I’m in the middle of a dialogue with you father – but you will likely never see this, even if I tell you these words.
I’m finally telling you things that I’ve kept hidden for decades, because I don’t want to continue a cycle of hurt. In this moment, I feel lighter.
I still don’t feel heard, I still don’t feel like we’re understanding each other – but I feel like maybe there is one less thing that I’m carrying.
I want to tell you – my honest opinion of you, is that I feel like you have worked really hard to try and make sure you are treated fairly, to protect yourself, to make sure you feel safe. I think you feel like other people can’t see how hard you have had to work for that.
I want to tell you, I see that.
I also think that this became such an important need for you, you didn’t see that the ‘work’ you were doing was hurting the people who care about you, and you care about also.
I don’t think you saw, I still don’t think you see, how we weren’t trying to take that away from you, but didn’t want the way you went about that to keep eroding away out our ability to feel safe, to feel like our treatment was fair.
So how much of this is my opinion, and how much of this is fact?
I’ve asked you to engage in literature about childhood trauma and the impacts on development – because I want us to understand what the facts are.
I want you to understand – when I tell you I struggle with these things, and these things are in the literature about childhood trauma – and *oh look*, these are some of the behaviours you were engaged in connected with those things I struggle with, I hope for a better dialogue than “you can lay your demons off on me”.
No, I can’t.
You put your demons on me.
I’ll kindly own my own demons, I’m tired of dragging yours along too.
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I believe you’re proud of the ways you’ve grown from your father.
I have no right, and no intention, to take that away from you.
It’s going to sound like it anyway.
I know you’re sharing vulnerability when you tell me about the things you would never do, that he did – and I’m glad you didn’t engage in that level of abuse.
Unfortunately…
This was never about that. While you were busy focusing on the things you would never do, I’ve been trying to tell you about how the things you were doing instead were brutalizing me on the inside. How increasingly unsafe I felt – even if you didn’t beat me the way your father did.
That didn’t mean you wouldn’t lay hands on me, especially when pressed – and I knew that.
So while maybe you never beat me like that, I could have taken it. I suffered enough violence at the hands of my peers to know I can take a punch, and I built up a disproportionate pain tolerance to survive that violence. That’s probably why I eventually started to feel a bit more confident to stand up to you, and press you more when that unfair angry protector showed up.
I still remember when you picked me up by my throat.
I was always so small compared to you, I never really stood a chance.
So living with you just became about survival.
You *must* understand that feeling.
So that’s why I feel like I’m taking something away from you when I say “I don’t fucking care that you never beat me, I was already experiencing violence elsewhere. This isn’t the Trauma Olympics. I was a child experiencing a lot of unsafe things, and I needed a parent who didn’t continually erode a feeling of safety at home. A parent who could show me there was another way to live, other than, ‘I can dish it out harder than I can take it’. I deserved that. I absolutely did not get that.”
We both deserved that.
I’m glad you’re happy now.
To build some of this secure adulthood, you took away some of my safety and security as a child; and I can’t get that back. I’m still trying to fix the hurt from that. I have to figure out my way of building my own security, and how much to include someone who historically has compromised that feeling – much like you had to with your father.
Show me you give a shit about that, and that you’re even trying to understand.
2 MUCH THINK 2 SLEEP 