A Letter To My Dad

Greetings Steemian's

Today was a tough day for me. It's hard for me to put into words exactly how I feel at the moment. It's a mix of emotions, but mostly sadness.

Sometimes, it's hard to know what the right decisions in life really are. I try to make decisions that are logic based, and don't lean towards emotions, but the reality is, I am an empathetic person, and although empathy isn't a bad character trait to possess, sometimes making decisions based on what your heart tells you to do, can leave you in a place filled with sadness. I don't know what other word to use. Sadness with a hint of anger and disappointment is all I really feel right now.

Perhaps it's a direct result of having a set of expectations towards a situation where you hope things will work out for the better, even if the situation contains more evidence to the contrary.

I was a victim of physical and mental abuse for my first 18 years on this planet. I would describe this abuse as extreme. There is no practical sense in giving details of the horror I faced as a child. I will simply state, that it had a traumatic effect on me that certainly will affect me for my entire life.

My abuser was my father. He successfully destroyed two families, and I was the oldest child in his second family. I encumbered the brunt of the physical abuse in comparison to my siblings, but the psychological abuse was bad for everyone, if not worse than the physical abuse, and my mother and siblings, to this day, have serious issues as a result of his torture towards us.

I made a conscious decision at the age of 18 to join the Marine Corps, primarily to escape this abuse. It was the quickest way out, and I thought it may be a nice start to a successful life. I didn't really have any passion to join the service. It wasn't something I saw myself doing forever, and I joined the hardest branch, because my father had been in the Marines, and I knew if I joined any other branch, he would hold it over my head forever, and say that I wasn't as tough a man as him because I chose an easier route. This was in the forefront of my thinking when I made my decision. I did after all, have a goal to be a better man than him, and I would give him no way to compare my life in lesser terms than his own. This of course was a juvenile way to think, but I was barely a man, and rather naive in my thinking.

After a few years of service, flying up through the ranks, and maintaining the poster child presence of a true Jar Head through and through, I received a phone call that would change my life, and the direction of the lives of my entire family.
My sister called me in tears, balling her eyes out over how she couldn't take it anymore, and how she was forced to take care of my two year old autistic brother day in and day out, while he kept my mother in the kitchen screaming at her. She begged me to do something about it, and I felt the anger and rage bubbling up inside of me.

I informed my command of just how bad the situation was at home, and told them that I felt a moral obligation to intervene, because everyone in the household was too terrified to take any kind of proactive stance. I believed that I was the only one who could open up a case against him, and have it be successful.

My command was in agreement and sent me to a duty station close to home. With the assistance of my fathers sister, and my minor brother who was about 16 years of age at the time, we opened up a child protection case that resulted in a court order for him to vacate the home immediately. The witness testimony, along with the signs of abuse that were prevalent in the home, were enough for child protective services, and the court, to make their decision.

After this, I didn't speak with my father for 12 years, nor did I have the desire to. I didn't deal with any of this very well, and took to drinking alcohol, and abusing chemicals to suppress the memories and pain. I even carried guilt for having my father separated from his family. The kind of guilt that a man feels who betrayed his father. My emotions were all over the place. For the majority of these 12 years, I lived in complete inebriation. The heavy use of drugs and alcohol took a toll, and I was able to quit. today I maintain abstinence, but it isn't always easy. The PTSD I suffer from fuels anxiety to a debilitating level, I have bi polar disorder, and that is likely a symptom of heavy drug use. I also have extreme social disorder, and have a high level of introversion. 93 percent according to my personality analysis. At one point the doctors told me I was agoraphobic, but that diagnose dissipated with an update to the DSM-5. Now the doctors tell me I am extremely depressed. Go figure.

It took me many years to come to forgive him, as well as forgive myself for doing something that I thought to be somewhat of a sin, and this forgiveness wasn't easy, but it was crucial for my recovering from alcohol and drugs.

I recently started thinking about the fact that he is getting old, and out of the two families he made, no one wants anything to do with him. I started feeling bad for him. My empathy kicked in full force, and I thought "maybe I should be a good son, and make amends with my Dad. He could use someone to look after him in his golden years."

Against what would be considered sound logic, I decided to contact him on his birthday. I said happy birthday Dad, through facebook messenger, and his reception was very good. He seemed excited, and very happy to hear from me. He said he had been missing me, and had wanted to see me for years.

