finding forgiveness.

i am a girl with many flaws. my wife will surely agree. one of said flaws is my inability to let go of hurt. i hold onto it as if it were my life preserver in the midst of the Titanic catastrophe. you get to a point in adulthood to where relinquishing hurt is a necessity for survival. question is, what does one do when it is pivotal to do just that and you don't have the tools and mechanisms to do just that? i'm at that place and i don't know what in the hell to do. you'd get better results with al sharpton at an Aryan brotherhood beauty pageant.

as a little girl, that hurt was the only thing i had to hold onto. it was the only thing i had to cherish to be able to connect with my monster, with my dad. he with held all normal fatherly emotion from me. he was never proud of me, he never doted on me, he never ever said the words every daughter needs to hear. that strips away the vital bonding material that glues every parent-child relationship. when there is no glue to hold that necessary relationship in place, unhealthy emotions take that place. every put down, every jab (towards me, my mom, or my mom's family) cemented the ill emotion of hurt. that fosters itself into an awkward and highly unhealthy relationship. the rippling affects of such an easily preventable tragedy touches every single aspect of that child's life and future. if i let go of the hurt, that was equivalent of letting go of my dad. what child wants to do that?

the way he could play puppeteer and manipulate the strings to rain down the ultimate guilt trip for wanting to- or even thinking about- letting him go was nothing short of amazing. like the Vatican convincing the masses that contraceptives are the work of the devil. he learned from the master of manipulation how to make things work exactly the way he wanted. what he wanted was to be able to control me from across town without so much as having to make an appearance in my life. is it any wonder that i was perpetually stuck in a conundrum of purgatorial guilt? i learned to feed off of the hurt. its what sustained my relationship with him until he killed himself and his wife. i no longer wish to be crippled by this disadvantage. i wish to grow. how does one find forgiveness to grow? where does it come from within you? how do you grow forgiveness?

contemplating.

"what a quandary," exclaims Mrs. Peggy Ingram. and bless my stars, was she right. i have never been in this strange and foreign predicament that i am currently in. my house is totally clean. i have NOTHING left to clean. this has NEVER happened to me before; it feels too damn weird. i feel it is as if i am shamefully betraying my heritage, the very fabric of my upbringing. if my mama knew, she'd surely shit herself. okay well maybe not, but she'd damn sure make some type of snide comment.

growing up in a house with one angry thirteen year old, one innocent four year old, and brand new one month old twin boys meant a very chaotic house. there were always clothes to be folded, put away, bottles to be made, messes to clean, and food to be cooked. looking back now as an adult and being finally freed of my monster in the dark (aka the Evil Faux Czar), i can see the things that i should have done to make things better for my mom and for the greater good of the household. however, aside from the normal hormonal imbalances occurring at the time in my body and suffering the abuse from my evil monster in the dark, i couldn't tell my ass from my head. left or right, up or down... it was all the same to me. there was so much that i was unable to comprehend back then. and to tell you the truth, there's still some that i don't get to this day. i've accepted it but it doesn't mean i have forgiven it, or that any of it was okay. it happened. i can't change the past. so i move on and learn from his mistakes. if anything, i can say quite adamantly that the cycle stops here.

i still am waging an inner civil war from within myself on whether or not i am worthy enough of certain things. that is perhaps the biggest thing that i have trouble choking down. i am trying to take responsibility for my foolish and down right stupid behavior in my past and the repercussions that followed. but this, however, this issue stems directly from him. his actions continue to haunt me until this day. i cannot help but to wonder until when the day will come to wen i am even free of his ghost, of his memory, of his chains of abuse. the first time i ever stood up to him still mystifies me completely. long story short: my Nana had a brain tumor for which she had surgery to remove. it so happened that the surgery landed on 'his weekend.' (he did the part time custodial thing. at least on court papers that is.) so i called him to let him know that i couldn't come because of my Nana. to no surprise, he flew off in a rage. he screamed at me through the phone so loud that my mom heard him from across the room that i was in. his cursed filled tirade threw sharp daggers at me like, "what has she ever done for you? she's not even related to you and you want to be there for her when its my god damned weekend?!" yeah, it was so not cool. i was so taken back by his reaction to my not being able to come to his house for the weekend, that i mustered up the courage to tell him that i just would not be coming anymore, period. if i thought the Nana screaming diatribe was bad, boy was i ever sorely mistaken. what followed was nothing short of pure hatred. venom. anger. rage. abhorrence. i started crying on the phone because he broke me; i couldn't take it anymore and had to give the phone to my mama. she promptly hung up on his ass. i remember curling up into a ball in her lap sobbing once more for the daddy i didn't have.

