and – when the mood and mind are agreeable, type out a few more sentences or paragraphs to tell you all the things I’ve never had the luxury of space or the stillness of mind to convey. I send my thoughts to this quiet, accepting page and purge myself.
I do not think I will ever truly want you in my life as a father. For all I dream of how it might have been, it has never been and I cannot fathom that it will ever be so outside the realm of my own imagination. And though I cannot find a way to avoid wishing or dreaming, I find it all too easy to accept the reality of you. Somewhere between my dreams and reality lies the place where all things are equal and in that place, I am free of you and the memories of the days when I welcomed your hands, fists, and penis as the only way you were ever able to pay attention to me.
One day, perhaps even soon, I will no longer need to remember things quite so clearly. I will grow beyond the need to prick myself with the shards of what-might-have-been. One day, I will finally lay these ghosts to rest, move on with the life I’ve created, and finally be able to say the one word I’ve wanted more than anything to say to you…. goodbye.