We started having regular visits together every weekend, and this continued on for the past two months, but things weren't going as I expected them to. The man I remember had not changed at all. He knew better than to scream and yell at me, but he maintained his innocence in everything that has happened in the past, and immediately took to the victim role. He vehemently denied any wrong doings, and tried to manipulate everything in a way that tailored his victim role. I can only describe his way of thinking as that of a sociopath narcissist. He seems to be defunct of any type of empathy whatsoever. I do not wish to share the sick things he did to us. It is all very disturbing to describe, and it was no easy task to forgive him, so his lack of acknowledgment in the role he played with abusing innocent children and women, is beyond astounding to me..It's actually deeply disturbing and confusing.

Over the course of these two months, he started trying to figure out ways to get back at people in his life that he felt wronged him. He expressed the desire to sue everyone, and obviously was using me to fish for information, and assist him with this. I became his means to an end. I expressed that I didn't feel like living in the past, and that creating more conflict wasn't a solution to the problems of the past. I expressed that I truly believed he should just leave the past alone, and try to move forward with the future. To me it makes more sense, but his desire to maintain a sense of control, and be correct in with everything would not allow for this.

I have been having some issues with my son, who is going through some psychological issues himself right now, and my father saw this as an opportunity to attack my sister who is my son's caretaker. He started making phone calls to lawyers, and the lawyers started calling my sister. He made it about my son, but the true relevance to the situation, lies within an issue he had with her at an earlier time, where he felt she wronged him. I had no intentions to attack my sister in any way. She is working with me to see my son, and caring for him. I have nothing but the upmost gratefulness to her, and although we have our disagreements from time to time, I treat her with the respect she deserves for taking on the burden of caring for my child.

If you are still with me, I imagine you are just as disgusted as I was when I heard this news, and I had quite the emotional breakdown yesterday. I was very close to relapse, but I knew this would solve nothing. I was able to make it through the day, and I woke up with the realization, that I needed to remove my father from my life. He is nothing but negativity, and damaging to every aspect of my existence if I keep him in it. I have been asking the creator to bring light into my life, every night recently, and undoubtedly, the creator is helping me. I woke with the intrinsic awareness, that I must remove him, no matter how shitty it makes me feel, and it indeed, did make me feel shitty. But I did it. I composed a letter for him, regardless if he deserves it or not, and blocked every avenue of communication possible for him to even respond to it. I have no desire to hear a response. Nothing he can say will change how I feel. I want positive people in my life, and he is negative. It's as simple as that, even if the emotions associated with it are not.

I am not going to share the entire letter. The full details in it are personal, and not really necessary for the relevance of my post, but I will share the last couple paragraphs. I had many people analyze the letter, and everyone was in agreement that I was very diplomatic, but also very efficient in expressing how I felt, as well as to the point. It's been a hard day indeed. I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm not looking for validation. I know what I did was the right thing to do. I am just sharing, because it helps to write about it. Life isn't perfect. Sometimes we wish people were someone they are not, and sometimes those people are the ones closest to us. In the end, everything has a meaning, some of us just don't know what that meaning is yet. So here it is, the last words I will ever have with my father.

I want you to know that I love you unconditionally Dad. I always will, and it pains me immensely to write you this letter, but I feel it's the only way for me to fully express how I feel to you, as well as avoid the volatility that could potentially emerge from trying to have this conversation with you over the phone, or in person.

I want to see good things happen for you Dad. I want to see your family reunited with you, but it's my opinion that you need to take a look at the past, and accept the role you played in how everything came to be. I see someone who takes the role of the perpetual victim, but my memory, and the memory of so many others, does not correlate with your depiction of the events that transpired. I see only two ways that amends can be made with your family. Accept the role you played, and ask for forgiveness, or don't mention the past at all, and move forward in a positive direction with those that are willing to be in your life. Trying to exact revenge in the form of lawsuits, and accusations onto others, is a recipe to stay disconnected, and make matters worse.

I'm really disappointed that things have ended up this way. I want you to know that I have had a nice time with you lately, and I hold the gifts you bought me for my birthday dear to my heart, but I need to take a step back and work on myself. I hope you consider the things I have said here. Everything I said I mean, and I was very specific in my wording for a reason.
I love you Dad. Take care.

Thank you for reading.
Much love,
@futuremind

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