My Childhood Abuser Died Recently

An unexpected sadness set in

My childhood abuser, ex-stepdad, father of my two younger and much beloved siblings, someone I thought I could love as a father when mine was unceremoniously removed from my life died two days ago and my emotional experience has been nothing that I thought it would be.

In the past I had imaged that I would feel some kind of relief when the day came that this person no longer walked this earth, that some triumphant FUCK YOU type satisfaction would wash over me, dancing on his grave glee would overtake me, comforting my soul when he succumbed to old age, but that didn’t happen. I’ve always felt a kind of compassion for him as a fellow complicated human, knowing something of his difficult upbringing, his flight from home in Mexico at a tender age, it made me feel unkind and a bit dirty to only have a bitter hatred for this person when that goes against the very core of who I live on this earth as. I am a compassionate and empathic person and my compassion for him at times could feel detrimental to myself, could feel like a betrayal of self, of what I THOUGHT I should. feel but I think the real self betrayal would’ve been to make my feelings for him neatly one dimensional, to force them into a tidy box marked “hate” when it was much more than that. So it should come as no surprise that when this person, who took so much of my life from me finally died of old age that I’d feel a lot of conflicting emotions. One I didn’t expect was grief.

Complicating everything always in my relationship with myself, him and the abuse he inflicted on me were my younger siblings who I love wholly and unconditionally, who happen to have been borne of this person who caused me so much lasting damage. How could they come from him? How could I hate him but love them? Could he be all bad if he created such good? So when I got the text from my brother that my sister was flying in from Hawaii to be with her father who wasn’t expected to last the night I just felt an incredibly crushing sadness. Sadness for a life lost and sadness for their grief but quick on the tail of that sadness was a growing anger. Anger for myself, for an apology that will never come, rage that I never told him how much damage he did, how much he damaged my sense of self, my self-esteem, how unsafe I’ve always felt in this world both emotionally and physically because of him. So here I am utterly and unequivocally angry, but it’s a sad anger, an anger of loss of myself, sadness. for that trusting little girl that that was so utterly betrayed, Sadness for the following years upon years where I struggled and pushed and railed and tried to destroy myself while coming to terms with what had been done to that little girl. To me. Coming to terms with the years lost to the myriad and complicated symptoms of complex PTSD, anxiety, a decimated sense of self, living in dissociation, not knowing how to be comfortable accepting love, not knowing how to name what I’m feeling. So you could say this grief, it’s complex.

I wrote these words in a rush of emotion on the night he died, complex and complicated emotions brewing for too long just poured out. It’s now been 8 or 9 months since his death and I wish I could say that I’ve put this to rest but the truth lies somewhere in between the emotions that come and go. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about him in particular, I’m just still working on the aftermath of his actions by living life day to day and tackling the tough emotions when they come. I can still chastise myself at times for having any positive feelings about or for him and then chastise myself for having THOSE feelings about the first feelings. And then I think — if all I did was stew in hatred and not see the complicated, messy and fucked up humanity in another human being that caused them to do such horrible things — if I couldn’t feel sadness and empathy for them I’d be betraying who I am. I believe in people, I understand deeply that our histories can turn us around, make us into a version of ourselves that we’re not proud of. I don’t think he set out to hurt people but his actions had consequences. Ones I live with everyday as I learn to navigate new ways of loving and respecting myself in spite of growing up thinking that I must be really fucking defective, so completely unlovable to cause someone to want to hurt me so so deeply.

The devastating betrayal of abuse by a parental figure who is supposed to protect the children in their care, leaves deep, deep scars, these turn into layers and layers of scar tissue that harden us, warp our thought patterns, beliefs and actions towards ourselves. The years spent peeling away these layers of scar tissue has been both ruthlessly painful and euphorically triumphant, I’ve been left bleeding and raw for days, weeks, months and years by the slow process of revealing, feeling, sometimes (often) running and finally healing. I’m taking my power back from the person who took it from me, it would be a betrayal of self to continue to let him live rent free in my consciousness.

I honor myself by healing, by working toward living a life I love, by striving to surround myself with authentic, kind people and most of all for finally forgiving myself for someone else’s sins. I no longer own them, they no longer own me. I am mine.

The north is to south what the clock is to time

There’s east and there’s west and there’s everywhere life

I know I was born and I know that I’ll die.

The in between is mine

I am mine

Pearl Jam