letter to you (one that i might actually send)
I'd forgotten what it felt like to love you. The past few years I've spent trying to convince others and myself that I am allowed to hate you, and that with every right to it, I've been able to accomplish it. Who needs you? I've lived my entire life not quite sure of your place in it, always on the edge of losing you, of not having any agency over our relationship, and I thought if I got the chance to let go, you wouldn't be able to control me, or my emotions anymore. It hurts to be wrong. It hurts to have conversations, to see, as if in the clear light of day, that I've loved you all along, that I've missed you, that I've been waiting desperately to find a way to let you back in, and have spent the past three years trying to find your replacement.
Sometimes, I don't want to know the things that I know. Sometimes I understand things on a level that digs into me with sharp pangs, and I wish that I could turn everything off, just for a while.
Are we doomed to make variations of the mistakes our parents made in raising us? Even if we know the reasons why we do certain things, do we ever really have the agency to change them? To change ourselves?
I can't bring myself to write specific memories of you anymore, because I haven't known you since the day you broke me into a million pieces that August night when I was seventeen. Something shut off in me that night; the way that it hurt shook all the way through to the bottom of me. But, that summer night wasn't quite the end. When I didn't talk to you for the first period of years, I hadn't yet entertained the notion of letting you go completely, I hadn't yet given up on you, and it wasn't even my decision, not really. I did it for my mom, for the opportunity to go to college.
It took the time when you accused me of not loving Oma, of not loving your family, when you used your calculated meanness and hatred of yourself to try and bring me all the way down to my knees, to make me feel the most anger I've ever felt in my life, for you. The most hatred of you, of your cruelty, your selfishness. I've gone through enough emotional abuse in my friendships and relationships to realize when someone is toxic to me, and that toxicity has seeped deeply enough in their being to not allow room for anything but dragging me down. And that, dad, is where I placed you. If you want to know the reason I stopped speaking to you, stopped giving you anything besides the courtesy of pleasantries, it's you. You are the reason. Nothing else, nothing more complicated. A lifetime of you, has ruined me.
Because of the way you have taught me that I deserve to be loved, I spent most of my life apologizing, seeking out people who would love me with conditions, who seemed like they needed my help, that I might someday feel secure in having them. That when no one else could get in and get them to stay, that I might somehow get there. But in 24 years, you've never changed. I did. I had to, am too smart not to adapt. I deserve better things, and in my constantly evolving awareness, I have moved forward, slowly.
But I am afraid, am always afraid. I am fearful of the strength of subconscious emotional hangups, am scared of the power of my own emotions, as they rocket through my body and briefly cripple me, take away my ability to focus, to do the things that I love, to remember to be myself in the absence of someone I have allowed in. I am terrified of the way I still do not hate you, despite almost enough years between knowing you and now to have allowed my cells to replenish me into a new combination of matter and consciousness. In short: I have not viewed you as my father in almost seven years.
I wish I could just let you go. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to know you, to love you, to have you as my father? It affects my whole life, my whole being, the way that I walk around in the world. I hate myself for the way I feel about you, for the way I don't feel about other people, for the times I've chosen you over people who deserve it, who deserve me, much more than you do. I hate myself for loving people who are anything like you, and the way they find and keep me, at least for a while.
I don't know how to live in this world, the one you have manipulated my emotions into creating for me. I don't know how to be in a world that still has you in it, or even one without you, because traces of you live within me. These traces exist not in the way that make me a bad person, but in the way that does not allow me a way out of mistakes of the past. I am searching for you, everywhere, even as I simultaneously keep you, forcibly, at arm's length. Not that you try very hard to get to me, or that you ever have. There is an enormous difference between yelling at me in the car about the time my mom has stolen from you, as if I am something to be evenly carved into like pie, and the stories I hear of my mom opening her arms to me every time she picked me up from you, never questioning why she had to let you into my life, why she had to allow me the freedom to love you even as it broke her.
I could say that I don't deserve her, but I have worked far too hard to fall into martyrdom that allows me to make mistakes as I like. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve the way you have broken me, don't deserve the tears that still fall down as I write this. It hurts to excavate, don't you think I know that? The difference between you and me, is that I never get the choice to lie to myself, never get the option to hide from my emotions, from myself, from the people who love and want to help me. Something in my being, it doesn't let me go there.
