I can’t tell you the first time my “father” hit my mom. It was just always there like Saturday morning cartoons and cereal. I didn’t know a world where it didn’t exist.
One of my earliest memories is a particularly violent fight in the kitchen. I remember the desperation flowing through me as my young mind raced for solutions.
I screamed. Surely they would stop and check on me.
They didn’t.
I cursed. I would be in big trouble now!
I wasn’t.
I tried to pull them apart which resulted in my father pushing me to the ground.
I remember running to my neighbors to call the police. I don’t remember if they showed up that day, but it doesn’t matter. They showed up often.
This is the man I’ve been asked to forgive for most of my adult life. Somehow I’ve become the bad guy for not forgiving him. As I grow older, I can’t help but wonder if there is some truth to that.
The sins of the father
Alcohol.
Crack.
Violence.
One of the last summers before our permanent escape, my father sold our air conditioner. It was one of the hottest summers of my life up to that point. It is a small thing, but it shows how little he cared for us even when sober.
He created scars on my brain that will never heal. Pluck the right chord and I’m transported back to that time.
My mom once asked us if we wanted breakfast from Mcdonald’s, an absolute dream in my childhood.
She rushed us to the car, but she didn’t have to push much. We were excited to go. My father came running out of the house like a drunk zombie, bottle in hand just to provide context in case I was confused, I guess.
He lounged for the car and my mom hit him to escape. It wasn’t fast enough to do any serious damage, but I’m not sure my young brain understood that at the time.
The bottle of liquor shattered on impact and the glassy liquid rolled down the window in slow motion.
I think the peak joy of a Mcdonald's morning contrasting with the terror of my monstrous father was enough to make the mental scar permanent.
I’m not sure if we ever got Mcdonald's that morning.
The cycle continued until I was about 10. We would make escapes; he would find a way to weasel back into our lives.
No, he wouldn’t find a way.
I would give him a way. I would cry for my father. I missed him. I wanted him back.
My mom would give in, and inevitably, he would beat her again.
He wasn’t the only sinner in my family.
Judgment
My “father” went on to make many more mistakes in life, but he has supposedly grown as a person.
Everyone is a human.
I always say people can change. I am not here to pass judgment.
If those are the terms for forgiveness, then I forgive him.
People want more from me though. They want me to have a relationship with him. They want me to hang out with him. Am I wrong for not wanting to do this or feeling the need to do this?
Furthermore, it would feel like a betrayal to my mother. I failed her in so many ways. She never explicitly told me to never build a relationship with my father.
On the contrary, despite the accusations, she was always very open to me having a relationship with him as a child. She took ten years of beatings so that I could have him in my life.
Nevertheless, not long before she died, she shared a poem with me. In the poem, she talks about a man that abuses her. Those ten years of beatings haunted her to her deathbed and probably contributed to her early death.
Immediately my “father” and his family pounced, trying to build some type of rapport with me on the back of death and pain.
I wasn’t having it.
A few years have gone by since then. I ask myself if he dies, will I be okay with never forgiving him in person?
Will I be okay with never having an adult conversation with him?
I wonder if I’m the bad guy.