Hey Dad (My letter to My father on Father's Day)

Father's Day isn't weird for me (even though I had a psychotic Dad).  I love celebrating the men who are good, strong, decent, caring, honorable fathers. I want to say a few things to my Dad now that he is dead....as of a week or so ago. Plus it's Father's Day. Perfect time.

Hey Dad,

I don't think you intended to harm me. I mean, I don't believe that when I was born you were just waiting for me to grow up a bit so you could have sex with me.  I do not believe that at all.  I don't have any answers for your actions... I have long since given up blaming and shaming myself for your madness.  Although I still struggle with intimacy (giving myself fully and openly in love) I struggle with the truth of things. I struggle with weight and the fear of being small again.  Because when I was small I was a child and being a child I was in danger and I can't ever go back to being small and in danger.  My weight loss journey is a vicious cycle.

I am still working this shit out. At 50 years old I am still pushing through fears and insecurities. I am now trying to handle this weight and my psychosis for staying fat. I know better in my head, but my memories are strong and deep and the body can't endure the possibility of revisiting that kind of assault and brutality.  My body is resisting weight loss; it is protecting itself and in the back of my mind, my brain is helping it.

Hey Dad, I have been most fortunate to have had some good men come through my life. Good men who far outweighed the bad ones. Good men who gathered up my broken pieces and quilted them together helping to create a whole me.  Some were passing through and did what they could for me and some are still in my life holding me up and loving me for no reason. No reason. Ha ha ha! that just opens me up... to be loved for no reason.  Like God does.

Hey Dad, I blamed Mom for many years for not doing enough to protect me.  I was mad with her for not being able to believe me until she got proof. I hated her and wished her dead. I spent a lot of time trying to break her heart.  Thank God she was made of finer stuff... the stuff of angels.  She let me free fall from my life and find my way back to the world. I did.  But I would fall many times over.  I paid a heavy price for your shit...and I am still paying.  But the difference now is the balance due ain't so high. I am more me than I had ever dreamed I could be.

Hey Dad, I'm a mom.  I adopted 4 kids. Remember when you said I was too weak to birth children.  You were right on some level... I couldn't birth any, but so what.  I have 4. 4 is divine.  It has real meaning to me.  They will never know harm under my roof. And that for me,  is how I pay it forward.  Taking care of the 4.

I am getting married again.  Marrying a man who sees my broken pieces and is not daunted by them. He is a binder of wounds and loves me so. It blows me away how I am able to jump across the gaping wounds of my childhood to get to love in the present day. I believe I am worthy of this love. It grows me profoundly.

So Dad wherever you are, I hope you are at peace. Truly.  I have released you from my hatred.  I have released you from my spirit.  And now that you are dead dead dead, I no longer have the anxiety of running into you on the streets where I live.  I can't tell you how liberating and divine that is.

No, not at all, Father's Day is not weird for me. I love celebrating all the beautiful, positive, caring, daring men who have come through my life with unimaginable gifts of love and friendship.  Your shit was the key to opening the door to a life filled with love. I believe that now.  It's my story to tell.

As I sit here and ponder you and this Father's Day, there is a deep sense of real peace for me.

That's it.