Trigger warning: very violent memories, DV, SA, death
A very long rave about my father.
My close friend and I chatted more than usual today. We often talk about very deep subjects. At least, they are deep on the level of how we are, what has happened in our lives, traumas we've experienced, deaths we've had in our lives, our depression and physical illness, and we also laugh a lot too.
Today I happened to think about my dad, as I often do, and talked once more to her about him. Then I told her how guilty I feel to talk so negatively about him after his death (early 2000s), to reveal all the worst of him. I wish I talked more about the wonderful side of him.
She was understanding and related, I think about her mother, who died about five years ago, and who she still misses and thinks about almost every day, I think.
My father is strongly on my mind again tonight. After he died, I felt he was with me every day, and, in a way, didn't even miss him, because I felt him as a companion in my days, the best of him was there it seemed at any time I wanted to reach out for some kind of psychic support.
On another level I was actually relieved when he died, because I was afraid of him in my life, probably all through all my life. I knew what he was capable of.
This may be moderated, but my mother told me several years ago that he held a gun to her head when she was pregnant with me. She never knew if the gun was loaded or not. He was drunk and laughing.
I am horrified that my mother stayed with him after that. I had one man pin me to a bed about 15 years ago, with his hands around my throat, saying he felt like punching my head in. I moved out of living with him as soon as I could afterwards. Aside from that, all my relationships have been with kind, sensitive, gentle men. And I am also long time friends with a few men, consistent, loyal friends. One of my new friends is a man also. Again, not a violent man, sensitive and creative.
What I revealed here about my dad (I've said it to other people too, but only those closest to me, and my psychiatrist and psychologist), well unfortunately it is indicative of a whole lot of other terrible experiences in relation to him. For example, he at one time talked to me alone about taking out the whole family, including himself. By 'whole family', I mean me and my mum and him. I was about 10 years old when he asked me what I thought about it.
There's more. He drank a lot fairly frequently and got violent with mum. She gave almost as good as she got. I remember thinking one night one of them might end up dead. That was the night she swung a heavy ashtray on a long stand at him. She said vicious things to him on a regular basis, as I have done at some time to almost all the men I've had intimate relationships with. But I can't excuse my father for ultimately taking the physical power over her in the way he did. He did hit me once when I was about four, in a shocking way. But then was sick about what he did, because, when he wasn't crazy with inner torment, he loved me so much.
I loved my father and always have. I never didn't forgave him in one way. He had a miserable life, clear to me even as a child that he was tormented. I now understand that he was suffering an extreme form of mental illness but never got any help or even diagnosis. Like so many men of that generation, perhaps. He grew up in The Great Depression. He had a very hard childhood. All his brothers were half crazed like himself, behaving like beasts to their wives. Alcohol had a major part to play also, but in a way only revealed the violent desperation in them.
I tend to think my father had bipolar, like myself, though I know it's not the best thing to diagnose other people like that. But bipolar is said in the Black Dog Institute literature to be 80% genetically related. Further, it says that it is the most inheritable of the mental illnesses. I feel I inherited my bipolar from my father. He was such a Jekyll and Hyde. My mum is pretty crazy too in some ways, but she has had a much happier life overall, it seems to me, and has functioned much more effectively in the social world. Even though she has endured incredible hardships.
So what was good about my father? When he was high spirited and happy, as he also could be, he was very charismatic in his playfulness, funny humour, physical antics, infectious warmth, affection. He was also very musical and entertained many people with his music, including teaching me music throughout my childhood, both through basic instructions on how to play guitar, and playing to and for me. He once wrote a song for me. I was embarrassed at the time, but it is something I now have in sheet music in the tiny bundle of possessions, mostly letters we wrote to each other, that are just about the only earthly remains he left me.
He was very poor and suffered a great deal because of it. All of us were very poor. In fact I have pretty much lived below the poverty line my whole life. He struggled terribly with workplaces, as I have done throughout my life, to the point of breakdowns, sudden resignations, followed by abysmal depressions. This was part of his mental illness, I think, as it is with me.
He was intelligent, though only went to school until year 7. One of the most moving memories I have of him from when I was a child was when he spent months, maybe years, studying a Little Oxford Dictionary, learning to spell the words, expanding his vocabulary. He used a little exercise book that he would write words in. The dictionary, which I still have, is full of underlinings in red biro. His favourite word was 'paraphernalia'.
I always loved my dad. I almost adored him when I was child, and there is still so much love, compassion and appreciation in me too for him now.
But I ask you, how do you reconcile this kind of relationship with someone, especially so primal a relationship as that with your father?
I have done awful things to him in my life. For seven years I had no contact with him or my mum. I was suicidal when I made that decision. I mourned the both of them all those years. Then the death of a family friend brought us together again. At one time I became convinced that he had sexually abused me, though I now doubt that ever happened. I didn't confront him with it but I went pretty far in making it known elsewhere.
Despite all of this, I'm so glad I had a continued relationship with both of them after that big break. Never one to say 'I love you', in his final years, Dad and I used to say it to each other on the phone almost every time we spoke. When he died, I just made it to his death bed, was living interstate at the time. We had a special moment then, a happy memory to leave me with. I remember the last moment of it especially well. It was a loving and good humoured moment. Then he died later that night after I'd visited the hospital. I howled like an animal in the waiting room. He's the only person I've ever seen after their death, the only human body without the animating spirit.
After his death, there were mystical moments. And I still have him as a loving presence in my life, regardless of it all.
That he thought of you each time the pen touched the paper, to me is proof of his love. I can imagine the guilt he felt for harming a love so innocent as his own child. 