My dad told me to kill myself six months ago, in June.
When I talked to him after six months of no contact, he made a point to apologize for my faulty perception of things.
The apology of an abusive person frequently looks like, “I’m sorry you…”
“I’m sorry you thought I said that.”
“I’m sorry you’re mentally unstable.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you when you were sad.”
He never once apologized for hurting me, though. He isn't sorry about that.
The problem wasn’t that I thought he told me to kill myself. The problem was that he actually told me to kill myself. And I feel in my heart that he meant what he said, when he said it.
The problem wasn’t that I was mentally unstable. It was that anyone who had a person in their life that dead set on hurting them would be mentally unstable.
The problem wasn’t that he wasn’t there when I was low... The problem was that he was the one dragging me down. From that time when he punched my arm till there were bruises when I told him to stop calling me names, to the time when he called me a slut for saying I was attracted to girls, and leading up to the day six months ago when I almost took my life.
It took five years of the cycles of abuse spinning faster and faster for me to realize that real love doesn’t ever look like that, and that he isn’t going to change. In fact, it took being in an authentic, real, loving relationship myself to see that love and pain are not unanimous; not even a little.
The dysfunction between my father and I goes back a long time, back to when I was sixteen years old. Arguably it could go back even further if you consider the extreme neglect that took place during most of my childhood.
At 16, my father used finding out that I smoked marijuana as an excuse to start physically and verbally abusing me. Ironically, I started smoking because I was depressed.
It felt like being punished for feeling bad, and those were some of the darkest times in my life.
Though he painted a pristine image to the outside world and had leadership roles in the church I was going to, the people closest to me knew of the horrors that would take place between closed doors. Horrors of my privacy being violated, of my sense of self being diminished, and of being put through immense fear, repeatedly.
Many of the people who would hear what I spoke of, wouldn’t be able to handle the dissonance that would take place within themselves, and would in turn question my honesty. After all, it’s easier to tell ourselves that the teenage girl just wants attention, instead of scrutinizing that there might be a more sinister issue at hand.
The abuse in and of itself was bad enough, but the hypocrisy and lies really destroyed. Gaslighting, rewriting the past, and denial were the closest I got to a meeting of minds with my father. Lies upon more lies.
Abusive relationships are akin to acid rain. You can’t tell just by looking at the rain how damaging it really is. But with time, you notice the statues it touches are corroded and rotting. The trees it touches wither. The fish around it begin to surface, belly up...
But it takes time to make the connection.
Some days, I don’t know why I didn’t kill myself.
Perhaps I didn’t because of my closest friends and family.
Perhaps I want to believe that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
But many days, the phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you wish that it did” resonates much more.
On good days, I’m a survivor that never has to look back. On bad days, I can feel like it’s happening to me all over again.
I’m writing because if I don’t talk about this experience, it’s going to continue to control me. I’m doing this for my own sense of release, and I’m doing this for other people who have gone through the same.
You are not alone. And the fact that you’re not alone, is really fucked up. Nobody deserves to be told the absolute lie that their life is worthless. No one.
I know it’s a struggle. I know what it’s like to battle inner demons every single day, to wrestle internally with things that are small to other people, such as, “should I leave the house today?” In fact, it's my goal to be as open as possible about my own struggles.
Like many abuse victims, I have a hard time seeing how any positive self-focus or self-care is not selfish. I beat myself up for setting the smallest of boundaries (as pointed out by my therapist this week), and wonder if deep down I really am a narcissist like my father. If you have gone through abuse yourself, you know what I’m talking about… Even long after the abuse is over, the abuser still lives in your mind, criticizing your every move.
How do we know what's real? This is a question I've been asking myself for a while.
The truth is in the intention.
Sometimes the people close to us accidentally hurt us. They do things carelessly that trigger our pasts, or tease us about something that we’re sensitive about, or overwhelm us with their problems. Relationships are messy like that, and we’re all destined to witness the limitations of language at least some point in our lives.
But sometimes, people set out with the intention to harm us.
You can tell a lot about a person's real intentions by seeing how they respond when you tell them you feel hurt by their actions.
A person who truly loves and cares about you will feel bad about hurting you, especially since if someone loves you it is not their intent to hurt you. They will seek to find a solution, either by changing their actions completely, or by meeting you halfway; by getting on the same page.
A person with sinister intents does not care if they are hurting you. They will shame you for feeling hurt in the first place. They will refuse to take accountability for the part they played in causing the hurt, or in extreme cases, their behavior will worsen. Pyschopaths and sociopaths especially like being worse to their victims at this point, because they like to get a reaction out of you.
As I was sitting there crying that night, imagining the ways I would take my life, my dad towered above me, yelling that I was pathetic, worthless, and that he was embarrassed by me, until I became angry enough to ward him off physically. I’ll own up to the fact that I didn’t care much about hurting him after that point. It took a lot to bring me that low. The illusion that he cared about me was shattered.
Love has pure intent. Love is flexible, patient, kind… And is not self seeking, but symbiotic. Love has a spaciousness to it that leaves room for growth, for mystery.
Ill intent shows through its inflexibility, impatience, unkindness, and hatred. It is only concerned with the self; not the highest self, but the ego-self, which is concerned with hierarchy and survival.
Though it can be difficult to know the difference, in due time intent reveals itself. It is then up to us to move past the ego, towards love.
I am not so close minded to say that I would never accept an apology from my father. I love to wishfully think that some day he’ll call me up and say, “Gee, I am sorry I’ve been such an asshole to you and everyone else in the family. I’m sorry I was so blind to how hurtful I’ve actually been. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be the father that you all needed me to be.”
But for now, that is just a dream, and the words actually spoken still sting.
Is this release I’m feeling after putting words to it, what other people call ‘forgiveness’? Perhaps. But from my perspective, I am not quite to a place of acceptance, something that I’ve always felt was deeply intertwined with forgiveness. I will never accept that it’s okay to say that to someone, and I will never accept that things had to be this way. No… I won’t hold on to a past that I wish had happened. I won’t grasp an illusion that died many times in the past, over, and over again.
I do not welcome my father back into my life. Is it possible to forgive someone, and still condemn them from entering your life? For the time being, I’m going to say that it doesn’t, and I will be here, in a space of not-quite-forgiveness, with my eyes fixated forward, moving towards the hope that with time, I will become stronger, and more loving, than ever before.