what i will never understand is what happened back before i was a teenager and did do the stupid and irresponsible things that i did. how can a man loathe his own child? a child, for pete's sake. an innocent, snaggle toothed, pig tail wearing child who loved playing on the slip 'n slide during the hot summers. how does a man do that? i doubt i will ever discover that answer. i love my damn dogs more than that sonofabitch ever loved me. how sad is that, i ask you. i can only hope that he loved his other daughter more than me. i know he pretty much thought his son could walk on water. my dad's mother thought the same of him. i would be lying to you if i said that i did not ponder about his other daughter. i often wonder if she has realized what type of mother she had. now that she is a mother herself, i wonder if she gets it. her own mom told her to not come home for christmas because she got along better with my dad when she wasn't there. and then they died. that christmas. i wonder how that makes her feel. but she and i are oil and water, even though it used to not be that way. we were never close exactly but we tolerated each other alright. before they died she did share some things with me on his antics and baffling behavior towards her, to show me it wasn't just me whom he hated. i had/have mixed feelings on that. but what i find puzzling is her current frame of thinking that they were excellent parents. like that because they both died, it excuses their different types of abuse. nothing pardons that, not even their deaths.


i do wish her well, because i do still care. i don't want to care but i can't help it. i loved her at one point in time. and now as an adult i have come to find that you just simply cannot erase love or hate. you can break the cycle, but you cannot forget it.

patchwork pieces.

tomorrow is the big day. my mom arrives to help paint our new house. seems unbelievably surreal. i am 26 years old. i have a wife and two dogs. and on top of it all, i'm still my Grandma's girl. try as i may, no matter how hard i dig my feet into the sand, time still washes ashore with the tide. you can't stop the tide.

i like where i am at, in my life. of course, i still want to change a few things. a little tweak here, a little tweak there...but who doesn't want to tweak their life up a little bit? all things that are meant to be, will be eventually. you can't stop the tide.

i am so thankful for what i have in my life. the people in my life are my
everything. each person that i love has a specific place inside of me; inside my soul. its funny if you think about it...my heart and soul are like a patchwork quilt of everybody i've loved. when i was born, i had a hole in my heart. to repair it, essentially, they patched it up. i was born a patchwork piece. how about that.

i've been looking at books on amazon.com tonight. like a fiend, i've been making my wishlist. on it, i have books on abusive fathers, grieving for them, memoirs of estranged father-daughter relationships, and of course, books belonging to my favorite genre, southern memoirs/comedies. i am wanting those books on fathers because he has been on my mind lately. i think its because the holidays are imminent. i have also been in contact with his other daughter. i don't really know what to call her. i don't know what title to label her with. and for somebody with a slight tendency towards OCD, thats annoying.

she says she finds herself comparing our lives. i think in comparison, our lives are vastly different, yet strikingly similar. how odd that we can be such a classic paradox. but it is what it is. what will be, will be. i am unsure if we will ever be in contact more than we are now. we weren't raised as sisters, so i think the undefined bond between us leaves us hanging in limbo. i believe we both only have good intentions at heart. to overcome all that hate, all of the lies,...would be a miracle of herculean magnitude. i cannot speak for her, but on my side, i feel my part is breaking the cycle. erradicating that anger, that hate for the next generation. i so hate the thought of passing down his DNA to my child. if i could somehow erase that out of my own DNA profile, i'd do it in a heartbeat. the ties that bind are not made of blood, but with love...not hate. hate can restrict. but that's all it can do. it'll only do what you allow it. and now that he is gone, i am not the only one who can breathe a sigh of relief. (i do not speak for J when i say this.)

his weapon of choice was hate. like a python, he used his hatred to suffocate his victims. a slow, painful agonizing death. he took aim at your greatest weakness, and dove in headfirst to assure his victory. he, like the anaconda, is now nothing more than a legendary monster. at least, from my perspective that is. what still saddens me, in the most odd way, is that he hated me as much as he so passionately did- and he didn't even know me. how does one hate their enemy so without knowing them? that isn't very smart if you ask me. seems to me the best strategy is to get to know your enemy inside out, so you could strike with one, simple and delicate blow. it scares me. it scares me that i have the capability to think like that. that i have the potential within me to be as evil as him. who thinks like that? bad people think like that. i mean, its just messed up.

he was all about fluffing up, like a cobra. but killing like the anaconda. that is the coward's way. he just made a mockery of himself for all to see. i laid in wait. i stalked to know his every move. scrutinized him. i knew his actions and reactions to any and everything in this world. then, i let the prey come to me. and there i sat, in the second row at his funeral with my wife in plain sight, for all of his cohorts to see. his disabled dyke daughter in full view of all of his friends. the thing that mattered most- his precious reputation. well, he mucked that up himself, but i... i reaped the rewards by desecrating his memory. and truth be told, i did so quite happily. somewhere in all of this is definately a therapy session or two.

my sanity, or the remainder of it, that is, was tied down to ground level, to reality by my wife. she tied it up like a boat to a dock. i thank buddha everyday for that. i really don't know where i would be right now, if she hadn't have been there for me. she hung in there. she didn't give up on me. neither did my family and friends. its hard to rip apart a tightly knit patchwork quilt. the ties that bind the quilt together are made of love- the most durable fiber there is. with that- i am stronger than i ever was.