Confusion

I always knew that my dad was not a good person. I knew he drank, did drugs, had anger management problems, was a womanizer, and was sexually inappropriate with people, but until I was 35 years old, I didn’t remember much of the abuse I suffered at his hands. I know that so far on this blog I have painted my dad with only one color on the brush – the color bad, but that isn’t the entire picture.

I think the mind of a child paints people as either good or bad – they can’t be both. As adults we realize that people have both good and bad inside of them. We base friendships on the balance of those qualities. When I started having flashbacks after Dad beat Grandma, I felt really confused. He had often told me that I was his favorite, so it made sense to me that I remembered the abuse he heaped on my sisters but not the abuse he heaped on me. When I did start remembering, I felt like my entire foundation was broken. I felt that I had loved him even when he didn’t deserve my love. I felt betrayed.

My mind could not reconcile the good I remembered in him with the horror that I was remembering now. I couldn’t understand that the man who could sit down with a six year old child and patiently teach her how to play chess could be the same man who exchanged her for money. It couldn’t be right – I must be crazy. I wanted to be crazy. The alternative was just too awful.

I remembered Dad playing in the community pool with me. He could be so much fun. He did everything large: laughed large, talked large, loved large, and had large anger. He loved to take us to the mountains. He taught us how to build a campfire by gathering pine needles and small branches to use as kindling and then putting larger pieces of wood on the fire. He always brought a watermelon and placed in the creek so that it would be cold, crisp, and ready to eat after we finished roasting hotdogs and marshmallows. On the days he came home singing, he was a bucket of fun. Granted – many of his songs were completely inappropriate for little girls’ ears, but none the less, he was fun. I loved those days of being safely on his lap with him calling me his little Bambino. One day I even faked being asleep in the car just so he would carry me inside and tenderly tuck me into bed.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the flashbacks of abuse that terrorized my life. Usually, I thought about them for a week or so before calling my older sister and saying, “You are going to think I’m crazy, but do you remember Dad ever French kissing us (or which ever other memory had surfaced)?”

“Oh, I hated it when he did that,” she replied.

"Damn, I was hoping I was just crazy. I didn’t want that to be true.”

When pregnant with my third child, I suffered complications and was on bed rest for six weeks. During that time Dad was clean and sober. He came to my house. He brought crab legs and watermelon for me to eat because one: he remembered that watermelon was my favorite food when I was little, and two: he felt like crab legs would be really good for a baby in jeopardy. I couldn’t reconcile this man with the father who didn’t care that we were starving as children, or with the man who did all the other things I have posted about on this blog.

As humans we try to classify things. We sort – we make patterns. My dad doesn’t fit a category. He is both good and bad. He is charming and anti-social. He is mean and kind. He is compassionate and narcissistic. He is generous and selfish. He defies all that I know about people. When I studied British Literature, I found characters and authors who embodied him. In my dad I see Shakespeare’s Iago—a man who orchestrates those around him to cause hurt, and then sits back, smiling with a deep dimple in his cheek, chuckling at his own cleverness. I see Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein—a man who gives life but then abuses and abandons the very lives he helped create. I see Lord Byron’s Byronic hero—a soul that is selflessly selfish. When good, he would give his last dollar, but when bad, his cutting words flay his victim’s heart, and then his hatred burns anything good that is left.

Every child (at least this one) longs for a father. My father was the man who did all those good, kind things, and I am thankful for those memories. My father was also the man who did all those horrible things, and I feel sorrow for what he did. Because of the horrible things, the good things are tainted and make me feel confused. Yes, I understand that people are not perfect. We all fall at times, but the extremes in his behavior confuse my mind and thoughts. I am both thankful and ungrateful for the good things because it would be easier if I could say, “He is a horrible person; there is no good in him.” But there is good in him. At least there was good in him at one time. I don’t feel there is enough good left in him for anyone to be subjected to the man he is now.

I hope that when my life is done, the good I leave behind will far outshine anything I have done that has hurt others. I know that we are asked to not judge, but I am a proponent for healthy boundaries, and there is not any possible way to have a relationship with a rabid human. I know that God does not expect me to subject myself to more abuse.

In future posts I want to talk about forgiveness because forgiveness is possible – even in cases like mine.