I wish you would change. But I've given up hope that you ever will. So it becomes my responsibility (yet again) to find a way to exist in a world where you are my father.
Sometimes, I don't want to know the things that I know. Sometimes I understand things on a level that digs into me with sharp pangs, and I wish that I could turn everything off, just for a while.
Are we doomed to make variations of the mistakes our parents made in raising us? Even if we know the reasons why we do certain things, do we ever really have the agency to change them? To change ourselves?
I can't bring myself to write specific memories of you anymore, because I haven't known you since the day you broke me into a million pieces that August night when I was seventeen. Something shut off in me that night; the way that it hurt shook all the way through to the bottom of me. But, that summer night wasn't quite the end. When I didn't talk to you for the first period of years, I hadn't yet entertained the notion of letting you go completely, I hadn't yet given up on you, and it wasn't even my decision, not really. I did it for my mom, for the opportunity to go to college.
It took the time when you accused me of not loving Oma, of not loving your family, when you used your calculated meanness and hatred of yourself to try and bring me all the way down to my knees, to make me feel the most anger I've ever felt in my life, for you. The most hatred of you, of your cruelty, your selfishness. I've gone through enough emotional abuse in my friendships and relationships to realize when someone is toxic to me, and that toxicity has seeped deeply enough in their being to not allow room for anything but dragging me down. And that, dad, is where I placed you. If you want to know the reason I stopped speaking to you, stopped giving you anything besides the courtesy of pleasantries, it's you. You are the reason. Nothing else, nothing more complicated. A lifetime of you, has ruined me.
Because of the way you have taught me that I deserve to be loved, I spent most of my life apologizing, seeking out people who would love me with conditions, who seemed like they needed my help, that I might someday feel secure in having them. That when no one else could get in and get them to stay, that I might somehow get there. But in 24 years, you've never changed. I did. I had to, am too smart not to adapt. I deserve better things, and in my constantly evolving awareness, I have moved forward, slowly.
But I am afraid, am always afraid. I am fearful of the strength of subconscious emotional hangups, am scared of the power of my own emotions, as they rocket through my body and briefly cripple me, take away my ability to focus, to do the things that I love, to remember to be myself in the absence of someone I have allowed in. I am terrified of the way I still do not hate you, despite almost enough years between knowing you and now to have allowed my cells to replenish me into a new combination of matter and consciousness. In short: I have not viewed you as my father in almost seven years.
I wish I could just let you go. Do you have any idea how much it hurts to know you, to love you, to have you as my father? It affects my whole life, my whole being, the way that I walk around in the world. I hate myself for the way I feel about you, for the way I don't feel about other people, for the times I've chosen you over people who deserve it, who deserve me, much more than you do. I hate myself for loving people who are anything like you, and the way they find and keep me, at least for a while.
I don't know how to live in this world, the one you have manipulated my emotions into creating for me. I don't know how to be in a world that still has you in it, or even one without you, because traces of you live within me. These traces exist not in the way that make me a bad person, but in the way that does not allow me a way out of mistakes of the past. I am searching for you, everywhere, even as I simultaneously keep you, forcibly, at arm's length. Not that you try very hard to get to me, or that you ever have. There is an enormous difference between yelling at me in the car about the time my mom has stolen from you, as if I am something to be evenly carved into like pie, and the stories I hear of my mom opening her arms to me every time she picked me up from you, never questioning why she had to let you into my life, why she had to allow me the freedom to love you even as it broke her.
I could say that I don't deserve her, but I have worked far too hard to fall into martyrdom that allows me to make mistakes as I like. I don't deserve you. I don't deserve the way you have broken me, don't deserve the tears that still fall down as I write this. It hurts to excavate, don't you think I know that? The difference between you and me, is that I never get the choice to lie to myself, never get the option to hide from my emotions, from myself, from the people who love and want to help me. Something in my being, it doesn't let me go there.
I wish you would change. But I've given up hope that you ever will. So it becomes my responsibility (yet again) to find a way to exist in a world where you are my father.
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