My father and I

Once I could trace that thread of insecurity running through my entire life to my father, then I needed to know what to do with it.

The most formulaic response would be to forgive him, but that didn't feel necessary because I didn't feel like I held a grudge against him. There's a really long history of having to get over and through things. The times when I have felt my love for him most strongly have all been related to him doing something terrible, because that's when I feel most how tragic it is that he won't stop being terrible.

Even when I decided that I was not going to try and reconcile after the last disowning, that was not about anger. It took too much out of me to try and maintain the relationship to justify based on the good it did for either one of us. It was a sad thing to realize that I don't do him much good. Tiptoeing around his temper allows him to maintain his ways, but trying to persuade or argue or do anything different brings out the spite really quickly. If I felt like there was a benefit to him, I would stick with it, and it would be a lot of stress and pain, but I would do it. I didn't have any grudges left, even if I had gained some self-protection.

I can't rule out that there might be a stage in my development where I can have a relationship with him as he is without damaging myself, and I thought of that, but that wasn't what this meant either.

One thing that I remembered was seeing the healing of someone who had been tormented by abuse that happened to her when she was younger. After a short struggle it came very quickly, It was a gift of grace, and it troubled me because it looked so much like forgiveness for sin, but that sin wasn't hers.

I think of forgiveness as this culmination of being wronged, and being angry, and then letting go of that anger, but you can hold on to other things.

I had accepted my father's shortcomings a while ago. Recently I had come to realize that having a different father could have made for a very different life, and that maybe there was something to grieve there, but it was so intangible it didn't really go anywhere. Suddenly that core weakness was something I could put my finger on. How I had been all along made sense, but was also wrong.

I could let go of that. I can look back at always feeling like there was something wrong with me, and that I needed to make up for it (though it was so ill-defined it was impossible), and I can see that was wrong, and I don't ever have to feel that way again. It wasn't about it being his fault so much, but it was really important to know that it wasn't my fault.

I did take a moment again to think about my father again and to feel compassion for him. I care about him, but I am responsible for me.